'er any'ow. She
won't 'ave to do none of the fightin'!"

Fighting!

Henry sat up and looked at the man. Why, of course, there would be
fighting ... and perhaps England would be drawn into the war, and
then!...

A girl came out of the hotel, with towels under her arm, and called to
them. "Coming to bathe?" she said.

They looked at her vacantly. "Bathe!" said Henry.

"Yes. It's a ripping morning!"

They stood up, and looked towards the sea that was white with sunshine
... and then turned away again. It seemed to Henry as if, down there by
the rocks, in a splash of sunlight, a corpse were lying ...
festering.... He sat down again, mechanically picking up a newspaper and
reading once more the telegrams he had already read many times.

"Come along," the girl said. "You might just as well bathe!"

Gilbert looked up at her and smiled. "I was just wondering," he said,
"what one ought to do!"

3

The banks had closed, and there was an alarm about money and a deeper
alarm about food.... Panic suddenly came upon them, and in a short
while, visitors began to pack their trunks in their eagerness to get
home. The women felt that they would be safer at home ... they wanted to
be in familiar places. "I really ought to be at home to look after my
house," a man said to Henry. "They're a rough lot in our town, and if
there's any shortage of food ... they'll loot, of course! I don't like
breaking my holiday, but!..."

He did not complete his sentence ... no one ever completed a sentence
then ... but went indoors....

And telegrams came incessantly, telegrams calling people home, telegrams
announcing that others were not coming, telegrams containing information
of the war....

"I suppose," said Gilbert, "if anything comes of this, well have to do
something!..."

"Do something?" Henry murmured.

"Yes, I suppose so...."

Perkins came to him, Perkins who had an agency in Manchester.

"You know," he said, "I don't call this place safe. It's right on the
coast ... slap-up against the sea ... and you know, if a German cruiser
was to drop a shell right in the middle of us, we'd look damn silly, I
can tell you!"

"We have a navy too," said Gilbert.

"Yes, I know all about that, but that wouldn't be much consolation to me
if I was to get blown up, would it? You know, I do think they ought to
draw the blinds down at night so's the light won't show out at sea. I
mean to say, there's no sense in running risks, is there?"