Going from Marseilles to Salonica before reaching Matapan, the _Pamir_ was torpedoed--fired upon and missed--by a Boche submarine. The truth is, we shouldn’t mind being sent down if we could hit back and if all precautions had been taken. When a _poilu_ stops a bullet in an attack, if he has time to know about it before he dies he sees that his pals are delivering the goods and that gives him heart when he’s about to cast off. But as for us, old man, it’s not our fault nor that of the submarine if I am writing you to-day. Some are unlucky and some are lucky, and that’s the way things are! It was early morning, during my watch, when the shells began to fall. The weather was like the Last Judgment, and I was looking at the rollers which fell _smack_ on our stem and rushed away foaming. All of a sudden there were columns of foam, which shot up like tufts of feathers on the port side at about three hundred yards. They rose as high as our funnels. I said “Hell! We’re near a reef and the sea is breaking over it!” I put the helm over and went to look at the chart. There were no more rocks charted than in the white of my eye. So I righted the helm after having sent word to Fourgues that there was something funny on the sea, and just as he reached the bridge a bunch of shells fell twenty yards to starboard. There was no doubt about it--there was a submarine squirting at us and we with our arms folded, unable to answer back! But anyway, we should have been at a loss, for it was almost ten minutes before we knew from where or from what they came. The _Pamir_ was rolling like a log and the sea was as choppy as could be. It must have been that which worried the submarine, for the shots fell in front, behind, to port, and to starboard. Finally, during a calm moment, we saw puffs of smoke three or four miles ahead and spray breaking about the Boche. Then we turned our backs and hooked it as fast as we could. I couldn’t possibly tell you how many “thunders and blazes” Fourgues let out! I didn’t count them. He stamped and pulled at his beard: “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.