o island and from
one island to another. It was bitterly cold. We made our first
acquaintance with bread and butter tickets at Skagen, and found them
also in use on the railways and train ferries in Denmark and
Scandinavia.
We arrived at Copenhagen about 8.30 on the following morning. When at
Skagen I had written to Sir Ralph Paget, K.C.M.G., His Britannic
Majesty's Minister to Denmark--whom we had known some years before when
filling a similar position in Siam--telling him of our rescue. Lady
Paget and he were waiting at the station to meet us. They straightway
took my wife and myself off to the British Legation in Copenhagen, and
insisted on us remaining there as their guests during our stay in the
Danish capital. They were the personification of kindness to us, and
helped us in every possible way, and it would be quite impossible for us
to express adequately our great indebtedness to them. We obtained fresh
_vises_ for our passports from the British, Swedish, and Norwegian
Consulates, and my wife, who had been unable in Siam to obtain a
passport to travel to England, was granted an "emergency passport," on
which she was described as an "ex-prisoner." The Germans had, quite
unintentionally, it is true, helped her to get to England when our own
Government had forbidden it.
We left Copenhagen on the evening of March 4th, and once more during the
night embarked in a train ferry to cross to Sweden at Helsingborg. The
next morning found us at Goteborg. The old Mauritius woman and her
grandchild had been accommodated in a sleeping carriage with two berths.
Not being used to such luxuries and not knowing what to do in such
surroundings, they had deposited their garments on the bunks and slept
on the floor, which doubtless came more natural to them!
The same evening we arrived at Christiania; unfortunately we saw nothing
of this capital, as we arrived late at night, crossed to a hotel near
the railway station, and returned to the station to resume our journey
on the next morning before it was fully light. The whole of the next day
we were travelling through Norway in brilliant dazzling sunshine, over
snowclad mountains--some so high that vegetation was absent--finally
leaving Bergen in the late afternoon of March 7th on the S.S. _Vulture_.
From the _Wolf_ to the _Vulture_ did not look very promising!
Before leaving Norway every article of our baggage was carefully
searched before being put on the boat. I asked the Cus
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