Kings, Queens, and Pawns | Page 6

the car would go into the ditch, and if you will multiply
that by the exact number of German submarines and then add the
British Army, you will know how I felt.
Afterward I grew accustomed to the Channel crossing. I made it four
times. It was necessary for me to cross twice after the eighteenth of
February, when the blockade began. On board the fated Arabic, later
sunk by a German submarine, I ran the blockade again to return to
America. It was never an enjoyable thing to brave submarine attack, but
one develops a sort of philosophy. It is the same with being under fire.
The first shell makes you jump. The second you speak of, commenting
with elaborate carelessness on where it fell. This is a gain over shell
number one, when you cannot speak to save your life. The third shell
you ignore, and the fourth you forget about--if you can.
Seeing me alone the captain asked me to the canvas shelter of the

bridge. I proceeded to voice my protest at our change of destination. He
apologised, but we continued to Boulogne.
"What does a periscope look like?" I asked. "I mean, of course, from
this boat?"
"Depends on how much of it is showing. Sometimes it's only about the
size of one of those gulls. It's hard to tell the difference."
I rather suspect that captain now. There were many gulls sitting on the
water. I had been looking for something like a hitching post sticking up
out of the water. Now my last vestige of pleasure and confidence was
gone. I went almost mad trying to watch all the gulls at once.
"What will you do if you see a submarine?'
"Run it down," said the captain calmly. "That's the only chance we've
got. That is, if we see the boat itself. These little Channel steamers
make about twenty-six knots, and the submarine, submerged, only
about half of that. Sixteen is the best they can do on the surface. Run
them down and sink them, that's my motto."
"What about a torpedo?"
"We can see them coming. It will be hard to torpedo this boat--she goes
too fast."
Then and there he explained to me the snowy wake of the torpedo, a
white path across the water; the mechanism by which it is kept true to
its course; the detonator that explodes it. From nervousness I shifted to
enthusiasm. I wanted to see the white wake. I wanted to see the
Channel boat dodge it. My sporting blood was up. I was willing to take
a chance. I felt that if there was a difficulty this man would escape it. I
turned and looked back at the khaki-coloured figures on the deck
below.
Taking a chance! They were all taking a chance. And there was one, an
officer, with an empty right sleeve. And suddenly what for an

enthusiastic moment, in that bracing sea air, had seemed a game,
became the thing that it is, not a game, but a deadly and cruel war. I
never grew accustomed to the tragedy of the empty sleeve. And as if to
accentuate this thing toward which I was moving so swiftly, the British
Red Cross ship, from Boulogne to Folkstone, came in sight, hurrying
over with her wounded, a great white boat, garnering daily her harvest
of wounded and taking them "home."
Land now--a grey-white line that is the sand dunes at Ambleteuse,
north of Boulogne. I knew Ambleteuse. It gave a sense of strangeness
to see the old tower at the water's edge loom up out of the sea. The
sight of land was comforting, but vigilance was not relaxed. The
attacks of submarines have been mostly made not far outside the
harbours, and only a few days later that very boat was to make a
sensational escape just outside the harbour of Boulogne.
All at once it was twilight, the swift dusk of the sea. The boat warped
in slowly. I showed my passport, and at last I was on French soil. North
and east, beyond the horizon, lay the thing I had come to see.
CHAPTER II
"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE"
Many people have seen Boulogne and have written of what they have
seen: the great hotels that are now English hospitals; the crowding of
transport wagons; the French signs, which now have English signs
added to them; the mixture of uniforms--English khaki and French blue;
the white steamer waiting at the quay, with great Red Crosses on her
snowy funnels. Over everything, that first winter of the war, hung the
damp chill of the Continental winter, that chill that sinks in and never
leaves, that penetrates fur and wool and eats into the spirit like an acid.
I got through the customs without much