The odyssey of a torpedoed tramp

Dear old Thing,

You must be wondering what has become of me in this unholy mix-up. How far it seems to our Fourteenth of July in New Orleans when we said good-bye at the Dollar Bar after a cake-walk to the sound of the gramophone! Here goes for my tale of woe.

Well, the Pamir was loading her cotton—five thousand bales—up to the twenty-fifth of July. It was hottish and we were in a hurry to clear for Liverpool and find cooler weather. The news, too, seemed a bit inflammable. American papers were getting up stunts in big headlines over Serbia and the rest, but we thought it a “try-on” of the pro-German press and the Hearst crowd. You guess we were glad to be going to see what was happening in France and what the old things thought about it.

We got under way at 2 a.m. At the start a d—— great sea-elephant just missed ramming us, but the Old Man steered like a wizard. I took the watch at three o’clock for Blangy, who was having a touch of fever and had been loading up with quinine for two days.

The ship nearly had sunstroke in the Gulf! Ninety-five on the bridge, one hundred and four in the cabin—not a breath of wind! In the Atlantic it freshened up a bit and Blangy reported fit again.

The boat was doing ten knots and a bittock, but at the end of three days our engine started racing like the very devil. The propeller shaft broke off short about a yard from the thrust block. We must have run into a submerged spar which had fouled the screw. It wouldn’t surprise me if a chunk of the propeller had gone to the bottom.

No good trying the S.O.S. stunt, as we have no wireless! Muriac, the engineer, was a wonder. He found some way of forging on our wretched anvil a couple of steel collars which he fixed on to the two broken ends of the shaft with eight bolts. That took two days. You can imagine how Old Man Fourgues cursed to see himself a-floatin’ like a bloomin’ buoy in the middle of the sea. You figure him, with his slant eyes and his goatee, shouting down the engine-room hatch every five minutes:

“Hullo there! Muriac! Will your turnspit be ready to turn by the time the grapes are ripe?”

“Another hour—maybe two!” yells Muriac. “But for God’s sake leave us alone!”

We got under way again after having drifted fifty miles to the west. Fourgues was afraid the engines would not run to more than ten knots, but the shaft was stronger than ever.

This delayed us considerably. On the night of the seventh of August we entered the Irish Channel and looked for lights. Search me! I had the watch and for three hours Fourgues blackguarded me like the expert he is, because I could not see a lighthouse or any other kind of light!

“What have I done to have a blind man like this? Get a new set of eyes! Run her aground! Shove her up against it! Get nice and close! You may see the lighthouses then. You’ll have made us lose three hours. This trip will never end!”

He couldn’t see the lighthouses any more than I and that was why he was making such a row about it. We had got almost near enough to touch land; you could see it, like a wharf—but devil a light anywhere!—when, all of a sudden, a craft going at full speed over-hauled us! It only showed lights at intervals. It kept its position as we could see it to port. I kept on my course. Bang! Bang! The ship fired twice with blank.

“The devil!” said Fourgues. “We have struck destroyers at practice. There must be others. Keep your weather eye skinned, my boy.”

I did! Bang! A shell fell ten yards ahead of us. The destroyer came up and yelled through the megaphone:

“Stop! Or we’ll sink you!”

Sir, we stopped! The destroyer came closer still. We could see nothing except a red hot cinder or so now and then.

“Who are you?”

“Pamir, French cargo-boat with cotton from America for Liverpool. Why do you stop us?”

“Oh! You’re French, are you?”

“Yes!”

“Right-oh! War’s declared!”

“By G——!” cried Fourgues and I at the same time and he fell on me and hugged me.

“Ça y est, my boy! We are having it out with the Boches!”

“What are you going to do?” yelled the destroyer.

“Go back to France!” answered Fourgues immediately, and added:

“Is England with us?”

“You bet!”

“Hurrah!” cried Fourgues. “Hard a-starboard and full speed for H——. We’ll report to the Admiralty.”

The destroyer accompanied us a little way and finally left us, calling:

“Good-bye and good luck!”

“Thanks. Same to you!”

You can’t deny it, Fourgues is a brick! No hesitation about his turning back to France! He slapped me on the back, offered me a cigar, and joked on the bridge.

“No wonder there weren’t any lights! It’s likely we’d show the Huns the way! Tumble down, my boy, and tell Muriac and Blangy. Rout them out if they are asleep. My word, won’t they stare! Send them to the bridge and bring up a bottle of fizz. My treat!”

Blangy and Muriac didn’t faint; the guns had awakened them, but they supposed it was manœuvres.

“Not pulling our legs?” they both said.

“No, to H—— with pull-legs. The Old Man will tell you.”

Every one embraced every one else. No one thought of sleep. On the bridge Fourgues tried to pour the champagne, but he spilled it on our hands in the dark, he was trembling so with excitement. We drank what was left.

“With all this,” he said, “we don’t know when the thing started. Pretty fools we look without wireless or anything! We might have butted into the Boches! However, all’s well. Decent chaps, the English, to be on our side. What should we have done if they had left us in the lurch?”

“What about the Russians?” queried Muriac.

“They’re all right!” said Fourgues. “We are all going in together.”

“And the Italians?” said Blangy.

“Um! We must get some information. Could you hit it up a bit, Muriac?”

“We ought to manage eleven knots. The coal is good and the shaft will hold.”

“All right. Let her rip! We must get to H—— to-morrow.”

We put on all the speed we could. As for me, I didn’t sleep. I had been counting on a leave in August while the boilers were being cleaned, and was going home, to La Rochelle. You know why, old man. I told you about it in New Orleans; it was to have been this year. What will she say, poor little thing? I had to put to sea again without seeing her!

The Pamir reached H—— at nine in the morning. Fourgues went to the Naval Préfecture and returned at noon with the daily papers and the news.

“No one knows what is to be done with the Pamir. We have to wait for orders. I wired to the owner; I asked the Admiral to unload the cotton. They told me to keep it pending further instructions. We are forbidden to touch anything. No examination of our engine or boilers! Muriac, your shaft will be looked after later! This afternoon a Naval officer will come aboard to settle the destination of officers and crew.”

If we had not been at war Fourgues would have exploded. To leave us with five thousand bales of cotton in the hold, the boilers and shaft unrepaired and without a notion of what we were going to do the next day! But he took it very well, even not being allowed to go ashore and the order to keep up steam.

The Naval officer, one of the Tin Hat sort, came on board about three o’clock. He mustered the crew, looked at the Service certificates, and in half an hour had fixed everything up. Muriac went, Blangy also. Half the deck crew and three-quarters of the engine-room artificers packed up and landed. The officer said that it was to man the war-vessels and coast-defences. He told us to leave that very evening for the port of —— in Morocco, where we should receive further orders. Fourgues became a bit restive.

“See here! You want me to run over to Morocco with two officers missing and half the crew?”

“We need the officers. Ships of war come first. Those registered for active service afloat serve in the Fleet, officers or men. As for men, we will send you at five o’clock a contingent of reservists, five seamen and ten engine-room ratings.”

“Might just as well leave me mine, who know the ship! My shaft is broken, my boilers are falling to bits!”

“Pooh! You’ll get on all right!”

“But coal? And provisions?”

“Go ahead; you can provision on the way if necessary. You are needed in Morocco.”

“To do what?”

“You will receive orders.”

“Can you let me have charts for Morocco? I have only those of America and Europe.”

“We’ll see. I don’t believe there are any left. We gave them all to the battleships.”

“I haven’t any wireless.”

“What’s the need? Are you afraid of meeting the Germans. We are guarding the routes.”

“And my five thousand bales of cotton?”

“No use to us! Please hold yourself in readiness to get under way at six o’clock, as soon as you have received your reservists. Do you understand?”

“All right.”

“Send all going ashore into my launch smartly. I still have three ships to deal with.”

Muriac, Blangy, and the men packed in five secs., believe me. They were in such a hurry that they hadn’t time to shake hands. What can have become of the beggars?

“This is a nice game,” says Fourgues to me when we were alone again. “You can take charge of the engines and we will take the watch by turns—the two of us—unless they send us some one who knows starboard from port. Hurry up! Go and write home—I’m going to do the same. It’s two years since I’ve seen my wife and the children at Orange. And you, poor devil of an engaged man! Oh, well, it doesn’t matter! I’m quite happy. They’ll find the old Pamir can account for herself.”

He shook hands. We both wanted to weep. To start like that, with a damned dislocated ship! We went below; he wrote to Orange, I wrote to La Rochelle—not much, you know; just to say that we were there and to address letters c/o the Admiralty with “Please forward” in large letters on the envelope. And then the reservists arrived. What in Fortune’s name had they sent us!

I can see now why they keep the “active service” reservists in the Navy. The others are too much of a good thing! For the deck, there was a croupier from Deauville, a tram-driver, a newsvendor, a shopman, a cabby; for the engine-room, a hotel lift-boy, a cinema man, three carriers, a bill-poster, a cattle-dealer, and three others of the same sort. What do they remember about the sea? They arrived, stupid, fat, and full of questions. We shoved ’em along proper! The lift-boy and the movie-man are to take duty in the boiler-room, the driver will steer, the movie-man also runs the dynamo. I forgot a chef of the Hotel Romantic at Monte Carlo! We bagged him for the officers’ table. If he can do anything with beans and bully beef he’s a wonder! As to Fabrice, whom you may remember—little Fafa who made such good cocktails at Galveston—he went forward again.

The Pamir left H—— at exactly six o’clock. No need to add that Fourgues and I did not shut an eye during the trip. Twelve hours’ watch apiece out of the twenty-four and filthy weather. The rest of the time I spent in the engine-room in overalls trying to see to overheating and leaks. At the Training School one learns little about mechanics—I am the more aware of this, having forgotten everything! The first day we had a lot of bother with condensation and the hammering on the cylinder cover was so great that we were obliged to reduce speed and drain the cylinder. The engine-room filled with steam. All the reservists ran off, squealing like pigs. With the old Pamir men we patched it all up and the next day it was the tubes of boiler 3 which began to blow. That’s the old one which was in urgent need of repair. The cattle-dealer, who was on duty at the feed pump, did not know where the cocks of the tanks were. When one had emptied itself he simply let it go. The gauge fell to zero and you can imagine the explosion. We drew the fire under one boiler and after that could barely make seven knots. In the Bay of Biscay we caught it proper. Two of the carriers and the bill-poster came out of the bunkers half dead, spitting blood and coal-dust by the quart, so now there was no way of getting the coal on the fire. Fourgues slowed to five knots. Our firemen were simply unable to stoke. It was more than they could manage, and at every shovelful they fell down, sending the fuel everywhere except into the mouth of the furnace.

With such a crew Fourgues was afraid the trip would take a month, and that we should run short of provisions and coal. So he put in at the port of —— and had a pretty cold reception. In the first place, it was Sunday and they wanted to know why he came bothering people then instead of on a week-day. He must have talked to them like a father, but I was unfortunately not there to hear. They gave him permission to get the provisions, but as for coal, search me!

“What!” says he, “you have heaps there! Can’t you give me half of one heap?”

“Impossible. What you see there is not to be touched. It is the mobilization reserve.”

“Great Scott! We are not merely mobilized, we are at war!”

“Possibly, but this is stock belonging to the mobilization—which means that it can’t be touched.”

There was no way out of it. But of what use is coal which is there for war, but which cannot be given out in time of war? The Pamir sailed after eight hours in port. We got provisions. Fourgues telegraphed to the office for money to be sent to Morocco. We were stony-broke, and would have to eat down there and pay for coal and get water and everything.

The rest of the passage was completed somehow or other at between five and six knots. The grease ran short, the bearings got hot, the bilgepump got out of order, and there were three feet of water under the planks of the stoke-hole. You can imagine the stink! Really, Muriac had points; he would never let any one put a nose into his shop, but he made things work! As for me, I give it up. Between bridge and engine-room—it was enough to drive a man crazy! Blangy was a lucky devil! By this time he must be on a really-and-truly ship with a full complement, officers and men. I wonder why it was he instead of me who went. We belong to the same year; only he gave his certificate to the officer at H—— first and was already packed up when I handed in mine. We’re in for a nice time, my boy, but much water will pass under the Pamir before they give us any officers.

We reached Morocco the day before yesterday. How did we get into the harbour? Ask Fourgues! We didn’t get the charts at H—— after all, and had nothing but the track-chart of the Atlantic, where the coast of Morocco occupies about half an inch. The bottom is bad, the coast is flat. We spent a day and a night wandering around in sight of beaches with three cacti and a palm-tree. Fourgues didn’t want to make the wrong port and at a distance they all looked alike. Quite impossible to get our bearings—clouds or fog all the time. Fortunately we came upon an American who signalled our position to us and the route to follow. And that’s how the Pamir got in.

In port everybody had skipped to France by the last boat. There was one shore officer, one chief petty officer, and no one else. They asked us what the deuce we had come for and if we had any munitions.

“Munitions!” cried Fourgues. “Five thousand bales of cotton, boilers shaken to pieces, nothing more to eat, some scrapings of coal, and no cash in the locker.”

“What the devil are you doing in Morocco then?”

“I was sent here from H—— and they said there would be orders here for the Pamir.”

“First we’ve heard of it. Never mind! Wait a bit and we’ll find something for you to do.”

And that’s why, old fellow, I write you from Morocco. We are waiting for the orders which have been requested from Paris, Rabat, and Tangier. Nothing comes. Fourgues will never recover his temper again. Our cotton had begun to heat, for it is warm here. Half the reservists are on their backs—diarrhœa, gastric troubles, general breakdown. You ought to hear them. Impossible to go anywhere or to unload, for we were told to be ready to start at two hours’ notice. As for me, I slept for nearly thirty-six—I had had my share! Fourgues is very nice to me. He takes it out on the reservists, and lor’! he does talk to them! At bottom he is right. All those fellows thought they were going to have an easy time and they need to be jacked up.

Consider yourself in luck, my son, to get such an epistle from me. Fact is, I’m Fed Up and I want to know what has become of you and the fellows. A ship from the south is passing to-morrow and I shall send this at a venture. I address it c/o your people, hoping they will see that it reaches you. Shall we write to each other once a month as before? I will try to. Shake, old man!

Dear old Thing,

And so you too were taken from your ship, like Blangy! (By the way, I have received nothing from him, not even a card. I suppose his laziness has got the better of him again.) All the same, I wish I might see you on your battleship, in a double-turret, on the lookout for twelve hours out of the twenty-four—How fed up you must be, poor old dear. I remember you telling me in New Orleans how you were soon going to command a Chilian sailing-vessel—“And tack about here and let out the sheets there!” I can still hear you. And now you are a gunner! They must need excellent observers on your battleships and I remember that with the sextant and the table of logarithms you used to beat us all to a frazzle. Position found within half-a-mile in twelve minutes—that was your style! Tut, tut, and so you mayn’t smoke your pipe. Never mind! As a hooker, the battleship Auvergne is right there—the very latest thing! I saw her launched. You ought to have nothing to complain of, and one of these fine days you will drop a few of the best “eggs” on the Austro-Boches at Pola or Cattaro. You won’t miss them, will you, like the Goeben and the Breslau? Taking it all in all, I’ve no sympathy for you.

As to the Pamir, they let her play bumpety-bump on the bottom for ten days there in Morocco. We rolled from one side to the other, notwithstanding our five thousand bales of cotton. I wouldn’t have believed there could be so much swell on that damned coast. It’s a nice place for loading! Try it! You have to look smart or bang goes your tackle, your derrick, and the whole caboodle, and get your load in your face. The most annoying part of it is that when there isn’t a cloud nor so much as a breath of breeze, you still get rollers and rollers, high as houses, from the sea. Furniture, dishes, books—down comes everything. In dead calms you would think you were in a Malay Straits monsoon.

They had no idea what to do with us down there. Fourgues would not set foot on land again, he was so riled at being “to Hell and gone” with a lot of blacks while others were working in France. And what a song they made about letting us have coal! There was a German ship, a great hulk of the Woermann line, in the roads, which had been stuck ever since the mobilization, hold and bunkers full of coal. All that was necessary was to take it! Oh, dear, no! Mustn’t touch the Boche even for a painter or a tarpaulin! The Boche is sacrosanct! This ship carried bananas and peanuts. All had rotted on the spot and you could smell them two miles away.

All the same, Fourgues kicked up such a row about the coal that they gave him some. We hadn’t enough to get as far as Gib.! We took some from the dock, from a heap intended for the Expeditionary Corps. You can imagine all the forms we had to fill up, and besides, they counted the sacks—just enough to get us to our destination. If the Pamir had taken one more day, it would have stopped dead like a sailing ship on the Equator.

Finally, one day, we were told to hook it right there for Oran, to transport Algerian troops. At the last moment a counter-order! Two days later, order to leave for Dakar and to put ourselves at the disposal of the Navy down there. We had weighed anchor, but not yet stowed it when they signalled us to let go again where we were. Five days passed. No news, no letters from home. We got down in the mouth. Fourgues stayed in his cabin, telling fortunes with his cards, swearing like a trooper. I gave lectures to the reservists on drain-pipes and valves. Muriac would have been amused to hear me explaining the way things worked. The rest of the time I played the mandolin, but enthusiasm was lacking, and, moreover, a good deal would have been necessary to keep up the strumming, when you had to clutch the wall every ten beats to keep from taking a toss when it rolled. Finally I played lying down! One fine morning they ordered us to get under way in a hurry and sail for T——, twenty miles to the north, to transport a tribe of Germans driven out of Morocco. Dirty work, but we were glad to be moving. My Gawd, what a stinking anchorage T—— is,—straight coast, open roadstead, no anchor-hold, a swell and a pebbly bar! Lovely! We are beginning to learn what rolling ninety degrees means.

On land there were about fifty Boches with all their goods and chattles—furniture, pianos, enormous trunks, a regular migration. The Germans do very well in Morocco. They have all passed the military age, for it is so written in their papers—the youngest was fifty. You who are a physiognomist would have put him down at thirty-five. The authorities ordered us to treat them with respect in accordance with a section in the International Law, and to give them accommodation, not as prisoners, but as passengers “under supervision.” Fourgues, who hates underhand dealing, said that he was not going to inconvenience the crew for the Boches and that he should put them on deck. Then he was told to construct wooden shelters on the deck, for dormitories and cabins. He said he had no wood for the purpose, so they sent him planks and new joists and some military carpenters, and in forty-eight hours the entire deck from the funnel to the stern was covered over with a fine hutment. We looked like one of those wash-houses on the Seine.

But, Lor’ love you! that wasn’t all! There was the furniture of these gentlemen, enough to fill a train, and they did not want it broken. Fourgues had planned to pile it forward and then lash it above the main hatch.

“You see, my boy,” he said to me, pulling his goatee, “there won’t be much left of their gadgets if we get a good sou’-wester in our backs. However, they can make matches with the remains.”

Unfortunately, in the first batch there was a piano. We slung and hoisted it with tackle, and in spite of the swell it came aboard pretty well and was just over the hatch. But as it began to descend, blowed if the cable didn’t foul the winch and stop short, our piano in the air. Three huge rollers came along, and everybody hung on to keep from taking a toss. The piano swung once, then once again, and then bang on to the port railing. The lid and cover flew off. Bang to starboard! The piano veered, the black and white keys chased each other over the deck, the strings snapped one after the other like a machine-gun, and the whole show smashed up. It looked like a burst spring mattress. Fourgues was overcome with that laugh of his which makes his tummy shake, and turned as red as a tomato. As for me, I was laughing so much I could hardly stand up, and the crew howled for joy. But the owner, a Boche in spectacles, raised the deuce. He fired broadsides of insults at us, but fortunately he spoke in his own disgusting language, for Fourgues was beginning to lose his hair and would have chucked him overboard without hesitation if he had understood a single word. It was just before the Marne and the Boches were jeering at us to their hearts’ content. This particular one went on land shaking his fist. We dumped what remained of the piano into the sea and loaded the rest of the furniture. But the next day we received an order to put all their stuff in the hold. A little tin-pot officer of sorts came aboard to announce this to Fourgues. He was well received:

“I am loaded to the hatches with cotton and I won’t unload a single bale. Even if you bring me a written order, I forbid my men to touch it without the order of my owner. I can’t keep you from unloading cotton, but you will have to provide the men.”

So a gang from land came and cleared half the hold. I wonder what in the world they did with it! We stowed the stuff as well as we could. To be sure, several chairs and gladstone bags went overboard, but nobody fished them up again. The Boches asked—but they did not ask Fourgues—to be given some bales of cotton for mattresses. So during the entire voyage they slept like pigs in clover while we continued to enjoy the Company’s usual board and lodging.

On the whole, we got on fairly well with the Huns. They tried to swank at the first meal. One of them, a genuine old one, had the face to go on the bridge afterwards and tell Fourgues that there wasn’t anything to eat, that Germans had to have beer instead of water, and that all these from Hamburg and Leipzig and elsewhere were gentleman of rank who had helped France conquer Morocco and had colonized there because France lacked the ability to do so and that they intended to be treated with respect. It was worth paying for a seat to see Fourgues during this little address. He put his hands in his pockets in order not to pitch the man of beer overboard. When the other had finished, Fourgues answered in his little calm voice, the one he uses, you know, when he is in such a rage that he is absolutely expressionless:

“The first person, you or another, who makes any complaint I shall put into the hold with the furniture. If you don’t like the food of the crew, you are not obliged to eat it. I forbid any of you speak to me. This officer is to look after you. Get to H—— off the bridge!”

They were quite subdued and we heard no more from them. They attended to their little affairs in their wooden stable and they slept. Easy enough to manage, these folks, when you put the wind up them. The old man would ask me politely when they wanted anything:

“Could you add a little sugar to the coffee? Could you sell us some matches?”

The latter was in order to start conversation, for always afterwards he would ask me if the Pamir was surely going back to France.

“Why do you wish to know?”

“Just because! Honestly, you aren’t going to a neutral port, are you?”

“No, we are bound for France.”

“And where?”

“If you know the country, you will recognize it.”

“All right, and I may tell my friends that we are not going to a neutral country?”

After the fifth or sixth time I told Fourgues about this.

“You bet!” he said; “all these humbugs are of military age. If we landed them in Spain they would have to hurry over and take a taste of our 75’s. They prefer a season in France snugly interned. They know we are much too stupid to hurt them.”

Fourgues was right. When I said as much to the old Boche, he smiled without answering. We landed them at —— and they have gone to hang themselves somewhere else. And whew! but their quarters were filthy! We had to swab and holystone for two days and it still smells.

You can be sure that the owner arrived by the first train. He was beginning to ask himself what had become of the Pamir and he doesn’t at all like losing money. His first interview with Fourgues was a little stormy. He didn’t quite dare reproach him for having turned about before Liverpool because that would have been a little bit too thick, but he was a little liverish all the same.

“You might just as well have gone on to your destination. Two days more or less isn’t anything.”

“It wouldn’t have happened,” said Fourgues, “if the propeller shaft hadn’t broken in mid-Atlantic. Muriac got us out of that splendidly, but with all respect to you, the whole engine is falling to pieces.”

“Anyway,” said the other, “you have your five thousand bales of cotton.”

“Five thousand! Minus fifteen hundred which are high and dry in Morocco!”

Well, sir, that hurt! He completely lost his hair. It had to be explained ten times, with the little tin-pot officer’s written order and all the rest of the red tape.

“Fifteen hundred bales of cotton gone! Fifteen hundred bales of cotton gone!” He kept repeating it over and over.

Then Fourgues, who had had all he could stand ever since Morocco, put it to him straight and told him to his face that if he didn’t like the way things had been run, he could hand the Pamir and her engine and her cotton over to some one else, and that without officers or crew it was pretty rough to be blamed. The owner was scared. He slapped the Old Man on the back and said:

“We’ll square all that, my good friend. Don’t get excited. It’s all right—everything I said was from the shareholders’ point of view. I am going to see the Admiral, and since you’re O.K. with your papers the Government will look after everything and we’ll try to have the Pamir chartered or some other arrangement made.”

He went away as sweet as honey, but I know what that means—somebody’ll have to pay heavily for it. He must have moved heaven and earth, for the next day a post-captain came on board to ask Fourgues how much coal he could take.

“Three thousand tons!”

“The Government engages you to carry coal to the navy. Lighters will come alongside at noon and you are to load at once.”

“And where shall I put it? I have one hold full and the other half full of cotton.”

Then the captain roared like a bull and said that he had been disturbed for nothing and that he didn’t know where to put the cotton, and that Fourgues might just as well have put it all ashore in Morocco, and that there wasn’t any sense in a boat that was neither full nor empty. They don’t mince their words in the Navy when they are talking to the Merchant Service. But Fourgues took it with a good grace because he wanted to get down to Orange and so he didn’t care. Moreover, he knew the owner could arrange it all with the authorities much better than he. No time was lost. The owner returned the next day and said that after consultation it had been agreed that the forward hold was to be emptied and loaded with fifteen hundred tons of special coal for torpedo-boats, but that the cotton should be left aft. After having supplied the Fleet, the Pamir would go to England and unload her cotton at Liverpool in order that all might not be lost, and then get more coal at Cardiff and go again to the Fleet.

“In this way my interests and those of the Government are equally protected. I sell only half my cotton and you get a load of coal at Cardiff at a cheap rate.”

I should like very much to know how much he made them pay for our stroll to Morocco and the fifteen hundred bales of cotton that were left behind and the chartering of the Pamir. He can’t have lost much by it because he went away very sprightly after authorizing Fourgues to go to Orange. So I am here alone with ship, engine, loading, and everything. As for La Rochelle, it’s all up. The coal is due to-morrow at 4 a.m.

Fourgues has just gone and I am in charge. There had to be a war for me to get a command! Well, perhaps I shall see you on your Auvergne down there and we’ll swap yarns. So long, old man.

Dear old Man,

Will you believe that I almost saw your battleship? It was just as we entered the Adriatic south of Leuca. At dawn I was taking the watch and I saw some smoke in the north—the kind that only warships kick up. Afterwards I saw the masts and smokestacks of three big ships which were going along line ahead. Fourgues thought it was a division of the big fellows bound for Malta to coal. He is pretty smart—for at Liverpool I received your letter dated in Malta five days after this encounter. I will speak of your letter later, but first let me tell you of affairs on the Pamir.

I thought we should never be done loading coal at K——. Fifteen hundred tons isn’t very much. In England or America it wouldn’t have taken more than a morning. There you are made fast to a wharf, the waggons come, you capsize them into the hold, and when one train is empty another pulls up.

At K—— it took three full days. We put it in with a teaspoon, as it were. In the first place, they tied us to a buoy out in the very middle of the harbour and the lighters came now and then in a sort of happy-go-lucky fashion. They had gangs on board of the kind that doesn’t get blistered, who stuffed the coal into sacks with shovels and then hove them with a windlass, ten at a time. There were other men in the hold who unhooked the sacks, emptied them by shaking them out, hung them on the hook and sent them out again. While the emptying was going on the windlass kept on running just the same. I understand now why coal costs the Navy so much!

That was not all. The port told us that we were to carry coal in briquettes especially for torpedo-boats, so of course I expected briquettes. Not at all! Ten lighters arrived loaded with lump coal. I say lump coal, but I might more correctly call it dust. It must have been there for several years, rotting in the yard. I shouted to the captain of the tug that there had been a mistake and that his dust must be for some other boat.

He asks me if I am the Pamir. “Looks like it,” I said, “can’t you read the name?” Then he answered that his written instructions were for the Pamir. He added that the briquettes would arrive later.

The moment there is a written instruction I go ahead: briquettes or coal-dust, they’re all cargo! It took two days for a thousand tons and the foreman of the gang thought that was going fast! What would he catch from the owner, I wonder, if the Pamir had to pay two days’ harbour dues for four shovelfuls of coal?

“But,” I asked, “isn’t this coal for the torpedo-boats and isn’t it true that they use nothing but briquettes?”

“You’re sure to find cruisers and warships down there. They burn anything. And anyway, these ten lighters were ready and we had to send you a thousand tons, so we took the first thing at hand.”

They don’t worry about things at K——, believe me! The briquettes arrived the third day and it was necessary to flatten out the coal-dust, which was piled up like a sugar-loaf, so that they should not tumble to the bottom of the hold. We mustn’t break them, said the foreman, because that spoilt them. But only the tops of the lighters were stowed, shipshape, with whole briquettes. (It was splendid coal, too, Grand-Combe Lens, the very pick of the basket.) But after two or three layers there was nothing but leavings, pieces as big as your fist, and in the bottom—mud—which we had to take just the same because the order was to send the lighters back well scraped out. If everybody scrapes them why should there be any mud? It will be nice in the furnaces of the torpedo-boats! Do you remember the cases of oranges we bought at Carthagena: the top layers A1 Lloyds, the bottom rotten? So it was with their coal.

Fourgues came at seven that evening and we left at eight. Now he don’t care a damn about anything. He saw his people at Orange and found everything all right and brought back with him a lot of macaroons they make at Aix, preserves from Apt, and a cask of extra brandy. He has not lost his hair once during the whole voyage, and what is more, he has promised me on his word of honour that it will be my turn next time. With all his faults he is not a liar! In three or four months I shall make a trip home and perhaps I shall have been able to save enough to get married. We shall see.

Things are going better all the same. At K—— the Navy gave us a reservist chief quartermaster. He is the owner of boats on the Seine and caught on quickly. As far as Liverpool we divided the watch among the three of us and so could breathe. During the trip I taught the tram-driver the rules of navigation, lights, whistles, etc. From Liverpool to Cardiff he took the watch under Fourgues’ supervision. He’s fairly on the spot. He will take the watch by himself on the return trip and you can see your old chum beginning to revive.

At K—— there was an engineer who came to look at our broken shaft and repairs. He found it rather rustic (as he termed it) and had a new collar made for us, all polished and well-turned with a guard and friction band. It was a bit too fancy to be solid and has already started shaking loose. At the first dirty sea we get the two pieces of the shaft will begin to twist apart. Fortunately I have kept Muriac’s collars.

The Pamir was ordered to go to Anti-Paxo. She made her ten knots and arrived without too much trouble. The reservists are beginning to tumble to it. I forgot to say that the burst tubes of boiler 3 have been changed. It isn’t perfect, but if we don’t drive her too hard we can wait awhile for new tubes. We arrived at Anti-Paxo at two o’clock in the morning. Why do they make us sail with all lights on when the ships of war have all lights out? We are game for the Huns as much as they, and you can’t tell what you may blunder into. During the last night, with the sky so overcast that you couldn’t see the bows, suddenly I smelt smoke right in my face, on the starboard bow. Well, old man, it was one of your thirty-six funnel cruisers which had just cut across our course a cable’s length ahead and which sent its bloomin’ cinders into my eyes. I hadn’t seen a thing! You could have knocked me flat! Really, they might show a light when they are going to play stunts like that. I know that their officers watch, but just the same, one of these days there’ll be a smash, my boy.

Before Anti-Paxo a T.B.D. came down on us full speed. We hoisted our signal. She stopped to port side ten yards away. The commander looked furious.

“Are you the Pamir? You ought to have gone to Fano.”

“At K——,” answered Fourgues, “they said Anti-Paxo!”

“It’s the Marguerite which should come to Anti-Paxo. We have been calling you all night.”

“But just look, sir, I have no wireless!”

“Yes, I quite see. All you hookers are alike! Well, come along, follow me. How much coal have you?”

“Fifteen hundred tons.”

“Good! You are to coal the cruiser Lamartine, there behind the point.”

“Yes, but the top of my hold has briquettes for torpedo-boats!”

This did nothing to soothe the commander’s feelings. He reflected awhile and then swore.

“Well, so much the worse. The Lamartine has been waiting since yesterday and she has to sail north to-day. She’ll take your briquettes and to-morrow you can give your lump coal to some other ship.”

“All right,” said Fourgues.

And off we go to hail Lamartine which was waiting below the promontory, drifting without having cast even the smallest anchor.

At a thousand yards they made us stop because an officer from the ship was coming aboard in a launch to help us to handle her. They might just as well have kept him. We have only one screw, not three like a cruiser, and the Pamir, with three thousand tons in her hold, won’t turn like a teetotum. The officer wanted to show us what to do. Fourgues began by cursing aloud and then bethought himself that in time of war the Merchant Service must contain itself. When he saw that the damage would not be serious, he let the officer go ahead.

“Go ahead! Astern! Hard a-starboard! But your ship doesn’t answer the helm! She’s broadside on! Astern! Astern! My God—”

Bump! You bet she stopped, the old Pamir! It was lucky the Lamartine was armoured! Otherwise we should have walked right into her as far as the steps of the masts! Anyway, we rammed her. We broke the two first hawsers, new steel ones, and we scraped her a little. Ah, oh, my! what gadgets you do have sticking out all over your ships—turrets, guns, catheads, bridges!

The Pamir took the whole bump with her starboard lifeboat which tumbled between us and cracked like a nut. This deadened the shock somewhat, but our davits were twisted and we can’t hang another lifeboat up there in a hurry.

The cruiser began to load her coal at seven in the morning and by three in the afternoon, including the lunch interval, had swallowed her thousand tons, briquettes first, lumps next. How the crew did it I can’t think. Some crew, eh? Just think, they had been thirty days at sea and yet they grubbed that out in seven hours! If you have that kind on the Auvergne you can be proud of them. What I want to know is if your naval constructors spend their time trying to make it more difficult for the coal to be taken aboard? They certainly never could have handled briquettes themselves or they would not have made it necessary to go about it as if one were trying to get furniture into a house through the chimney.

I tried to follow the course of a load of coal from the hold of the Pamir into the hold of the Lamartine, but it was like trying to find the exit of the maze at the Crystal Palace—only there it was dirtier!

And then, do you trail your coal around on the Auvergne in hampers, like those in which the negroes of the Antilles carry bananas? It is like trying to empty the Mississippi with a cocktail straw. The hampers break—this breaks the backs of the men—and as for dust...! The English and the Germans do things better than this, it must be admitted. With their Temperly the coal goes up a sort of lift and their ways of getting into the hold are less outlandish. I may be wrong, you’ll put me wise anyway.

Lamartine sent us to anchor for the night on a submerged reef, saying that another cruiser would come on the following day to take what was left. Before you could say “Jack Robinson” she was gone in the mist. Fourgues lost no time about anchoring, very glad to draw breath and smoke a pipe in peace.

We cleaned up and he had a lot of brandy sent to the bridge; we put it in our coffee to get the coal out of our mouths, and then we yarned till supper. The fog lifted for the sunset and we were both struck dumb. You are lucky to be seeing that every evening! Fourgues wanted to swank and say that in the Rhone Valley and at Marseilles, when the mistral’s blowing, the sunsets are better than that. All brag! As for me, I know this beats the Antilles and the Gulf of Bengal to a frazzle. There was not more light and not so many bright colours, but it was like velvet. You must be grateful to me for telling you all about it when you have seen it every night for three months! But I should be happy to go back there again to look at those sunsets while I think of home.

The next morning we expected a cruiser for our lump coal. Instead there arrived a flotilla of destroyers who hooked themselves on all round the Pamir. It was neatly done—a cable here and a fender there, and there they were, like good children, all fast, lashed for’ard and aft. The Commodore boarded us and asked for Fourgues. He couldn’t have had his boots off for a long time nor washed either. His beard was full of cinders, his eyes red. When he found out that the Lamartine had taken the special coal and that there was nothing for him but coal in bulk, he fairly let go:

“This is the third time! It fouls my gratings and it smokes like hell! And they want us to make twenty-five knots with that dirt!”

But he had to get off at noon in order to go on patrol duty in the evening—I forget where—and so he took the coal. Those fellows on the destroyers, I pity them even more than the ones on the cruisers. They haven’t room to swing a cat, and they must ship some awful seas!

We had a hundred tons of coal left when the six of them had finished. Fourgues would have liked very much to return empty, for there’s no sense in carrying freight home again. But no ship would coal there for five days, and as it was hardly worth while for the Pamir to go north with so little, the Commander-in-Chief ordered us by wireless (received by the Commodore) to proceed to our destination.

“You see, my boy,” said Fourgues, “the cruisers took the coal intended for the destroyers and the destroyers the coal for the cruisers. Such is life!”

The destroyers gone, we filled our forward ballast-tanks, for you can imagine how our twenty-five hundred bales of cotton weighed us down by the stern, and got under steam for Liverpool. It was a regular joy-ride. Fourgues had no fear of running short of coal with the hundred tons we were carrying gratis, and there were three of us for the watch, including the Johnny of the Paris boats, who, by the way, has a little fund of stories that leave Fourgues’ a long way behind.

At Liverpool the pilot delivered a telegram from the owner, who said that according to agreement with the consignee, we must hand our cotton over to the Karl Kristian, a big Norwegian cargo-boat, moored near Birkenhead. When we were able to make fast to her, can you guess what the captain said to Fourgues? Guess again, my son! That the Karl Kristian was going to carry the twenty-five hundred bales with four thousand more to Copenhagen! You bet that stuff’s going to stay in Denmark! This was the first time Fourgues lost his hair since K——, and he said that if he had known he would have pitched it all overboard in Morocco and carried furniture for a hundred thousand Boches, rather than hand over to them material with which to furnish shells for a whole Army Corps. You must have read the articles of the Hague Conference, old man, on your battleship, so if you can tell why it is forbidden to sell coal to the Boches and why cotton is not contraband of war, you will do both Fourgues and me a favour. If the Germans were in our place on the sea and we in theirs, I think an embargo on cotton would not have been so long delayed.

The Pamir soon hooked it from Birkenhead. During the day the Karl Kristian scraped out our twenty-five hundred bales, and Fourgues profited by the occasion to have the builder’s diver—the Pamir was built there—take a squint at our screw, which did not seem to be turning true. It was then we learned that a good chunk of metal from the propeller was lying in the Atlantic, as well as three nuts broken off from the nave. Fourgues would have liked to have it repaired then and there, but the people at the yard told him that they were overrun because the Admiralty was rushing construction, and that if the Pamir could go as far as Cardiff, we should find another screw at their branch establishment and some one to mount it. As it is only a short trip we left that evening in ballast, and this morning they had her down by the bows and installed a raft under the propeller, just at water-level. To-morrow they will be through. We shall load up coal and get off again.

As there was nothing to do while this work was going on, Fourgues gave shore-leave to the whole bunch, who did not need to be told twice, and invited me to dinner at the Welsh Lino! It bucked us up to drink cool beer and eat fresh bread. As we were in such a good temper, I read him your letter from Malta which I had had in my pocket ever since Liverpool. I hope you don’t mind. Anyway, he said:

“They are lucky on the Auvergne. With a young chap like that on the bridge the commander ought to be able to sleep easy.”

Believe me, it made him sit up to learn that you watch in a turret and that when you set foot on the bridge you cease to call your soul your own! All that you wrote interested him greatly. Fourgues has an abrupt manner, appears rather off-hand, and talks little except to swear; but when he really unbosoms, there is nothing to do but listen, for I have observed that sooner or later you find he was in the right.

“Your friend’s letter is not at all bad,” he said when I had finished. “He is interested in what he is doing and there’s nothing else worth while in the world, except home and family. But he seems to me to believe that the world was created on the Auvergne. That’s a way they have. And he believes in nothing but guns and dreams of nothing but the damage they’ll do. Very good, but we’ve still got to see if there’s going to be nothing but guns in this war at sea! By the way things are going, I have a sort of idea the Germans don’t figure it that way. As for the Austrians! Well, we shall see. Come on, Sonnie, let’s play English billiards and have a drink of whiskey. That’ll stretch our fingers and legs a bit. You can tell me what you think of the letter and see if we agree.”

You know I’m a mug at billiards, especially on those enormous English billiard-tables. Fourgues gave me a hundred points in five hundred and won in seven breaks. I stood around and watched him do it and never saw him look so pleased. I tried to get in a few words about your letter, but he held the floor the entire time. I can’t tell you all he said, for it lasted an hour, but he asked a lot of questions and as I could not answer them—“Ask your gunner,” he would say, “this and that and the other,” chalking his cue.

And so, old man, I obey, and you may answer direct to Fourgues if you wish. I shan’t be jealous and it will please him.

“One of two things,” he said—“either the Navy wants to fight the Austrians or it don’t. If it wants to, why blockade the Strait of Otranto? If you want to shoot a rabbit, you let him come out of his hole first, then you get between the hole and the rabbit and then you fire! But you don’t get in front of the hole in the first place or he won’t come out. I don’t know where the Austrians are—at Pola or Cattaro or somewhere else—but I know they’re not going to come out with our Navy parading up and down in front of them, in strength four to one. It would be better if we were to stay in some port near by, with only one or two ships in the Strait—which is not so broad—and let them make a sortie if they want to and then fall on them.

“The thing would be decided in an hour and the blockade would be over. Instead of that, we wear out our ships and our men while the Austrians remain at home, keeping their engines in A1 condition and sweating at target-practice so as to be right on the spot when they choose to move.

“And what good does it do to go up and down the Adriatic in full war-paint? Everybody knows that nowadays warships can’t get near an enemy coast because of the mines. The commander of the Lamartine told me the other day that they’re not allowed to go in beyond the 55 fathom line and that means from ten or twenty or thirty miles out to sea. They certainly won’t bombard the Austrian arsenals and invade Austria from that distance. All they’ll get will be a floating mine or a torpedo from a submarine. I can’t see any other result. Fact is, with the apparent intention of fighting, they all seem to me to be doing their utmost not to get any. What’s more, if you have read the English papers, you can see that it’s the same over there. Well, who lives learns. Write all that to your friend with a greeting from me and ask him what they think about it on the Auvergne and the other ships. Perhaps all this is only the imagining of an old duffer who hasn’t worried around books on tactics, but it ought not to be very far from the truth.”

Fourgues said a lot more, but this is enough for to-day. To-morrow three thousand tons of coal and off by night! If we have no new instructions we go back to coal the Fleet. But perhaps a telegram will come during the day. Good-bye, old man. I’m going up to play the mandolin on the deck and you may bet I shan’t be thinking of you!