the Austrian prisoners to Sardinia. But where were
the typhoid and the cholera patients to be transported? No one wanted
them; and in this stampede of a people, cholera and typhus had made
their appearance and spread with alarming rapidity. A certain number
of cholera patients had been taken to Brindisi; and everyone,
naturally, refused to take them in.

Since this was the case, a French trawler, the _Verdun_, commanded by
Lieutenant d'Aubarede, brought the sick to Corfu. And, as M. Emile
Vedel tells it, this was perhaps one of the most beautiful episodes of
our navy's activity, for there are few deaths as hideous as that to
which they exposed themselves in taking in their arms poor beings
touched with a malady essentially so contagious, and so dirty and
covered with vermin that they made everyone shudder. With precaution
and care that brothers do not always have for their own brothers,
these near-corpses were taken to Corfu, where doctors and nurses from
the French Navy saved some of them and made the end more easy for the
rest.

In twenty-two days everything was almost over. The troops at San
Giovanni and Valona and Durazzo had been evacuated, as had the
Austrian prisoners. All the money of the Serbian treasury had been
transported to Marseilles in the cruiser _Ernest Renan_. It amounted
to about eight hundred million francs.

However, on the twentieth of January, about two thousand men still
remained at San Giovanni di Medua. There were also a certain number of
field pieces. After so many men and guns had been saved, were these to
be abandoned? No. Everything must be saved. The last man must be saved
and the last gun must be saved, whatever may be the risk, the fatigue
and the hard work.

On the morning of the twentieth of January, Captain Cacqueray,
commanding the French naval forces, had two young naval officers of
the French fleet come aboard his ship, the _Marceau_, Ensigns
Couillaud and Auge, who commanded the little trawlers _Petrel_ and
_Marie-Rose_. He ordered them to return once more to San Giovanni and
bring back with them all they could.

"You must succeed and you will succeed," Captain Cacqueray said
simply.

Some few minutes later the two trawlers were out in the Adriatic,
headed for San Giovanni. Here we must quote Ensign Auge's words. He
commanded the _Marie-Rose_, and we must be satisfied with citing from
the eloquent brevity of the ship's log:

From the peaceful docks of Brindisi, we