hatever he was,
eyed the speaker compassionately. "A great action has taken place in
the North Sea; we have lost nineteen big ships in addition to
destroyers, and the German fleet is wiped out."

"It doesn't seem good enough, does it?" murmured a graceless member of
the group.

"But if it's really authentic?" Draycott turned to him doubtfully.
"And there must be something in it if it's in all the Spanish papers."

"On the contrary," returned the graceless one. "It is precisely that
fact that makes me believe there is nothing in it."

The remark seemed conclusive; and yet so detailed was the information
all over Gib, so definite the lists of vessels sunk on each side, that
even intelligent Scorps--as the inhabitants of the place are
known--were impressed. Strangely enough, exactly the same detailed
lists, with just sufficient difference to make them credible, were in
all the Italian papers at the same time--though this only transpired
later.

At the moment nothing much mattered but the time of the next boat going
East: it was their own little personal future that counted. A naval
battle--yes, perhaps; nineteen ships down--the German fleet as well;
fifty or sixty thousand men--gone, finished, wiped out. And yet it was
the next boat they wanted to know about.

Callous--I think not; merely a total incapability to realise a thing so
stupendous. It has been the same all through the war: the tragedies
have been too big for human minds to grasp. It is the little things
that tell; the isolated thumb-nail impressions that live in one's mind,
and will go with us to the grave. The one huddled form lying
motionless in the shell-hole, with its staring, sightless eyes; the one
small, but supreme sacrifice: that is the thing which hits--hits harder
than the _Lusitania_, or any other of the gigantic panels of the war.
The pin-pricks we feel; the sledge hammer merely stuns. And the danger
is that those who have felt the pin-pricks may confuse them with the
sledge hammer; may lose the right road in the bypaths of personal
emotion. War means so infinitely much to the individual; the
individual means so infinitely little to war. Only it is sometimes
hard to remember that simple fact. . . .

VIII

It was from the top of the Rock that they watched their evil-smelling
boat depart, to plug on northward up the home trail, unperturbed by
naval battles or rumours thereof. And it was from the top of the Rock
they first saw