Iowa state bystander. [volume] (Des Moines, Iowa) 1894-1916, 1914-12-04
WAR! DRAMA At SEA|
Remarkable Letter From a
French Naval Officer.
Pictures . Night Of Tense Watching
In the Dark--ls Broken by the
Discovery and Destruction
Of Torpedo Boat.

Paris.-There has come to me,
writes Paul Scott Mowrer, In the Chi.
cago News, remarkable letter from
a naval officer, who is cruising with
the French feet in the Adriatic, hunt
ing the Austrian foe. 1t gives = vivid
picture Of the solitary drama Of war
at sea. Here it Is:
1T is black night. The wind is
terrible, the swell monstrous. All
lights are out. Darker than the night,
without single noise aboard. the
ships. one behind the other, watch
upon the sea that nothing may pass.
Ten miles to the north, ten miles to
the south, they are holding their blind
course. All seems to sleep.
Our lookouts at bow and stern. lost
in shadow, are rolling and pitching
like phantoms, while not a single
sound breaks the incomprehensible
silence. But the cannon are ready.
There is a man behind each loaded
piece, his finger on the trigger, never
closing his eyes from the moment he
goes on duty to the moment of his
relief. Aloft, the searchlights, too,
are ready at touch of button to blaze
forth, to seek out, to harass. And on
the bridge, the officer on whom de-
ponds thousand lives, the officer OF
the watch, alone before God, his eyes
on his glass, peers for hours and
hours out into the black night and the
swell. There must be no failing now
of sight or mind or decision. That
moment Of failing might be the very
one in which the enemy, crouching
between two waves, launched a tor
pedo or sowed sinking mine.
For an instant in the unreal dis
lance, great paint brushes OF light
appear. They grope across the sky
and sea, stop suddenly, and the wind
brings the sound Of storm Of shells.
Then no more. Lights and cannon
cease. The night, the swell, the silence.
But the heart beats faster. Out there,
they are rowing. Perhaps presently
it will be my turn. want to smash
the lenses of the glass and illuminate
the whole stretch of ocean. Which
way will they come? Suddenly some
thing white shines on crest, like the
mustache Of foam under a bow.
ION guard! Fifteen hundred
yards! Eighty degrees to starboard!
Light searchlights! More to the left!
Leeway f1fty-eight! Fire!
All the crouching shadows leap
asunder. In the bright sheaf. OF light
is a pallid specter with three or four
smokestacks which plunges like
greyhound over the foem. Fifteen
cannon at once are splitting ceaseless-
ly. Our phantom ship has become
volcano.
More in the right! A thousand
yards!'
THE hostile torpedo boat disappears
In an aureole of blows, behind foun-
tains Of water, very white under the
livid electricity. But still on it comes.
bringing death.
Eight hundred yards!'
THE blows are falling nearer to 1t.
They make a wall Of water and iron.
In the aureole Of spray appears some
thing red, black, yellow, like a hit In
the eye. A shell has struck the belly
Of the torpedo boat and it has blown
up.
"'Cease fire! Searchlights follow to
the end!'
I'VE go to look, to pick up the dead
and the wounded. Nothing is left
hardly few splinters of wood.
Lights out!'
We return to our course, to the
watch, the silence, the obscurity. The
men who serve the guns lie down.
The gunners stand and wait. The
officer of the watch, who has saved
thousand lives, once more stares
searchingly into the dangerous dark
ness. The boat rolls and pitches. 1t
is cold and gloomy. But the sea Is a
little freer and France better pro-
tected."