chair to
her side, "and so many of the nurses and doctors were going by this boat
that I thought I would come, too. I feel quite a professional already.
Nearly all the women here are in nurse's uniform and three-quarters of
the men on board are doctors. Where are you going, Hugh?"

"Just to the Base and back again to-morrow," he told here. "There's a
court martial I want to attend."

"Still mysterious," she laughed. "What have you to do with courts
martial, Hugh?"

"Too much, just for the moment," he answered lightly. "Would you like
some coffee or anything?"

She shook her head.

"No, thank you. I had an excellent supper before we started. I looked at
some of the cabins but I decided to spend the night on deck. What about
you? You seem to have arrived in a hurry."

"I missed the train in London," he explained. "They kept me at the War
Office. Then I had to come down in a Government car and we couldn't
quite catch up. Any news from Ralph?"

"I had a letter days ago," she told him. "It was posted at Harwich but
he couldn't say where he was, and of course he couldn't give me any
news. Father came back from the Admiralty very excited yesterday,
though. He says that we have sunk four or five more submarines, and that
Ralph's new equipment is an immense success. By-the-bye, is there any
danger of submarines here?"

"I shouldn't think so," Thomson answered. "They are very busy round the
Scilly Islands but we seem to have been able to keep them out of the
Channel. I thought we should have been convoyed, though."

"In any case," she remarked, "we are a hospital ship. I expect they'd
leave us alone. Major Thomson," she went on, "I wonder, do you really
believe all these stories of the horrible doings of the Germans--the
way they have treated drowning people attacked by their submarines, and
these hateful stories of Belgium? Sometimes it seems to me as though
there was a fog of hatred which had sprung up between the two countries,
and we could neither of us quite see clearly what the other was doing."

"I think there is something in that," Major Thomson agreed. "On the
other hand I think it is part of the German principle to make war
ruthlessly. I have seen things in Belgium which I shall never forget.
As to the submarine business, if half the things are true that we have
read, they seem to have behaved like brutes. It's queer, too," he went
on, "for as a rule seamen are never cruel."

They were silent for a time.