This march in convoy imposed by the submarine war represented a leap backward in the life of the sea.  It recalled to Ferragut’s mind the sailing fleets of other centuries, escorted by navies in line, punctuating their course by incessant battles, and the remote voyages of the galleons of the Indies, setting forth from Seville in fleets when bound for the coast of the New World.

The double 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 a nightmare, another ashy and nebulous wall would come advancing over the waters enveloping them anew in its night.  The most valorous and calm men would swear upon seeing the endless bar of mist closing off the horizon.