Villiers got off in the lifeboat and they rowed as hard as they could against the wind. The _Mer-Morte_ blew up twenty minutes later. He had time to embark all the fellows that had been killed and we buried them in Algiers. But he had held up as long as he could. Toward midnight the cold, the wet, thirst, and all that he had been through, made him delirious, and when we arrived he had to have a rope under his arms and be hoisted aboard--he had collapsed. He is almost well now. We reached Algiers the day before yesterday and put ashore the Arabs of the Army of the East, who will tell this story in their huts. Fourgues and I are going with Villiers to-morrow to see the military authorities and leave a written report and make a verbal one of the affair of the _Pamir_ and the _Mer-Morte_. I will write you later. The mail-boat for France leaves soon and we don’t know what the _Pamir_ is going to do. Good-bye, old man. I hope Villiers is going to stay on the _Pamir_. Then I can write you more often. SALONICA, _March 13, 1916_. DEAR OLD MAN, You’ll never guess what the _Pamir_ trundled up here? Firewood, just plain firewood! To be sure, there are lots of other things on top, but it’s mostly firewood. It appears that this commodity is scarce in France and every other country, and as in the Army of the East they had about as much as I have on the back of my hand, we brought two thousand tons. But I am anticipating. Let us return to Algiers where I left you after we had picked up the castaways of the _Mer-Morte_. The authorities of the port received us coolly. Villiers, Fourgues, and I told our tale and handed in our written statements for the Admiralty. It was all as clear as daylight, but they looked rather black. They asked Villiers a lot of questions about the route, the ship’s movements, the hour when the submarine turned up, where the officer came on board, where the _Mer-Morte_ went down--and Lord knows what else. Do you see it? Villiers was in the engine-room attending to his boilers and pistons. He answered that he didn’t know what took place during that time and that he had put in his written report all that he knew of the business. He said that he was the engineer and not a watch-keeping officer. But they didn’t like it. As I understood the thing, the _Mer-Morte_ ought not to have been torpedoed just at that spot. No matter where else and nothing would have been said, but there--no!