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.