Chapter 2 No.2

When I stood on the deck of the Channel boat in Dover Harbour looking back on England, whose white cliffs gleamed faintly through the darkness, a sense of tragic certainty came to me that a summons of war would come to England, asking for her manhood. Perhaps it would come to-night. The second mate of the boat came to the side of the steamer and stared across the inky waters, on which there were shifting pathways of white radiance, as the searchlights of distant warships swept the sea.

"God!" he said, in a low voice.

"Do you think it will come to-night?" I asked, in the same tone of voice. We spoke as though our words were dangerous.

"It's likely. The German fleet won't wait for any declaration, I should say, if they thought they could catch us napping. But they won't. I fancy we're ready for them-here, anyhow!"

He jerked his thumb at some dark masses looming through the darkness in the harbour, caught here and there by a glint of metal reflected in the water. They were cruisers and submarines nosing towards the harbour mouth.

"There's a crowd of 'em!" said the second mate, "and they stretch across the Channel. . . . The Reserve men have been called out- taken off the trams in Dover to-night. But the public has not yet woken up to the meaning of it."

He stared out to sea again, 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.