The odyssey of a torpedoed tramp

My dear old Man,

Isn’t it absurd that after two years’ interval I should again be passing the 14th of July in the United States? Only, this time you aren’t here and there’s not the slightest chance of our running into each other. I wonder if I should find you changed after all this time! Perhaps I shouldn’t know you any more now that you have shaved off your moustache in order to be like your brother-officers—you must have done it for swank, old man, since you got into the Navy List, but it won’t go down with me! Nor am I the skinny little chap you used to knock about to see if I could keep my end up. I have a beard like a missionary and my fiancée says that I have got stouter and that now I look like a man. So much for my appearance. As for the rest, it’s even worse. You can well believe that two years of hard labour like that we have had on the Pamir—and all that we have seen and all that we have heard—such things steady the head. At La Rochelle they listened to me as if I were an oracle, even the old people, which is quite different from what it was two years ago. Look here! I’ve pondered a little, and I now have my own opinions! Before, I was just happy-go-lucky, I didn’t care a hang for anything, I found everything perfectly simple as long as I had something to eat and my feet high and dry on the bridge if we were shipping heavy seas. Now I see more clearly the whys and the wherefores. I find life’s more complicated, and there are even times when I really think I might be quite at sea if I had to run the war myself. It’s age coming—maturity, as they call it. And so, alas, I realize that the more it goes on the more things will multiply and increase in difficulty until, if I ever have any real responsibilities, I shall be much too ancient and too concerned with a lot of considerations which will hinder me from acting. After two years of war, there is one conclusion of which I am sure: All the top men and Grand Panjandrums are too old, and what disgusts me is that it’s ten to one I’ll become like them. Everyone isn’t like Fourgues, who will soon be fifty and who can decide in five seconds because he is willing to take responsibility. But for one like that there are a hundred nonentities, and the country is suffering from it.

You will wonder if I am having the blues because I tell you this nonsense instead of the story of the Pamir, which, you say, amuses you. The 14th of July far from France, without a chum with whom to yarn—it gives me the hump. Fourgues and Villiers—who are really good fellows—tried to distract me at a music-hall in Baltimore, but I was bored. And then, hang it all——But I won’t go on. Let’s get back to the subject.

I was able to get to La Rochelle. We sent you a card, my fiancée and I. After two weeks at Bilbao, the Pamir was sent to Boucau to unload her ore. It’s a rotten port where the least swell sets the ship rolling like the deuce and where the anchorage is bad. Seeing that we should be long in unloading, as there was no proper plant, Fourgues let me hook it for La Rochelle and I didn’t stop to ask for details. I was glad that the train went fast, though I did wonder how long they were going to keep up this levity of burning coal for people on pleasure-trips instead of saving it for the soldiers and the armies. When I said that, I was told that the country would grouse if there were restrictions. That’s a wretched argument. They will have to come to it sooner or later, and then the Government will seem to have been forced and not to have foreseen anything; whereas, if it began at once, no one would be astonished. There have been other surprises since the war began and the country can stand being told there are strict orders. Only, to say that all’s for the best and that we shall never be obliged to do as the Boches do! At home I saw a lot of friends who told me stories about the censored papers, saying that things are going well and that we have all we need and that it will all be over in three or four months. What sort of fools can such writers be?

They have only to come and see and they’ll see. It’s like the Boche submarines. On that subject, old man, we of the sea have only to keep our mouths shut. Everybody knows more about it than we. During the first two or three days that I was at home, I said what I thought, but after a while I stopped because they demonstrated to me mathematically that the submarines were all bluff. All the stories I told of the sea, of my trips and what I had seen, they listened to attentively and it was flattering. Even the story of the Mer-Morte was considered very interesting. Really, it was exactly like servants reading a novel and asking for sensational details! But when I said that the Provence, the Ville-de-la-Ciotat, the Lusitania, and the rest were only the beginning, they called me a pessimist, and told me we were sinking a lot of submarines, that it was officially stated the Germans wouldn’t have any more, and, anyway, that only a thousandth of the trade had been lost, which didn’t amount to anything. The stupidest part of it was that I was obliged to say the same to my fiancée or she would have been worried to death. She made me swear to note that submarines weren’t dangerous and to keep my life-belt on all the time. I swore all she wanted. When she cries I am helpless. I didn’t tell her that the Pamir has neither wireless nor guns and isn’t likely to have them, and that if we run into a submarine all we can do is to blow on it to see if it will sneeze. As I stayed only five days the papers were not ready and we couldn’t be married. We decided that it will come off next time even if I get only forty-eight hours’ leave. I had put aside fifteen hundred francs, which I gave to her, and she will arrange everything, furniture and outfit, to set us up in a little house two or three hundred yards from her parents. Well, old man, though it was hard to say good-bye at the station, we shall be married before the year is up, I hope. Fourgues told me that I could count on eight days, but the unloading was done very quickly at Boucau because the weather cleared up, and I received a telegram the fifth day, ordering me to rejoin at Saint-Nazaire double quick. The Pamir was to call there two days after and would probably sail for America. I was rather astonished at the destination because the Pamir has the habit now of tubbing it around Europe; but sailors must be ready for anything.

Marguerite stuffed my bag full of preserves and made a big parcel of collars and handkerchiefs, socks and shirts. She has embroidered lovely initials on all of them and added some little silk pocket handkerchiefs, some coloured braces, and some absolutely ripping neckties. Dandy Dick, that’s me, old man! Villiers, who puts in all his spare time at the haberdashers’ collecting multicoloured hosiery, is dying of envy.

I couldn’t find anybody at Saint-Nazaire; only a letter at the company’s agency, in which Fourgues told me to report at Boulogne, the Pamir having been sent there, and that he would expect me the following Sunday. You can imagine what a mug I felt to have run away from La Rochelle without having had time to draw breath—and all the more so as it only gave me forty-eight more hours, not long enough for me to go home. So I stopped a day in Paris. A bobby hauled me up at the Nantes station and another in the Paris Tube, to inquire about my military status. I was in mufti. If I had only known, I should have made the entire trip in the Company’s uniform, for everyone in France looks at you askance and says disagreeable things if you’re not in uniform.

I found the Pamir at Boulogne in the Loubet dock, taking on a cargo of scrapped matériel from the British front here: wagons, guns, motor-cars, sheds, and scrap iron, to be repaired in England. Fourgues explained that the Pamir should have gone to America to get steel bars for the manufacture of shells in France, but as that order wouldn’t be ready for a month, they had seized the opportunity to have us potter around a little in the English Channel. For “pottering” it was rather important work, seeing that we made two trips each way and that both times in England we took on from two hundred to two hundred and fifty brand-new chassis for motor-cars and trolleys for the Flanders front. The English are beginning to get under way seriously. They were slow about it, but it’s not the same now as it was when we were there during the first year of the war. I don’t know how long it’s going to take them to train their new army and to make soldiers and officers, but as far as munitions go, there’s no question. You have no idea of the traffic between England and France. It is coming into all the ports—Calais, Boulogne, Fécamp, Le Tréport, Dieppe, Le Havre, Rouen, Caen—without counting the little ones. They are all crowded. As soon as we arrived in England they got to work, the Pamir was made fast to a wharf, and they pulled out her cargo and shoved in another. It took longer in France, although that, too, is a little better now than last year. Oh, it’s not ideal yet, and one often wonders what all the empty boats and cars are doing. In four or five years, maybe the officials and the office-Johnnies will look at their watches instead of piling up Forms—and Forms—and Forms.

At last we got off for Baltimore with some dozens of cases of French exports—fabrics, Parisian specialities—nothing much. When I think that the Germans continue to send their catalogues and merchandise over the whole world by way of the neutrals, and that the three-thousand-ton Pamir was sent out with scarcely two or three hundred tons of cheap stuff, it seems hardly worth while to talk in the papers about economizing. This little Atlantic trip will have cost the country some twenty-five thousand francs, some of which she ought to have recovered. And it’s like that everywhere. They can issue a new loan, but Fourgues says it’s saving the pennies and wasting billions of pounds.

Villiers and Fourgues have spent their time during the voyage squabbling at meals, arguing about all that has happened during the last two or three months: the Irish rebellion, the retreat in Mesopotamia, the Jutland battle, and the death of Kitchener—to say nothing of our own troubles.

At first Fourgues was a little overbearing toward Villiers because he believed Villiers contradicted him just to get his dander up, and two or three times he told Villiers that that was enough, that he wouldn’t have him take that tone with him. But this was in the Mediterranean when Villiers first joined with his neckties and his manicured hands. But when he put the engine right before you had time to sneeze and now that everything is going like a dream, Fourgues knows that he can’t be treated that way because it’s pretty good to have an officer on whom one can depend. So he asks Villiers’ advice on a lot of technical matters. But when it comes to their grand discussions of Naval questions and the politics of the war, they go it hammer and tongs. At bottom they hold the same views and I am beginning to believe that they wrangle for fun. Old Villiers has a little way of arguing in a calm voice, as though he were afraid of disarranging his collar or the parting of his hair. Fourgues tries to follow suit and says:

“Look here, Villiers, let’s talk this over calmly. We’re not of the same opinion, but it will do this boy good to hear your arguments.”

The “boy” is I! Ever since Villiers arrived, Fourgues has made me take a back seat because I haven’t the guts to hold my own with him. And also at present Fourgues is sick With me for not having got married at La Rochelle. He says that I am a laggard in love and that next time he will go to La Rochelle with me and march me straight to the registry from the train. If that will get me back sooner, I shall be delighted!

So, then, I listen without being obliged to take part. When Villiers is optimistic, Fourgues says that everything is going to the dogs. When Villiers is pessimistic, Fourgues says that the Allies haven’t made a single mistake and that as the Boches haven’t got us yet, we’ve got them beat and are going to wade right into them. Only, he shouts all this at the top of his voice because he can’t hold out more than five minutes in the face of Villiers’ durned coolness.

I believe they have discussed the Jutland affair at every meal, trying to find out who was beaten, what the results were, etc. Villiers is friendly with a lot of engineer officers, who, like himself, passed through the School of the Arts et Métiers and he is also accustomed to dealing with figures and is very exact. He says that things like the Jutland affair kick up a dust in the newspapers and in speeches, but that in fact they are of absolutely no use whatsoever. Fourgues is for hitting the Germans every time there is a chance, and he says that if the English had been able to smash the whole German fleet the war would be almost over. Villiers maintains that this is not true at all, that even if the big German ships were at the bottom of the sea, their coasts would still be just as well defended by guns, mines, submarines, and Zeppelins, and that the English could not get any nearer than now; he also says that if the Germans had lost all their big ships, under-sea warfare would not be changed one little bit and the submarines would give us just as much trouble. Battleships, he says, are as much ancient history as muzzle-loading cannon; in the future there won’t be anything but submarines, mines, and light boats to carry on the real work, as this war has demonstrated.

Although I know Fourgues really agrees, he would reply—just to keep things going—that as long as one side builds big ships, the other is obliged to. But Villiers didn’t catch on. He asked by what means the Gambetta, the Ocean, the Cressy, the Hogue, the Aboukir, the Bouvet, the Hampshire, and all the other big ships were sunk? Not by big ships, but by torpedoes which cost twenty thousand francs at most, but which can send battleships costing fifty millions and more to the bottom. So if for each ship worth fifty millions, twenty-five submarine torpedo-boats or mine-layers were built, the Allies would have a thousand, perhaps, and the Germans, with all the Dreadnoughts in the world, would not dare put their noses out of doors. But inversely, if the Germans had five hundred or a thousand submarines instead of big ships, they would make the sea untenable for us. As they are not people who stick to a thing when they find it’s a dud, they soon tumbled to it that submarines and mines are the weapons for war at sea and are going to turn them out like hot cakes. Fourgues repeated this conversation to me so often that I knew Villiers had shut him up completely, but he wanted to quibble, so one evening Villiers said to him: “To-morrow I’m going to bring you an estimate of the cost of the Battle of Jutland according to official accounts in England at the time we left, and you will see if it’s worth while to build big ships.”

He came to luncheon next day with his estimate and Fourgues shut up. Villiers gave me permission to make a copy to send you. He brought all the figures up to date with the latest information received in America and you simply can’t get away from it—it’s statistics. Here is the schedule. I shall copy it for you just as he put it down:

COST OF THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND

So there you have Villiers’ estimate. For the sake of appearances, Fourgues wished to quibble over every article, but Villiers could not be shaken because he had made his calculations according to some technical reviews he got in France and England and he said his figures were, if anything, below the actual losses. Ships always cost more than is officially stated and in time of war, coal, shells, and the rest go up from week to week, and, he said, it was very moderate of him to have reckoned 5 per cent. instead of 9 per cent. for the pensions.

“But, skipper, it’s not worth while to wrangle over a hundred millions more or less. Take any sum between one and two billions of francs. Do you mean to tell me that it made a difference of so much as a quarter of a second to the duration of the war?”

“But if they could have overwhelmed the Boches and bashed their fleet to blazes——”

“That would have cost three or four or five billions because the English would have suffered as well, and what then?”

“Then the English would only have to go back to port and warm their toes instead of being on tenterhooks all the time, leading a dog’s life on account of the big German ships.”

“That’s just what I wanted to make you say, skipper. I make every allowance. I admit that the German fleet would be destroyed. But would that diminish by one the number of their submarines? Would their mines, batteries, or torpedoes hinder us any the less from approaching their coast? Should we have one more merchant vessel on the sea or one less sunk?”

“Yes, yes; but as long as they have big ships we must have others to match.”

“I don’t agree with you. It would be sufficient for us to have hundreds of submarines in order to keep them from getting out and to hunt them down, as they do us.”

“But then their battleships would sink our cargoes?”

“Where have you seen battleships and battlecruisers becoming commerce destroyers? They are too easily damaged and they can’t take coal enough to keep at sea for long. Only light boats or submarines can destroy commerce.”

“Well, what are you driving at?”

“This: that the big ships are of no use any more except to make us spend billions in a few hours without any one being the better or the worse. That seems clear as day to me. Whereas a good submarine costing two million francs, which would carry six or eight torpedoes, and would have guns, could sink her eight or ten cargo-ships a month with a little luck. Even if the submarine is lost, it has done its work, because twenty or thirty thousand tons of wheat, coal, steel, or rubber are at the bottom of the sea. That’s what annoys the enemy! It would make less noise in the newspapers, but it’s the real work of the war. In this war the victory will fall to the one who can do the most damage to the other in the shortest time. It’s always like that and I can’t think why we haven’t seen it this time.”

I should never end if I told you all their discussions on this subject. There is something in it—the question is worth discussing, and I wish you would tell me what you think about it. Maybe you, who are on a Dreadnought, think it thundering cheek of me to write you things running down your show; but you and I don’t need to be polite to each other. Honestly, I expect an answer.

Dear old Man,

Since my last the Pamir has called at Baltimore, New York, Brest, Cardiff, Genoa, and Naples. We haven’t lost any time, you see. We almost went back to America to carry steel and shells again, but at the last moment we were ordered to carry food to Italy. So here we are under Vesuvius, and there’s nothing left for us now but to die, as the saying is. But I am not anxious to do that, for Fourgues has just written a strong letter to the Company saying that the Pamir must go into dry-dock considering how long she has been knocking about, especially as we hit something hard off the coast of England and he wants to know what happened, as we are getting water into the hold to the tune of about a foot a day and have to keep pumping all the time. So I hope we are going back to France to be careened. As that will take eight or ten days, Fourgues has promised that I shall be free for the civil registry and the church. So there’s something good. We didn’t take our steel from Baltimore after all. It hadn’t arrived. Depend on the Boches to organize strikes in factories, accidents on railroads, and cars gone astray! Anyway, Fourgues learned, knocking around here and there—but not from the Consular authorities—that, although there was no steel for us at Baltimore, there was heaps of it in New York rusting on the wharves waiting for someone to take it. So he upped and went and the Pamir anchored near Brooklyn Bridge and we took in three thousand tons of steel and a bit more piled on the deck. Fourgues, you may bet your neck, didn’t go at it by halves and only regretted that he couldn’t carry ten thousand tons. The Pamir was as full as she could safely stick it, and crawled like a tortoise in a nasty summer sea, which was anything but pleasant. However, we didn’t care a damn because this time we really were being of some use.

In New York, during a beano round Broadway and the swell district with Villiers, Fourgues ran into old Flannigan. I told you about meeting him in Norway last year. They all came on board in the middle of the night, a bit the worse for wear, making noise enough to waken the dead, carrying a gramophone they had pinched in a bar. They set to playing cake-walks and nigger-songs on the records which they had also pinched, and I got up at two o’clock because sleep was no longer possible. As Flannigan was to leave the next morning for the Scandinavian countries, or, as he said, going to make a trip in Bochie, he stayed on board until six or seven, drinking Dubonnet and seltzer by way of swabbing down his throat and relating his campaigns to Fourgues and Villiers, who poured down quarts and quarts of Vichy to wash out all the drugs they had put away in the saloons.

Flannigan denies it, but we are sure that he knocks around the Boches and that it’s not from hearsay that he learns all he tells. But, of course, you can’t blame him since he’s a neutral and as long as the official policy of the Entente is to let the Boches carry on their little games while the papers say the blockade is perfect, and that the Germans are tightening their belts, and that they’ll rush out presently crying “Kamerad” with their mouths open for us to shove food in. That’s not Flannigan’s opinion, nor ours either, nor that of anyone on our job. But I’ll go on with what Flannigan said:

“The Boches are not eating as much as before, that’s certain, but everybody knows that people always eat too much, and a lot of good things to eat are allowed to get in by way of Switzerland, Holland, and the Scandinavian countries.

“The land is also still there. It produces less because the fit men are at the front, but even if it produced only half as much as formerly, there would still be no famine. The Germans make a great fuss about it for the benefit of foreigners, but they are easy in their minds, and they know that England has only two-tenths of her territory under cultivation for food, and that if her provisions are cut off, it is she who will tighten her belt. They also know that they have torn the best coal-mines from France and Russia; that Italy, Russia, and France depend on what is sent to them by sea. To meet that situation the Boches are preparing something decisive in the way of submarine warfare. In 1915 they drew up a programme of construction, and when that programme is carried out they will declare submarine war to the death. They were not at all ready for U-boat warfare at the outbreak of war, as they had only twenty or thirty submarines. You may safely bet they would not have neglected the idea beforehand if they had believed it worth while.

“As they soon saw that it was their best chance, they went to work with determination, and submarines will be turned out like anything. They will be armed with big guns, will run faster than merchant-ships, and be able to stay out twenty or thirty days without difficulty. There will be others for mine-laying, to sow all the good routes with mines. All will be able to cut nets and to rest on the bottom.”

Flannigan says this is common talk in Germany, and that even if the official people in France and England don’t believe what they say publicly—that is, that it’s all bluff—they had better get ready for something nasty, for when the Germans once let loose they will go it as hard as they did when they let loose on land. Flannigan embroidered this theme for three or four hours and I can’t remember all the figures he gave. Villiers wrote down some at the time to pass on to chums in France, which will be of no use in the world, he says, as the accepted thing is to say that there aren’t any submarines.

The Pamir left New York the same day that Flannigan sailed. We took on there a fellow from the Munitions Department, a civil engineer who had gone over to America to take charge of orders for munitions, steel, etc., and who seized the chance to accompany the steel bars whose manufacture he had been supervising in the factory. His name is Mousseaux. He had had nothing to do with the sea before the war, but has now made several trips, to Serbia, Russia, Spain, and America, so is not altogether a mug. He told us a lot of scandals about munitions, the markets, orders, and the Boches, and I reckon that Mousseaux also thinks that if we are victorious it will be in spite of ourselves. He’s a sharp one, a big, blond, blue-eyed Norman. In short, what he says, goes.

He looked a bit scared when he saw that the Pamir had neither wireless, guns, nor anything else against submarines. But as he had telegraphed from inland that he would take passage with us and as he arrived the morning we sailed, he wouldn’t back out, but took things as he found them, especially as he was going to gain four or five days thereby. Ships don’t sail every day to France now. Moreover, it was his twelfth voyage since the beginning of the war and he had been on boats without wireless or guns eight times. Like all those who roll around at sea, he thinks as we do, and we soon agreed that the Merchant Service of the Allies is practically offered at present to the Boche submarines and that it can’t go on for ever. He, who is an engineer, assures us that the cost of fitting wireless on all the boats would be slight and that the price of one big well-loaded ship, sunk because it had no warning, would cover the cost of wireless for at least a hundred and fifty or two hundred cargo-steamers. Mousseaux adds that what’s wanted is a man of push and go to compel the owners, the chiefs of the Admiralty, and everybody else to agree and that then it would take only about a month. But now, no one dares to act on his own responsibility and it’s going to cost the country tens of millions.

Fourgues and Mousseaux almost fell out when Mousseaux asked what was the use of putting guns aft and none forward on the cargo boats that had them. Fourgues asked him what he meant by that.

“Yes,” answered Mousseaux, “I have been on several boats which had one gun—behind.”

“Well,” said Fourgues; “they couldn’t have asked the advice of the captain. But if they ever give me a gun, it will be surrounded by a lot of jossers from the Navy who will put it aft because the policy of the Entente is to be on the defensive as regards submarines.”

“But, skipper, the only way to bash them is to attack—fight them the moment you meet them.”

“That’s your idea and we all think so too. Please tell that in Paris to whomever it may concern. You’ll make one more to be told to shut his mouth and mind his own business, for the order is to run away—yes, sir—to run away from the U-boats—and to fire the stern gun if one has time. As for attacking—strictly forbidden, by gum! not on the programme!”

“But how can we say that we rule the waves if our ships must run and never show fight?”

“Quite so, that’s just what I want to know. They cram millions of tons of merchandise into us. They say, ‘Carry them to Europe, my son, you have nothing to fear!’ Every day we learn of a friend who has gone down before a U-boat, but it seems that didn’t count, and if we are lucky enough to meet a submarine, we mustn’t hurt it. We must leave it alone or turn our backs, like ——!

“And if we get a dose of it? Look at my masts—we haven’t even four wires to send a wireless to comrades in the neighbourhood! It doesn’t need a genius to discover what merchant-ships need! The Skippers’ Association keeps asking for it again and again and it’s as plain as the nose on your face! But everybody knows that we shan’t go on strike, and the big bugs say either that we’re afraid or else that we are rebels. So it’s go ahead or bust! And we go ahead—and every one of us knows that his turn is bound to come.”

“Besides which, skipper—though I don’t wish to criticize the Merchant Service—the passengers are sure to be drowned if the ships are torpedoed. On the Pamir you have two lifeboats, which might be enough for your forty men. But I have crossed on ships with a thousand or twelve hundred in the crew and no means of saving more than four or five hundred. As a rule, half the lifeboats—all those on the side which goes up in the air after the torpedoing—are of no use; so you can see that it takes courage to go to sea and that it’s folly to send whole regiments without protection. After so many months of war the civilians still find it amusing. If things were like that on land, the parliaments or the newspapers would have had them changed long ago. But knowing nothing of seafaring, the country swallows any story it’s told. And you’re in luck that it doesn’t understand anything about it.”

“Thunder and blazes!” answered Fourgues. “You call that luck? You mean, it’s enough to make one bash one’s head against the binnacle! It’s worse than you think. After all, I don’t care a damn, we’re among friends and can speak plainly. Will you believe that the Navy has not yet given orders for notices to be posted up on mail and other steamers, telling passengers what to do in case of submarines? So they go on board like sheep, carrying the latest newspaper in which is printed that U-boats are all rot. And when they are torpedoed, it’s butchery, sir, it’s massacre; and there’s nothing to say because if it’s that way, well—that’s the way they want it! And what do you expect them to do, these hundreds of land-lubbers, when the ship begins to rock? No one has told them anything. They don’t know anything. They run around, squealing like pigs, jumping into lifeboats, cutting ropes—and that’s so many drowned to shove down on the account. If a single general treated our soldiers like that, he would be suspended first and then court-martialled.”

Do you get Fourgues’ tone? We don’t bother on the Pamir with land affairs and politics. The sea is enough for us. We feel that we are being hunted from day to day and that it comes closer with each voyage, but we can say nothing, do nothing. That’s forbidden!... Oh, I forgot something that Flannigan told us in New York about the crews of the German submarines. The newspapers and the French authorities say that the good German crews have long since been destroyed and that submarine crews can’t be turned out in a day like hot cakes, so we can be easy on that score. Flannigan says that’s all humbug. In the first place, with money one can get what one wants in any country and the Germans pay their submarine crews royally. And then everybody knows that on a submarine there are only two fellows who have to understand the whole business—the captain and the second in command who have charge of the diving and steering. As to the crew, they have mechanics’ jobs, they look after levers, and valves, and so on, just as in any factory, and merely carry out the orders of the two chiefs; they have to turn this, turn that, and so forth. It wouldn’t take forever to learn that! Any mechanic can learn all there is to know in a month and so they have first-rate crews like those on the Zeppelins. There’s only the risk. But I’d like to know in what country danger stops the fellows with nerve? Neither in France nor in Bochie! Moreover, Flannigan said, after the submarine crews have drudged for fifteen or twenty days at sea, they are given leave ashore and spend a week or two with their families while other mechanics put the machinery in order. And they are treated like heroes and fêted everywhere, as well as given their part in the prize-money, so that there are more volunteers for the job than they require, just as in the French aviation service—where, of course, you get smashed up, but only after having had a smack at the enemy.

And Flannigan also said that the German Admiralty doesn’t tie up the submarine commanders on the pretext that they are young. It gives them a free rein, sends them out with full power to act and doesn’t bother any more about what they do nor about the Forms they fill up. When things are run like that we can expect a rotten time from the U-boats. If a quarter of that were done for the French, I believe we could pinch the moon.

At Brest our steel was not unloaded very fast, but that’s what you expect. And what a splendid harbour! It would hold all the ships of Europe and America and as it’s the nearest to the United States, from twelve to twenty-four hours could be saved on all trans-Atlantic voyages. Fourgues says you need to be French not to use such a port. It’s because we are too rich, he says. If the Germans or the English or the Yankees had Brest, they would make the first trans-Atlantic port of the world out of it, beating Hamburg, Rotterdam, London, Liverpool, and New York all together to a frazzle. But the Navy won’t make a move so the Atlantic trade and our good money go elsewhere.

At Brest there were a lot of boats starting for Archangel with material which will probably be wasted in Manchuria or Thibet as Flannigan has told us that the Czar is surrounded by a whole clique who are working for the Boches. Fourgues would have liked the Pamir to make the little Russian trip last year all over again, but they sent us to Cardiff with orders to take on coal and we sailed in ballast according to custom. It annoys Fourgues now to carry coal as it’s some time since the Pamir has carried any but clean cargoes, but we knew why when we reached Cardiff—the owner is behind this. I understand nowadays why there jolly well is a profit in coal and the Pamir will have paid for herself with this voyage. She can sink now! Fourgues and I have pulled our weight—the owner will be able to smoke dollar cigars.

We almost did get sunk off Sallys on leaving Cardiff for Genoa. It was between two and three in the afternoon, during Fourgues’ watch. The Pamir struck something which shook her from keel to truck, but whatever it was, it didn’t explode. Perhaps it was a submarine which will know we passed (let’s hope for the best!). Or perhaps a mine that didn’t go off. Nothing happened to us except that we have forty tons of water a day in the hold and must keep the pump going all the time. As we still have coal on board I can’t tell you what’s the matter, but it’s something pretty stiff. Fourgues and Villiers think that we can manage to get to France in order to get into dock there, but the day after to-morrow when we get rid of our coal, we shall know what has been smashed. From Cardiff to Genoa we fairly slopped. Never have we had such a wet passage. Fine weather, too. Not a single patrol-boat except at Gibraltar. We aren’t astonished to find no patrol-boats, but why say the routes are guarded?

At Genoa we loafed around for four days. There was a mistake regarding the destination of the coal, which was for factories at Naples and Rome. Visited the city and neighbourhood. They’re not overdoing things in Italy. Fact is, old man, France is the only country that is really pulling her full weight in this war—in men, territory, money and effort.

We cleared from Genoa for Naples, where they are worrying even less. There’s no doubt about it, but there are several classes not yet mobilized. Of course it’s none of my business. I know where I am in the Merchant Service, but when it comes to other things, people can always say I’m talking rot. We anchored in the port, between two warships which are not in the Strait of Otranto. Our coal was unloaded at a gentle pace.

To speak of other matters, they say that Rumania is going to come into the game and there is talk of Italy declaring war on Germany. Fourgues says that means at least six months more of war, which is to say the more Allies there are, the longer it will last, what?...

And now, old man, I must say good-bye. Fourgues and Villiers are going to take me to a music-hall in Toledo Street this evening to see if I am a real incorruptible fiancé, as they call it. I shall be awfully bored. If we go into dry-dock at home, I will send you a wire c/o the Navy Department and if the Auvergne is in France, come to La Rochelle right away, so that I can embrace you the first after my wife.

Best of Friends,

Happy people have no history. You left for Argostoli or Piræus and I got your wire on my wedding-day. My wife, who is with me at Marseilles, sends you warm greetings with her regrets that you were not there. Fourgues came. He made a little speech which literally doubled us up, and presented me with a fine lamp of wrought-iron. Villiers gave me a love of a hookah with two tubes, to soothe my wife and me if we quarrel. Thanks for the present which is on the way. The Pamir is in dock and will be ready in four or five days. Here’s to our next merry meeting, old man, I am as happy as a king and I wish you the same luck when your turn comes.

Dear old Chap,

My wife left yesterday for La Rochelle, as the Pamir was to have left Marseilles yesterday evening. But we were delayed, as Fourgues thinks we are going to ship a cargo. So I am writing again, as I only sent you a short letter and have received a long one from you. I don’t want to seem to preach, but—get married! Find a woman you like and then go right ahead. Take my word for it, for fellows like us, who live lives very different from those sheltered land-lubbers, it’s a revelation and it’s true happiness. I am no longer the same, and this is not an exaggeration. If it were otherwise I should tell you. Well, here am I utterly wretched because Marguerite left yesterday and because the Pamir must get under way so soon. To have a girl all to yourself, to listen to the things she says, that no one has ever heard before, and then to go away to sea—it’s something that can’t be described.

Add to this the war and the mines and the submarines! Fourgues is quite right—no man knows what he has in him till he gets a wife, a real one, and leaves her. What a profession ours is! Life seems so beautiful—one launches into it like a ship on the sea. But when, to support a wife you adore, you have to earn a living at the price of never being with her, it’s the worst of all. Yesterday, at the station, she went and I was left on the platform. She had implored me to be prudent, to save myself if the Pamir should go down, to forget my self-respect and that I am an officer, and to think of her. I swore! But you know what professional honour is. I knew I was lying. I knew that if the catastrophe came, the mariner would conquer the married man. What a terrible last day! We love each other so much that we did not dare speak: the sea was between us. I suffered the tortures of the damned. Was I right to marry her during the war. Later, there would have been no torpedoes or submarines—we could have accepted our separation with more patience. But now! Now I am afraid for my skin! If it were only my skin! But she! My body will go, but all the rest stays with her. And if I go down, what will be my last thoughts? I shall see her at La Rochelle, waiting for me and wringing her hands, and she will never know whether I am dead or not. It is atrocious. Don’t marry before peace. I swore to her that the submarines were all rot. But you and I know well that they are there—and everywhere—and that we’ve nothing against them on the Pamir. The people on land are sending us to the slaughter. Have they no mothers, no wives or daughters or sisters—those who refuse us guns and wireless? They sing the glory of France and they choke Frenchmen like that fellow in the Bible who offered up his son. The sea and the torpedoes make me afraid, my poor chap. I am afraid—afraid.