Chapter VIII: Part FOUR (2)

“Look at that devil sending us his shells while we sit here like impotents! But then, if they _had_ given us guns they would have been pea shooters or cocktail-straws and we couldn’t have fired more than four or five thousand yards. Look at her! She’s at least seven thousand yards away and is missing us only because of the swell. If it were calm we should be done for already!”

At the end of a quarter of an hour we had counted about forty shells and the submarine stopped wasting her pills and bore down on us at full speed, and you can guess, old man, that she gained on us hand over hand.

The _Pamir_, loaded with about three thousand five hundred tons, was down into the trough of the sea like a lump of lead and couldn’t make more than seven knots doing her damnedest. The Boche shot through the water like a fish. They must have closed her hatches and, of course, she didn’t mind the waves breaking over her, being built to navigate with water on all sides. She must have gained three or four knots on us, for after giving chase for three-quarters of an hour, she was only a thousand yards away. We saw her slow up a bit and open the hatches and the gunners came to fire from the deck! The first two shots fell twenty yards short and fifty too far. Fourgues said to himself that the third was going to hit and he put the helm hard aport so that we should rot up their aim. Just at that moment a hollow sea came along and shook us from stem to stern. Everything stowed on the deck began to slide and fouled the port tiller-rope, which jammed. Steering became impossible. The _Pamir_ kept turning around to port, only she couldn’t turn fast on account of the heavy seas, but the submarine doubtless believed that it was in order to run her down that we headed that way, so the Boche gunners scrambled through the hatches and shut them and they submerged on the spot. After that, not a thing to be seen! While our crew was hauling the packing cases around on the deck, trying to clear the tiller-rope, the _Pamir_ went round and round like a horse working a merry-go-round, and rolled and pitched without stopping. Then the submarine must have come nearer, for we saw the wakes of two torpedoes, one forward at about thirty yards and another which missed us aft. The second was well aimed and came straight at us. We could move neither hand nor foot, nor do anything but make the sign of the Cross and think of our families. But this torpedo couldn’t have been set to go very deep. As the _Pamir_ is not armoured, a hole at the water-line would be enough to finish her. Well, the torpedo got caught in the trough of a wave which made it leap into the air like a carp about a hundred yards from us and fall back into the water at right angles to its course. It passed behind us and we all breathed again.

The Boche must have been disgusted at losing two torpedoes and nearly fifty shells in one hour on a boat that steered like a cork. She came to the surface again at two or three thousand yards without sending us anything more and hooked it towards another ship coming from the west, the _Worthminster_, a big English tramp loaded with munitions, which had put in at Marseilles and had left the same hour as we, but which had fallen behind so that we lost sight of her the night before. I believe the _Worthminster_ went down. Salonica was her destination and she didn’t arrive there. We asked for news, but mum’s the word everywhere, and when the moon is made of green cheese we shall know, perhaps, if our mates of the _Worthminster_ are feeding the crabs.

You can be sure Fourgues made a hell of a row because the _Pamir_ had not been able to send a wireless message to the _Worthminster_, which had wireless, as we had seen at Marseilles. To see a submarine running after a friendly ship and not to be able to say, “Turn back to the west! Shells and torpedoes are coming!”--you’ll admit that’s enough to make one groan with despair! If only our tiller-rope hadn’t jammed, Fourgues would have chased after the Boche at the risk of being shelled, because the _Worthminster_ would have seen that something was up and would have disappeared. But it took two hours to clear the tiller-rope and repair it and stop turning round and round. So Fourgues went on his way signalling that he had seen a Boche submarine near Matapan and all the boats we met bore south. Those who came behind us were sunk, I suppose, without anyone being able to warn them.

At Salonica the Naval authorities asked Fourgues a pack of questions about the show. As the _Pamir_ had received no damage in the hull or upper works they tried to make Fourgues say he had dreamed it all and that he had seen no more submarine than in my eye. He was so indignant that he didn’t even get into a rage.

“Very well,” he said. “If it’s necessary to let yourself be sent to the bottom in order to prove that you have seen a submarine, next time I will stop and wait for it and then perhaps you’ll believe me. In any case you will get confirmation from the _Worthminster_ which----”

When he mentioned the _Worthminster_ the others looked odd and that makes us sure that she is lost. But they wouldn’t give any information. They merely questioned Fourgues:

“Why didn’t you warn the _Worthminster_?”

“No wireless.”

“Why didn’t you try to ram the submarine?”

“Tiller-rope jammed and damaged.”

“Why didn’t you attack the submarine?”

“No guns and a high sea.”

“Why didn’t you signal the _Worthminster_?”

“She was on the horizon and it was raining. You couldn’t have seen a signal at five hundred yards.”

And so on and so forth. Fourgues left abruptly, filing a written statement, and saying that as the folks who are drowned are blamed and the landsmen find fault with them, he would wash his hands of the whole business, and the next time he would let the submarine go about its job in order to settle the account and shut them up. But that, old man, was just the bad temper of the moment, for he doesn’t want the _Pamir_ to rot at the bottom of the sea any more than I do.

While we were unloading our stuff for the Army of the East, there were not a few cargo boats in the harbour, and one day Fourgues invited the skippers of all of them to a luncheon. As he is very popular, there were fifteen or twenty of us at table, all men of brawn and nerve who have knocked about from north to south ever since the beginning of the war, with millions of tons of merchandise in the hold, and any number of soldiers. It was a treat to hear such conversation from these men who really work and who aren’t afraid of anything. And then, between sailors, there’s no side. And Fourgues, who presided, isn’t easily gulled. So each spun his little yarn when his turn came, without trying to stuff anybody. All had been more or less attacked, torpedoed, or shelled, but they had obviously escaped since they were there! They said, though, that the Germans were settling seriously to the game, and that sooner or later no one would get through without damage. There were some who had wireless and guns; only, their guns were outranged by those of the submarines which had attacked them, and when they called for hours by wireless to warn others of danger, no one answered. There were some with wireless and no guns, and as they had only one operator and one man is only one man and can’t stay with the receiver at his ear twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four without going crazy, their ships were not kept constantly informed of danger and had some narrow squeaks. There were others who had guns and no wireless, but their guns were duds which jammed at the third shot, so they might as well have had none. And then there were those who had neither guns nor wireless, like the _Pamir_. These were in the majority and the only reply they can make to a submarine is to make their wills. To talk about such a state of things is not exactly merry, and without Fourgues, who was in fine form that day, it might have turned into a regular funeral service, especially as they also spoke of their lifeboats, which are insufficient everywhere; of their engines, which are at their last gasp as the result of overwork; of their ships, which hold together only because they’re good-natured, but which are sprung all over the shop; in short, old man, all the little worries which you have known in the past, but which were a joke compared with the present mess.

During coffee, Fourgues summed up by saying that since no one cared a damn about cargo boats and tramps as long as the sailors kept quiet, perhaps it was time for the officers and captains of the Merchant Service to say what should be done and get together so as to discuss and decide on some line of action. They all agreed and drew up a programme, which they bound themselves to ask their colleagues to sign wherever they went, and also arranged to send a deputation to Paris as soon as possible. But you can understand, old man, how it is they haven’t much hope of its coming to anything. They will be told to go and get themselves sunk, and that no one asked for their advice, and what the deuce do the people who do the work mean by daring to give their opinion about it? As the country knows nothing about the Merchant Service and as it is being assured that all goes well at sea, the only satisfaction the captains will have will be to know they were right, and when they arrive in port they’ll be able to count how many of their chums have gone to Davy Jones’s locker. Amen and glory be to those who are torpedoed!

If I had the time and knew how, I could tell you a lot of interesting things about Salonica that happened while we were there: Venizelos, the movement forward towards Monastir, the National Government, etc. You bet there’s plenty happening and lots of rumours. But I should need whole logs to tell about it, and then, outside my profession, I am afraid of putting my foot in it. Anyway, the Army of the East was glad to get our cargo from Marseilles--material for the railroad, tractors, tyres, gun-carriages, and petrol. When ships are late, operations are retarded by so much. If a ship is sunk, they have to wait for its substitute before they can go ahead. The stock must be collected again in France, sent to Marseilles, another boat found and loaded, which makes a month’s delay besides which something is always missing from the second shipment, some trifle that is enough to keep a vehicle or a gun or a railroad at a standstill. This kind of thing never happens at the front in France. There, they have only to telephone to the base in order to get what they want. Here, when you haven’t a thing, you haven’t got it and that’s all there is about it. But the French papers are howling that the Commander at Salonica is letting the grass grow under his feet! I’m only the mate on the _Pamir_, but I’d rather have my job than Sarrail’s.

From Salonica we went to the Piræus, Salamis, and all around there to deliver spare stores and supplies to the ships of the Fleet: screws, boiler-tubes, electric cables, torpedoes, sheet-iron, and tools--a regular hardware shop! We went from one anchorage to another, spitting out a few tons here and a few there, and picking up scraps of stories about the 1st of December at Athens, first-hand, all of them. Don’t expect, though, that I will blab any of it to you. The mails aren’t safe. But it isn’t the things that really happen that count--it’s what is said officially. Fourgues maintains that it’s very philosophical: only the official folks have any interest in telling lies for their own protection and they’re the only people who are believed. He adds that this war, no matter where you turn, is the Triumph of the Lie! He’s got a way of hitting things off just so! While the _Pamir_ was making her little Odyssey (Villiers’ expression) in the Greek ports, we three asked ourselves again of what use those great warships were, with their thousands of crew and their enormous guns. If it’s for our prestige in the East, one day like the 1st of December can wipe out the effect of a thousand battleships. If it’s for a Naval battle, then against whom? The Austrians? In that case there’s no need to keep more than twice as many ships as the Austrians have, and it would be better to dismantle the other French ships which are devouring coal and stupefying tens of thousands of sailors with idleness who would be much better on trawlers and little patrol-boats. With one great useless ship they could arm ten or fifteen that would be of some use. If all they want is to give the Boches targets worth shooting at when the big ships go for refit to France or Bizerta--why not Kamchatka?--when Italy is close by, we can understand. But it doesn’t concern me, of course, and, indeed, I have enough with the _Pamir_ and navigation.

At Argostoli, where they sent us to empty our holds for the battleships which were there, we kept on thinking the same things. Crews and young officers are bored to death and eating their hearts out in their longing for active service, the only service possible nowadays for men in the Navy--submarine-chasing in little boats! Ah, well, you bet that wouldn’t suit everybody. So, to make it look as though they were doing something, they keep up a lot of drill, as in time of peace. There it is! But what do you expect? There isn’t any war for them except that perhaps they may be torpedoed, and, of course, they must look as though they were of some use! So here is another French force lying bottled up and one of prime quality--nothing but beefy great chaps who ask only to leave their ships and go into danger! They aren’t like the fellows who want to get out of the trenches in order to make money far from the madding shells. Sailors would like to go on the real sea and just be paid as much as before. But whether they want to or not, it’s all the same. Communications are cut off between them and France, where no one knows a thing about the Navy and cares as little about it as the moon.

You should have seen how they fairly rushed us at Argostoli to get the latest news of Athens and the Fleet, from which we had come, straight! They know nothing here, or almost nothing. So at first, Fourgues, Villiers, and I began to roll off our first-hand information, believing that they asked questions in order to know. Not at all, old chap. All the Brass Hats opened their eyes as big as saucers and then told us to hold our tongues about it. France can let a hundred men and six officers be killed like rats in a trap, but no one must say how it was done. So Fourgues and the two of us shut up tight, and we replied to the young’uns, who knew bits of the story, that we had not the right to tell what we knew. So there you have us playing the censor, old man! It fits us about as well as gloves on a turtle! But as adventures are the forming influence of youth, after this business I understand the censorship, though I never understood it before, and used to ask myself why a country like France should not be told the truth. The censorship, old man, is to keep people from developing heart disease. Not the people at the front or on the sea, who couldn’t be any sicker after hearing the truth than they are after a shell or a torpedo, but the jacks-in-office who get advancement or a reputation through the war and who don’t want to have their noses rubbed in their little mishaps. But to think that a country like ours, where everyone goes laughing to the slaughter, should be treated like that to cover the tracks of a pack of incompetents! It’s enough to make you laugh till the Day of Judgment!

All the same, it’s more or less funny to see how the natives of this country have made game of us behind our backs ever since the 1st of December. What are we waiting for--to make them sweat ten times the blood of those French sailors? To hell with “outside influences”! What the devil do we care that this Power or that doesn’t want to hurt their darling Tino! But French blood is French business, and we could say to all the rest, “Hands off! Let _me_ settle this score!” Besides, with lubbers who admire nothing but the big stick, as you see from the way they go down on their knees with their mouths open before the Boches, it’s absurd to be considerate. But we keep on talking rot about memories of ancient days and all these Helleno-Boches, who are well aware of our stupidity, harp on that string and take advantage of us. Are we really such born fools as to be taken in by such humbug? Fourgues explained it all to me in very few words, as he can:

“Listen to this, my boy. There are adventurers, crooks who intend to marry the lady with the money-bags. So they recite poetry, mouth, and strike romantic poses. The good woman lets herself be taken in and goes before the registrar with her money-bags behind. And what does she get? He, the tender heart, beats her, makes off with the money, and then laughs at her into the bargain. Well, it’s the same thing with the Greek government and the Allies. They harp on their great ancestors, Themistocles and Canaris, and when we come with assurances of friendship we get a hundred bluejackets murdered. If we gave them tit for tat, things might be better. But we say ‘Let’s talk it over!’ So everybody sits down in a circle on the corpses and it’s French blood that makes the council table! If instead of this we said to them, ‘Constantine or bread!’ and sealed their ports with ships which are doing nothing, in a week we should be rid of those lads who fire in our backs, cut our bridges, and get their instructions from Potsdam every morning. But what do you expect, my boy? The Frenchman lets himself be killed and then says, ‘Pardon me!’ At least, that’s what it looks like.”

Well, old man, I don’t know just who Themistocles and Canaris were--humbugs, no doubt, but the rest is as plain as day. What lies can they be telling about it in France? Even here, only two days from the Piræus, we, of the _Pamir_, who were there, can’t get people to listen to us. What must it be at home?

And boredom! The _Pamir_ is waiting for orders. It’s a habit now! Fourgues is afraid they will make us take coal, seeing that that commodity is now dearer than meat. But I don’t care a whoop nor a damn nor a double-damn! And if you aren’t like me, your stripes have indeed changed you. Cheery-oh!

NORWAY,
_February 18, 1917_.

GODFATHER!

I am sure you are stunned by the above form of address. However, it’s not so far wrong. There’s going to be a little conscript--or a little mamma--for the class of 1937 who will look like me, I hope, and you are ex-officio godfather. Now, no objections! I heard about it only the other day on our arrival in Bergen. The letter had been chasing around after me for two months, but we have rolled about so during that time--and then, too, the censor held up the letters in Greece--that it’s a brand-new future papa who sends you this announcement. If you don’t congratulate me, you are no friend of mine!

That will do for family history. But you know such a thing doesn’t happen every day in a man’s life. Don’t think I’m bragging because there’s going to be a little post-card for which I made the design. No, old man, I’m not trying to come it over you. Just do the same when you can--and if you can--and we’ll call it square. And if you have the luck to be the first to see my little beggar, male or female, embrace the mother and the baby for me. You know that I mean it with all my heart.

It’s so long since I wrote you last, that I can’t remember where I posted the letter. I believe you were in dry-dock at Bizerta and I was waiting at Argostoli. If I repeat myself, pass over that part and begin where I left off.

Here is where we have been: Argostoli, Messina, Ajaccio (but that was extra as you shall see), Lisbon, Bilbao, Brest, Liverpool, Bergen, and the Norwegian ports where the _Pamir_ is collecting wood. And we’ve wasted no time either at sea or in port, as you will find. This time our work has been useful, and except for the German blockade which catches us in Norway, everything is going well. But I will do as Villiers does when he argues--take one thing at a time!

At Argostoli there were three other merchant-ships which were clearing at the same time as the _Pamir_, or very nearly, and we were told to travel together to join a big cruiser west of Cerigo in order to make up a convoy with other boats which the cruiser had collected at Salonica, Salamis, and elsewhere. There was one destroyer, the _Revolver_, to escort the lot of us. As you might guess, the convoy was composed of hookers, of which some made eight knots and others fourteen, and as we all met towards night, the next morning some were lost over the horizon ahead and others behind. We managed as best we could and followed the secret route. Near morning of the second day, the cruiser hoisted a lot of signals to tell us to head south because a submarine had been at work on the secret route during the night. So we all stampeded for the south, the fastest ahead, the lumberers behind, and the _Pamir_ well in the middle. It was worth paying for to see that obstacle race! The cruiser had orders to call at Messina or somewhere along that coast, but neglected to tell us, so she collected us somehow or other and conducted us into the Straits of Messina where we found ourselves all in a bunch about noon. And if there had been a submarine looking on, she couldn’t have missed us any more than she could have missed an elephant in a window. There the cruiser and the destroyer signalled good-bye and ordered us to follow the secret route as far as Marseilles from where each should proceed to his destination along the secret routes. But as there was no police, the fast boats put on speed, the others dragged, and on arriving before Bonifacio, the _Pamir_ had no one in sight but a big steamer which disappeared off the horizon ahead that night. We kept on all night and the next morning what did Fourgues see? The same big steamer disabled, having received a torpedo in the rudder and screw, and asking to be towed. As she had a gun, Fourgues thought she must have peppered the submarine, which had probably hooked it to wait for the others who were coming along the same course. The submarine had perhaps missed us by an hour or an hour and a half at most, but we saw nothing of her while we were over-hauling the steamer _Sainte Eulalie_, nor while we were towing her into Ajaccio. It wasn’t easy to pass the tow-rope, for there was still a touch of mistral about and the _Sainte Eulalie_ had broached to. One of our men had his hand smashed by the first hawser, which broke. The second held, and the _Pamir_ towed the cripple to Ajaccio at five knots speed. There we unloaded our wounded man. The convoy being dispersed, there was no need to go to Marseilles, so Fourgues lit out straight for Lisbon, where he had been told to call at Argostoli, but he permitted himself the luxury of sailing outside the secret route. When I say outside, I mean about fifty miles off, except at Gibraltar, where, of course, everybody has to pass. But if the Navy can’t guard Gibraltar, there’s nothing to do but pull up the ladder and order the funeral wreath.

Fourgues said that voyages at sea were beginning to offer a little too much variety for him to follow secret routes, and as long as he was not absolutely forced to do so, he would look a little farther and avoid submarines. So he struck the Spanish coast a little south of the Balearic Isles and we hugged it as far as Lisbon.

He said that, perhaps, it made him lose a day, but that there is less danger near the coast, for if you are torpedoed, you may have time to beach the ship and save it later, or, at any rate, the crew and lifeboats are almost sure to be saved, having only to row a bit to reach land. Fourgues added that this ought to be the general rule.

At Lisbon we coaled, and the _Pamir_ took the stuff the Portuguese Navy gave us for the Expeditionary Corps Portugal is forming in France. We were well received in Lisbon--not as in other Allied countries, where people are jolly lukewarm. The Portuguese are all out. They aren’t rich and their army is not huge, but all they ask for is to have a smack at the Germans and bash them in, which ought to be the ideal of all the Allies, instead of going in for shady diplomacy like some.

We filled only our aft hold at Lisbon with Portuguese war-material, going on to Bilbao to stuff the forward hold with steel. We fairly rushed it in. The Spanish--I mean the Spanish ship-owners--have begun to hang fire a bit about shipping us ore; for they say the Boches are going to send all ships to the bottom, and Spain doesn’t want to lose her fleet. So they ask enormous prices, and that means endless bargaining, while the ore piles up on the docks. That’s why the _Pamir_ loaded so fast.

I’m writing this as quickly as I can because I want to get to what we’re at now and the Norwegian rumours, and the mail-boat leaves the day after to-morrow. We lit out for Brest where the _Pamir_ left the Portuguese stuff and the Spanish metal. During the passage we sailed near a wreck, or rather fifty bits of wreck--wood, logs, buoys, etc.--scattered over half-a-mile of the sea. Fourgues made us search all the afternoon to see if we could find a raft or the lifeboats of the torpedoed ship. But it must have been as it was with the _Suffren_, which left nothing but her absence as proof of shipwreck. We were unsuccessful. When you come upon a tragedy like that and tell yourself that your turn may come, perhaps in a quarter of an hour--well, you are not so chirpy about the success of our Naval strategy as they are in Paris.

When they had emptied out our stuff at Brest, the _Pamir_ waited a day at the outside and was sent to Norway to look for wood in the shape of planks and joists. I guess there aren’t any boats to spare now, although the papers say that there are a hundred thousand arrivals and departures each week and that the submarine war has proved a fiasco for the Boches. At the beginning of the war they never minded letting the _Pamir_ slack it in port for eight or ten days. But now we’re on the go all the time. All the other fellows we have seen are hard at it, too. It will go on as long as it can and then, at some given moment, the whole show will stop. And then they’ll begin to cut down the food and coal of the country a bit, and then a bit more, and a bit more still, while we shall continue to be sent to the bottom. If this would open their eyes at home to the importance of the Merchant Service and the need of giving it protection, that would be something! But you’ll see they’ll make the people swallow some fresh lie! France is not a maritime country and will always let herself be humbugged about the sea. But I am anticipating and talking as though the Boche blockade had already been declared at that time, whereas it has only come about since we reached Norway.

So then, we left Brest. We were ordered to sail by way of the Irish Channel, an old acquaintance of ours since the war. In the English Channel, about ten o’clock in the morning, straight ahead of the _Pamir_ I saw a mine which must have become detached from the bottom and which was drifting like a dam’ log. If this had happened at night, old man, I should not be writing to you nor would any of the rest on board, because it was enough to blow up four _Pamirs_ put together. I put the helm over. We looked at the mine and admired it and that was all. No gun to send it to the bottom! No wireless with which to inform the authorities at Liverpool of the existence of said mine! But as we had to take aboard some “spares” at Birkenhead we anchored in the Mersey.

Unfortunately, Fourgues telegraphed the owner that he was in Liverpool, and the owner, who never loses a chance to feather his nest, answered that he must wait forty-eight hours in order to take freight that was urgently needed in Norway. This feverishly awaited freight, old man, was wagon-loads and mountains of sugar, preserves, and jams. It seems that in Norway they aren’t afraid to buy things that are worth their weight in gold in France. If you want my opinion, I will say that thin Norwegians won’t get any stouter on that cargo. Farther south there are gaping mouths and it’s for them we shall have worked! You can fool some people _all_ the time! The Allies’ blockade is like a net with broken meshes, here just as in Greece and other places. But that’s another story.

During the crossing from Liverpool to Bergen--which I recommend if you like gymnastics, for we never for one moment ceased rolling like the very deuce--Villiers amused himself making calculations according to the ship’s log to see how many miles the _Pamir_ has travelled and how much merchandise she has transported during the thirty months of war. He found that we have been round the world three and a half times and carried between eighty and a hundred million tons of stuff! We might have exceeded the latter figure if we had not made so many voyages in ballast. But, anyway, such as it is, Fourgues said that the _Pamir_ had done her bit. When you think that the biggest cargo boats can double and treble that record and that France needs it all, you can say that the Merchant Service has deserved well of her. Dear old chap, you know that I am not saying this to brag and make out that we are wonderful fellows! All that is very well for Mummy’s darlings who have their photographs taken to put in the papers or for the old buffers who spread themselves in the pubs in Paris. You know the sort who do as little as they can and make the most of it. But we who trudge up and down the earth and carry on without anyone knowing anything about it and who get more kicks than half-pence, without counting torpedoes and mines--and not more than eight days’ leave in port--I wonder what the Allies would have done if we hadn’t been there, right on the job and with our mouths shut? After this if the French people do not come to understand what the Merchant Service represents, all I can say is, their brains need a surgical operation, and there’s nothing for it but to let all our ships rip, and take to agriculture instead. Look at it any way you like: France needs the whole world to help her if she is to win the war, and as there are no railroads to Australia or Argentine or the United States, or to any of the countries which furnish us with raw material, she’d be in the soup without the Merchant Service. But a fat lot she cares about us. There’s no fear of anyone in Paris bothering, and we shall keep on just the same while those gentlemen go right on hypnotising themselves, some with words and the others with bank-notes enough to burst their pockets.

At Bergen we emptied out the grub destined for the Boches, and I have the honour to inform you that our men smashed just as many cases as possible, firing them out on to the wharf. The owner will lose nothing by it, though, for you may be perfectly sure that he took all precautions; but at least there’s that much less for the Boches to cram into their bellies. And while the _Pamir_ was in Bergen, news came of the submarine war which the Boches are going to carry on mercilessly--blockade, forbidden zones, no warnings, and all the rest of it. Of course, nobody on the _Pamir_ was a bit surprised by this business which makes all the Allied big bugs and the papers yell so. We and all the fellows who blow around at sea, and hear the talk everywhere, have felt the storm coming for ever so long. Only, as we aren’t officials, of course, we must have been mistaken! Well, the bomb has burst! Who is going to suffer? First, the ships that go sailing by; and then France, who will have to draw in her belt. What will they be in for at home in the way of high prices for coal, flour, butter, and the rest?

We who are used to transporting all that sort of thing, know what such a catastrophe means. But the dear public that buys at the corner grocery, and believes those things come there of themselves like the rain and the air they breathe, will be somewhat annoyed. Of course, they won’t be told how it came about, and they won’t know they are paying double or treble the former prices because ships go down at sea. As usual, they will have a lot of rotten reasons dished up for them, because it’s forbidden to give the real reason for anything. All the same, the Censor can’t prohibit the cutting-off of the gas, the electricity, the railroads, the restaurants, and everything that makes life comfy. For you may be sure the Boches aren’t going to do things by halves. Here, where we’re near them, people have information, and we have picked up a good deal at Bergen and Christiansund, where I am writing while our planks and joists are being loaded. It’s a good thing that the _Pamir_ is here to take the wood, for all the Norwegian boats have orders to lie low wherever they may be without stirring, on account of the blockade, and I beg you to believe there are millions of tons of building timber held up. Whatever will they do? It was short already! The worst is that the Dutch, the Spanish, and the other neutrals are also going to suspend their traffic because they aren’t keen either about losing their ships. Well, the _Pamir_ will have from three thousand to thirty-two hundred tons of wood which will serve to build the barracks of the _poilus_, railways, and pit-props for at least one Army Corps. This is at least as useful as shells and coal and we are pleased with our cargo.

To return to the information we have gathered here, it seems that things are boiling in Russia. A lot of people think that at Petrograd and other places up there they’re about fed up with Hun influence. The Germans are putting spokes in their wheels even at Court and in the Imperial family itself. Some say that it can end only by a separate peace or a Revolution. In fact, matters look pretty dark in the opinion of those who have been there.

In Germany they talk of nothing but the submarines, and the public expect wonders. The Norwegians say that the Germans have been turning out several submarines a week for the last few months and that there are many mine-sowers among them. So, as you can believe the Boches will keep their word, navigation is going to be the devil and we shall be blown up without knowing why or how. The _Pamir_ is nicely fixed for the first voyage after the blockade. She has to sail the entire length of the forbidden zone and our sort of patrol will be little protection. That has not changed at all in thirty months of war! But Fourgues says the Allies are rich enough to pretend that they can stand for it. Let a thousand or five thousand tons a month be sunk and still they will state in the papers that it’s all humbug, he says. But in the end the public will pay. Whether we get copped or not is of no importance at all. All that we shall have for our funeral oration will be silence everywhere. But this is nonsense. I am going to the movies to-night with Villiers, who is standing me a treat in honour of my paternity. We shall dine ashore. In three days we shall get under way for an Atlantic port which is not yet fixed. What luck if it were La Rochelle or Saint-Nazaire! I could go and embrace the little mother. Well, who lives, learns! Sailors were not meant to be with their families, and as the proverb says, “Sailor’s bride, sorrow’s bride!” I am sending you my photograph which I had taken at Bergen and which I am also sending to my wife so that she can look at me while she is waiting for the baby. You will see that I am well and that the war agrees with me. You know that I mean what I have written on the photo. Good luck, old friend, and here’s till we meet again.

* * * * *

OFFICIAL STATEMENT (end of February, 1917)

_The German wireless reports the sinking of the_ Pamir, _which is overdue._

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND

Transcriber’s notes.

Obvious typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected silently. Ambiguous hyphenation has been removed or retained according to the prevailing style for the period. Inconsistent hyphenation has been normalised.

A half-title page (blank except for the book title) and a title reiteration have been omitted from the front matter.