This night passed like all the others. Along the horizon were trails of gray light. The rolling sea emerged from the chaos of dawn, and the lookouts, with heavy heads and quivering eyelids, scanned for the thousandth time the troubled awakening of the North Sea. They saw nothing. Perhaps one of them had descried a streak of foam whiter and clearer than the rest, and quickly raised his glass to his eyes. But the streak of foam had already been covered again, and he dropped the glass which had not revealed the periscope. The three cruisers pursued their way amid the ridges of foam, one of which, though they were unaware of it, meant death to them. A shock went through the first ship. The sailors on deck thought there had occurred an accident to the machinery; those below thought that a gun had been fired.... Everyone listened. Under the brave fellows’ feet the ship turned, lazily at first, while the waves boiled impatiently about her. Then they understood, all of them; they knew that death was near. Before they sank into the sailors’ grave, they looked again for the enemy who had destroyed them without granting them the joy of battle. Their staring eyes fell upon their comrade of the patrol, and filled with fear, for the _Aboukir_ was lurching too. Both had been stung to death by the stealthy advance of the submarine vipers. Generous still in their very death-agony, the two wounded ships hoisted warning signals, that their comrade might evade the deadly track. But she, as generous in her pity, raced to save the lives of the sailors in the engulfing waters. She too received her mortal wound, without being able to fire a single gun, although, clearer-sighted in the face of death, she was able to discern the submarine under its white streak of water. As the chill of the hemlock poison rises to the heart, the water rose in the three ships. The boilers choked with it, the machinery was drowned; one by one the watertight compartments, exploded by the pressure of the waves, burst with the noise of thunder. The electricity failed everywhere at once, and the sea became a tomb where men struggled and were buffeted by the waves. On the deck, drawn up in line, the crews gazed straight into their doom. The triple choir raised a hymn which they had learned on their English Sabbaths, and they sank to meet their God. Farewell, sailors of the three cruisers, fallen perhaps through the same fate that is in store for our Adriatic cruisers! Your anguish, your vigils, your last thoughts, we feel here on the _Waldeck-Rousseau_. Your end was noble, even if no one around me envies it. For we pray the God of Battles, if he sends us death, that we may at least exact a heavy toll from our enemies! _Strait of Otranto, 8 October._