way. Of course it was not among the officers
and their wives that one saw these things; people used to self-control
keep their griefs to themselves, and perhaps a very inexperienced person
would have been deceived by the smiles on women's faces and the cheery
chaff of men. Even here there were things to be seen at the last moment,
but I confess that I turned my back when the saloon gangway was about to
be removed; some things are sacred even from the man whose business it
is to describe what he sees.

It was after the two thousand troops had all been embarked that the
friends of the men were admitted to the stage, and the dismal, though
enthusiastic, part of the affair began. Before that everything was
business and order. As the men arrived they were provided with hot
coffee and meat pies, which they drank and ate with every sign of
pleasure. Some of us who were very cold envied them for that moment. The
forward gangway was for about an hour occupied by men who did nothing
but pass rifles from the quay to the ship; it was a formidable sight,
this stream of deadly weapons that flowed on board. Up another gangway
enough cordite to blow up the whole of Liverpool was being gingerly
carried in small cases. But this hour or two of embarkation, in which so
much really happened, left little impression on my mind. It simply was
one more illustration of the admirable efficiency of discipline for
which our army is famous. It was when the gangways were removed and the
crowd began to pour on to the stage that the affair became human; and
the half-hour that elapsed between that time and the moment when the
mist finally hid the ship wrote itself much more deeply on my memory.

One gangway was left open, and stragglers and men who at the last moment
had stayed away for an hour with their wives and children were hunted
out and hurried up it. At the shore end there were many painful scenes,
which people with a little imagination may picture for themselves.
Fortunately a farewell is a brief thing, and leaves only aching hearts;
people could not stand a sustained agony like that of the last moment.
It is the price we pay for our powers of memory and forethought; the
charger, going perhaps to a bloody and cruel death, steps willingly
enough up plank; the drunken man sings his good-bye; only the sober and
alert taste the fearful sting of parting. Even the people who had kept
up a great show of callousness had the mask suddenly and for the mo