The
persistent hiss of escaping steam at the far end of the station seemed to
fill the air until it was presently drowned by the ear-piercing screech
of an engine: high up in the darkness ahead one of a bright cluster of
red lights holding their own against the fog, changed to green. The
whistle stopped abruptly, and the voice of a boy, passing along the
crowded platform, claimed all Sound for its own.

"_Chor-or-or-clicks!_" he cried in a not unmusical jodelling treble,
"_Chorclicks!--Cigarettes!_"

The platform was thronged by bluejackets and marines, for on this
particular evening the period of leave, granted by some battleship in the
North, had expired. They streamed out of refreshment rooms and entrance
halls, their faces lit for a moment as they passed under successive arc
lights, crowding round the carriage doors where their friends and
relations gathered in leave-taking. Most of them carried little bundles
tied up in black silk handkerchiefs and paper parcels whose elusive
contents usually appeared to take a leguminous form, and something of the
traditional romance of their calling came with them out of the blackness
of that February night. It was reflected in the upturned admiring faces
of their women-folk, and acknowledged by some of the younger men
themselves, with the adoption of an air of studied recklessness.

Some wore the head-gear of enraptured civilian acquaintances and sang in
undertones of unrequited love. Others stopped in one of the friendly
circles of light to pass round bottled beer, until an elderly female,
bearing tracts, scattered them into the shadows. They left her standing,
slightly bewildered, with the empty bottle in her hands. She had the
air, for all the world, of a member of the audience suddenly abandoned on
a conjurer's stage.

In the shelter of one of the great pillars that rose up into the darkness
a bearded light o' love stopped and emptied his pockets of their silver
and coppers into the hands of the human derelict that had been his
companion through the past week. "'Ere you are, Sally," he said, "take
what's left. You ain't 'arf been a bad ole sort, mate," and kissed her
and turned away as she slipped back into the night where she belonged.

Farther along in the crowd an Ordinary Seaman, tall and debonair and
sleek of hair, bade osculatory farewell to a mother, an aunt, a fiancee
and two sisters.

"'Ere," finally interrupted his chum, "'ere, Alf, where do I come i