e file of black hulks with plumes of smoke advanced very
placidly in fair weather. When the day was gray, the sea choppy, the
sky and the atmosphere foggy, they would scatter and leap about like a
troop of dark and frightened lambs. The guardians of the convoy, three
little boats that were going at full speed, were the vigilant mastiffs
of this marine herd, preceding it in order to explore the horizon,
remaining behind it, or marching beside it in order to keep the
formation intact. Their lightness and their swiftness enabled them to
make prodigious bounds over the waves. A girdle of smoke curled itself
around their double smokestacks. Their prows when not hidden were
expelling cascades of foam, sometimes even showing the dripping
forefoot of the keel.

At night time they would all travel with few lights, simple lanterns at
the prow, as warning to the one just ahead, and another one at the
stern, to point out the route to the ship following. These faint lights
could scarcely be seen. Oftentimes the helmsman would suddenly have to
turn his course and demand slackened speed behind, seeing the
silhouette of the boat ahead looming up in the darkness. A few moments
of carelessness and it would come in on the prow with a deadly ram.
Upon slowing down, the captain always looked behind uneasily, fearing
in turn to collide with his following ship.

They were all thinking about the invisible submarines. From time to
time would sound the report of the guns; the convoy's escort was
shooting and shooting, going from one side to the other with agile
evolutions. The enemy had fled like wolves before the barking of
watch-dogs. On other occasions it would prove a false alarm, and the
shells would wound the desert water with a lashing of steel.

There was an enemy more troublesome than the tempest, more terrible
than the torpedoes, that disorganized the convoys. It was the fog,
thick and pale as the white of an egg, enshrouding the vessels, making
them navigate blindly in full daylight, filling space with the useless
moaning of their sirens, not letting them see the water which sustained
them nor the nearby boats that might emerge at any moment from the
blank atmosphere, announcing their apparition with a collision and a
tremendous, deadly crash. In this way the merchant fleets had to
proceed entire days together and when, at the end, they found
themselves free from this wet blanket, breathing with satisfaction as
though awaking from