and before that, and the date, your business, where you were going in
England, why, for how long, and where you would stay. They were all
pleasantly put, but you had the feeling that let you stumble and it
would be God help you. Each asked a question or two that nobody else had
thought of. The last one had the least of all to say. He probably
thought that if, after all, you were a German spy, you had earned your
exemption. He only made a note of your name, handed out a red card, said
to give it to the soldier at the out-going door, claim your baggage,
have the customs inspector pass it, and go aboard the steamer when you
liked. All I saw liked to go aboard at once.

There was a man of many buttons behind a shining brass grill on the
steamer--French, apparently, but also speaking plain English. I handed
in my ticket and asked for a berth. He was snappy. "Have you one
reserved?"

"Why, no. When I bought my steamer ticket I was told that there would be
no need to reserve a berth--there would be plenty."

"He told you wrong. There are no berths."

"But is he not your agent--the man who sold me the ticket?"

"No."

"But you accept his ticket?"

"There is no berth."

"You mean that I pay for a first-class ticket on your steamer and then
have to walk the deck?"

"There is no berth, I say." He talked like a machine-gun, and the marble
Roman gods were not more impassive as he turned to the next. I saluted
him. You just have to honor a man who knows exactly what he wants to say
and says it, which did not prevent me from saying over the next one's
shoulder what I thought of his manners, the ethics of his company, and
the cheek of the well-known tourist agency which had sold me the ticket
in Paris.

But it did not get me anything. He went right on about his business of
turning more people away.

I had a look around. The smoking-room air was all blue, and all khaki as
to chairs and tables. Also all khaki as to sleeping-quarters. They had
been campaigning for a year or more on the western line, and had not
lost any time here. And every blessed one of them had a whiskey and soda
before him. They were talking, but not of the war. They were going home
for a ten days' leave after a year at the front and were trying to
forget the war. There was also a lounge-room and a dining-saloon, but
bunks there were also already commandeered by the strategic military.

It could be a worse night to walk the deck. To see what was doing