lines among the sleepers. Water trickled from
deserted waggons and fell in small cascades from the roofs of sheds.
The roadway, crossed and recrossed by the railway, had little muddy
lakes on it and broad stretches of mud rather thicker than the water
of the lakes.

Far down the quay lay a steamer with two raking funnels--the leave
boat, the ship of heart's desire for many men. Clouds of smoke,
issuing defiantly from her funnels, were immediately swept sideways
by the wind and beaten down by the rain. The smoke ceased to be
smoke, became a duller greyness added to the greyness of the air,
dissolved into smuts and was carried to earth--or to the faces and
hands of wayfarers--by the rain.

Already at 7 o'clock there were men going along the quay--a steady
stream of them, tramping, splashing, stumbling towards the steamer.
In the matter of the sailing of leave boats rumour is the sole
informant, and rumour had it that this boat would start at 10 a.m.
Leave is a precious thing. He takes no risks who has secured the
coveted pass to Blighty. It is a small matter to wait three hours on
a rain-swept quay. It would be a disaster beyond imagining to miss
the boat.

Officers make for the boat in twos or threes, their trench coats,
buttoned tightly, flap round putteed or gaitered legs. Drenched
haversacks hang from their shoulders.

Parties of men, fully burdened with rifles and kit, march down from
the rest camp where they have spent the night. The mud of the
trenches is still thick on them. One here and there wears his steel
helmet. They carry all sorts of strange packages, sacks tied at the
mouth, parcels sewed up in sacking, German helmets slung on
knapsacks, valueless trophies of battlefields, loot from captured
dug-outs, pathetically foolish souvenirs bought in French shops, all
to be presented to the wives, mothers, sweethearts who wait at home.

A couple of army sisters, lugging suit-cases, clinging to the flying
folds of their grey cloaks, walk, bent forward against the wind and
rain. A blue-coated Canadian nurse, brass stars on her shoulder
straps, has given an arm to a V.A.D. girl, a creature already
terrified at the prospect of crossing the sea on such a day. The
rain streams down their faces, but perhaps Canadians are accustomed
to worse rain in their own country. Certainly this young woman does
not seem to mind it. She is smiling and walks jauntily. Like many of
our cousins from overseas she is rich in splendid