The copper era and Morenci leader., 1915-01-01
WAR DRAMA AT SEA
Remarkable Letter From a
 French Naval Officer.
Pictures a Night of Tense Watching In the Dark-Is, Broken by the Discovery and Destruction
 of Torrcdo Boat.

Paris.-There has come to me, ] writes Paul Scott Mowrer in the Chi cago News, a remarkable letter from naval officer, who is cruising with the French fleet in the Adriatic, hunt ing the Austrian foe. It gives a vivid picture of the solitary drama of war at sea- Here it is:
 Tt 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 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 single sound breaks the incomprehensible silence. But the cannon are ready. There is 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 a button to blaze forth, to seek out, to harass. And on the bridge, the officer on whom. de pends 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 tor pedo or sowed sinking mine.
 For an instant in the unreal dis tance, 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 bow.
 "'On guard! Fifteen hundred yards! Eighty degrees to starboard! hlSnI S0dTCulASHlS. MCT0 u IA6 1OlI. Leeway ffty-eight! Firei
 All the crouching shadows leap asunder. In the bright sheaf of light is a pallid specter with three or four smokestacks which plunges like a greyhound over the foam. Fifteen cannon at once are spitting ceaseless- 1y. Our phantom ship has become a 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 liyid electricity But still on it comes. bringing death.
 Eight hundred yardsi'
 'tThe blows are falling nearer to it. They make 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. Search1ights follow to the endi'
 We go to look, to pick up the dead and the wounded Nothing is left hardly few splinters of wood
 "Iights 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 It is cold and gloomy But the sea is a little freer and France better pro- tected."