rivate
person, and was not yet endowed with the prerogatives by which, in the
name of a Secretary of State, I could requisition cars and impress men
to do my bidding.

At a hopeless moment I had the good fortune to fall in with a King's
Messenger, carrying despatches, who was in the next carriage. He
produced his special passports, and the prestige of "Courrier du Roi,"
Knight of the Order of the Silver Greyhound, worked a miracle. Every
one was at our service. We were escorted to the military headquarters
of Dunkirk--through streets already echoing with the march of French
infantry, each carrying a big baton of bread and munching as he kept
step, to an office in which the courteous commandant was just completing
his toilet. The Consul was summoned, the headquarters hotel of the
English officers was rung up, and thither we went through an ambuscade
of motor-cars in the courtyard.

A lieutenant of the Naval Flying Squadron was ready for us with his
powerful Rolls-Royce, and we were soon on the high road to Calais.
Everywhere were the stratagems of war: a misty haze of barbed-wire
entanglements in the distant fields, deep trenches, earthworks six feet
thick masking rows of guns. Time pressed, but every mile or so we were
stopped by a kind of Hampton Court maze, thrown across the road, in the
shape of high walls of earth and stone, compelling our lieutenant at the
steering-wheel to zigzag in and out, and thereby putting us at the mercy
of the sentry who stood beside his hut of straw and hurdles, and
presented his bayonet at the bonnet as though preparing to receive
cavalry. The corporal came up, and with him a little group of French
soldiers, their cheeks impoverished, their glassy eyes sunk in deep
black hollows by their eternal vigil. "Officier Anglais!" "Courrier du
Roi!" we exclaimed, and were sped on our way with a weary smile and
"Bonjour! messieurs." Women and old men were already toiling in the
fields, stooping like the figures in Millet's "Gleaners," as we raced
through an interminable avenue of poplars, past closed inns, past
depopulated farms, past wooden windmills, perched high upon wooden
platforms like gigantic dovecots. At each challenge a sombre word was
exchanged about Antwerp--again that strange telepathy of peril. Calais
at last! and a great empty boat with a solitary fellow-passenger.

* * * * *

He was a London wine-merchant of repute, who had got here at last from
R