The Soul of the War | Page 7

and it was some minutes before he spoke again.
"Queer, isn't it? They'll all sleep in their beds to-night as though nothing out of the way were happening. And yet, in a few hours, maybe, there'll be Hell! That's what it's going to be--Hell and damnation, if I know anything about war!"
"What's that?" I asked, pointing to the harbour bar.
From each side of the harbour two searchlights made a straight beam of light, and in the glare of it there passed along the surface of the sea, as it seemed, a golden serpent with shining scales.
"Sea-gulls," said the mate. "Scared, I expect, by all these lights. They know something's in the wind. Perhaps they can smell--blood!"
He spoke with a laugh, but it had a strange sound.
11
In the saloon were about a dozen men, drinking at the bar. They were noisy and had already drunk too much. By their accent it was easy to guess that they came from Manchester, and by their knapsacks, which contained all their baggage, it was obvious that they were on a short trip to Paris. A man from Cook's promised them a "good time!" There were plenty of pretty girls in Paris. They slapped him on the back and called him "old chap!"
A quiet gentleman seated opposite to me on a leather lounge--I met him afterwards at the British Embassy in Paris--caught my eye and smiled.
"They don't seem to worry about the international situation. Perhaps it will be easier to get to Paris than to get back again!"
"And now drinks all round, lads!" said one of the trippers.
On deck there were voices singing. It was the hymn of the Marseillaise. I went up towards the sound and found a party of young Frenchmen standing aft, waving farewells to England, as the syren hooted, above a rattle of chains and the crash of the gangway which dropped to the quayside. They had been called back to their country to defend its soil and, unlike the Englishmen drinking themselves fuddled, were intoxicated by a patriotic excitement.
"Vive l'Angleterre!"
An answer came back from the quayside:
"Vive la France!"
It was to this shout that we warped away from the jetty and made for the open sea. A yacht with white sails all agleam as it crossed the bar of a searchlight so that it seemed like a fairy ship in the vision of a dream, crept into the harbour and then fluttered into the darkness below the Admiralty pier.
"That's a queer kind of craft to meet to-night!" I said to the second mate. "What is she doing?"
"I'd like to know. She's got a German skipper and crew. Spies all of them, I guess. But nobody seems to bother."
There were spies watching our own boat as we went across the Channel, but they were on English vessels. Searchlights from many warships turned their rays upon us, staring at us from stem to stern, following us with a far-flung vigilance, transmuting the base metal of our funnel and brasswork into shining silver and burnished gold. As I stared back into the blinding rays I felt that the eyes of the warships could look into my very soul, and I walked to the other side of the boat as though abashed by this scrutiny. I looked back to the shore, with its winking lights and looming cliffs, and wished I could see by some kind of searchlight into the soul of England on this night of fate. Beyond the cliffs of Dover, in the profound darkness of the night, England seemed asleep. Did not her people hear the beating of Death's war drums across the fields of Europe, growing louder and louder, so that on a cross-Channel boat I heard it booming in my ears, louder than the wind?
Chapter II
Mobilization

1
The thunderbolt came out of a blue sky and in the midst of a brilliant sunshine which gleamed blindingly above the white houses of Paris and flung back shadows from the poplars across the long straight roads between the fields of France. The children were playing as usual in the gardens of the Tuileries, and their white-capped nurses were sewing and chatting in the shade of the scorched trees. The old bird man was still calling "Viens! Viens!" to the sparrows who came to perch on his shoulders and peck at the bread between his lips, and Punch was still performing his antique drama in the Petit Guignol to laughing audiences of boys and girls. The bateaux mouches on the Seine were carrying heavy loads of pleasure-seekers to S��vres and other riverside haunts. In the Pavilion Bleu at St. Cloud elegant little ladies of the demi-monde sipped rose-tinted ices and said for a thousand times; "Ciel, comme il fait chaud!" and slapped the hands of beaky-nosed young men with white slips beneath their waistcoats and shiny