Early in the morning an ensign translates a wireless from Malta. By way of numberless cables this message brings news from the Pacific. Under the massive shadows of the Cordilleras of the Andes, three English cruisers were swallowed up in the Chilean twilight. They fought against stronger vessels, but the German guns _a eu raison de leur valeur_. Twelve years ago, from the height of the American peaks, I had looked over the infinite expanse where this passage at arms took place. A few years ago, during a cruise to China, I had visited these same British vessels. I remember their appearance; faces that smiled at me then are now, no doubt, sleeping over there on the threshold of the _madrepores_; fingers which pressed mine are twisting the dark sea-weed, the sailor’s shroud. I envy those ships. I envy the dead of the battle of Coronel. A few weeks later, we shall know the details of their glorious end, but from now on I shall envy them, for they have fulfilled their destiny. It was not vainly that their torn flag shone in the sun. They struck, they perished, their eyes have carried with them into the deep the vision of battle; their death transmits a heritage of vengeance to which all British sailors are the heirs. Why does fate give us in the Adriatic a felon enemy that only runs away? Certainly I hate the Germans; but at least you find them when you look for them. Whereas to draw from the depths of the sea the only adversaries that Austria sends against us we should need picks and rakes. Our magazines are full, our engines are quivering, our guns thrust out their jaws, but all that crawls in the Adriatic desert is the submarine. Silent lightning flashes, alternate shafts and shadows burn our eyelids. The four hours of the watch pass. My eyes are fixed on the blackness; my dreams encircle the earth every moment. A procession of memories has accompanied the storm. Perfumes from Indo-China, the theaters of Paris, negresses of Guadeloupe, Madagascar cyclones, idylls of the West and tragedies of the East, tropic homesickness, and the English countryside--the whole procession of the past glides through my watch. Smiling, mystical, dim, it hastens to respond to my mood of nervous fatigue. It leaps upon the bridge to companion my solitude. About all my comrades, about the officers, who like me have become hermits of the deep, there crowds in the same way the phantoms of the past. We do not summon them. They run to us, form in line, yield place to others; the train of our dreams is more mobile than the sea. Meanwhile duty does not suffer. The round of memories never deflects our eyes or our ears from the surface of the waters. When necessary, we can scatter the memories with a single gesture, and do whatever is needful.