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.