I should smile! Three of them sent their heels about two inches from his pipe and Fourgues hooked it faster than he would have thought possible. You can’t imagine the noise that a hundred mules can make on a steel deck, even with a wooden floor. There you have four hundred hoofs making the devil’s own rattle all night long, and there’s no way of going by-byes. Things went pretty well as far as Sardinia, because we had calm weather with a slight breeze; but from Malta to Matapan we ran into a wind from the North-West with a choppy swell in consequence. The hundred mules danced a hornpipe all together as we rolled and pitched, and their stamping drowned the noise of the wind. They brayed for all they were worth. The spray stung their eyes and got in their noses and they sneezed wretchedly. Add to this the two hundred barrels, loose in the hold, which went bim-boom! bim-boom! on top of the firewood and you see what a time we had from Cette to Salonica. But it was all the same to me, for since Villiers has come I have nothing more to do with the engines. So I have six good hours a day in which to lounge in my cabin, playing the mandolin and reading your books. I have reached Suffren, Nelson, Villeneuve, and Trafalgar in the Naval History. Here is my conclusion: _Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose_. The secret route was altered by the time the _Pamir_ went from Cette to Salonica. Perhaps the sinking of the _Mer-Morte_ was the cause of this. Fourgues and Villiers think so. All I know is that we didn’t have one patrol-boat between Cette and Point Cassandra. You who are on a warship--can you explain this to me? I suppose you protect the boats that are worth the trouble, although the _Provence_, which had more than a thousand men on board, caught it not long ago. Evidently boats loaded with mules, wine, and firewood are not worth the trouble, and I am the first to realize that this is true. I have had rafts made of the extra wood I pinched, and if the _Pamir_ goes down we can hope to float. But I can quite understand that they shouldn’t bother about a tramp with a crew of only thirty-five men, and if you tell me that the others are guarded I’m satisfied.