his Secretary and Reporter till my return.[37]

He goes down to the quay to make arrangements for my transport and
returns after some considerable time. There have been difficulties
about this detail. And the Commandant has an abhorrence of details, even
of easy ones.

He comes back. He looks abstracted. I inquire, a little too anxiously,
perhaps, about my transport. It is all right, all perfectly right. He
has arranged with Dr. Beavis of the British Field Hospital to take me on
his ship.

He looks a little spent with his exertions, and as he has again become
abstracted I forbear to press for more information at the moment.

We breakfasted. Presently I ask him the name of Dr. Beavis's ship.

Oh, the _name_ of the ship is the _Dresden_.

Time passes. And presently, just as he is going, I suggest that it would
be as well for me to know what time the _Dresden_ sails.

This detail either he never knew or has forgotten. And there is
something about it, about the nature of stated times, as about all
things conventional and mechanical and precise, that peculiarly
exasperates him.

He waves both hands in a fury of nescience and cries, "Ask me another!"

By a sort of mutual consent we assume that the _Dresden_ will sail with
Dr. Beavis at ten o'clock. After all, it is a very likely hour.

More time passes. Finally we go into the street that runs along the
Digue. And there we find Dr. Beavis sitting in a motor-car. We approach
him. I thank him for his kindness in giving me transport. I say I'm sure
his ship will be crowded with his own people, but that I don't in the
least mind standing in the stoke-hole, if _he_ doesn't mind taking me
over.

He looks at me with a dreamy benevolence mixed with amazement. He would
take me over with pleasure if he knew how he was to get away himself.

"But," I say to the Commandant, "I thought you had arranged with Dr.
Beavis to take me on the _Dresden_."

The Commandant says nothing. And Dr. Beavis smiles again. A smile of
melancholy knowledge.

"The _Dresden_," he says, "sailed two hours ago."

So it is decided that I am to proceed with the Ambulance to Dunkirk,
thence by train to Boulogne, thence to Folkestone. It sounds so simple
that I wonder why we didn't think of it before.

But it was not by any means so simple as it sounded.

First of all we had to collect ourselves. Then we had to collect Dr.
Hanson's luggage. Dr. Hanson was one of Mrs. St. Clair Stobart's women
surge