urney--an affair of some six hours--was
unexciting. I think I should have slept through the whole of it if it
had not been for a major, plainly a "dug-out" who had not gone
soldiering for many years. He had landed from England a day before we
did, and had, by his own account, been tossed about northern France
like a shuttlecock, the different R.T.O.'s he dealt with being the
battledores. He had been put into trains going the wrong way, dragged
out of them and put into others which did not stop at his particular
station. He was hungry, which he disliked; dirty, which he disliked
still more; and was beginning to lose hope of ever reaching his
destination. M. slept; but then M. was at the far end of the
compartment. The other three people with us were French, and the
major could not speak their language. It was to me that he expressed
his feelings, so I could not sleep.

We reached H. at 10 p.m., almost as fagged and quite as dirty as
that major. I had already learned something. I was determined not to
report myself to any one until I had washed, slept, and eaten. It was
snowing heavily when we arrived. With the help of a military
policeman whom we met we found an hotel. He told us that it was a
first-rate place; but he was no judge of hotels. It was very far from
being good. We had, however, every reason to be thankful to that
policeman. We secured two beds. While we were smoking our final
pipes, two young officers turned up. They had been round all the good
hotels in the town and failed to find accommodation. They failed
again in our hotel. We had engaged the last two beds. They went off
sadly to sleep on the platform in the railway station. If our
policeman had known more about hotels and sent us to a good one, it
might very well have been our fate to sleep on the platform.

Next morning, M., who is extraordinarily persevering, secured a bath.
It is a great advantage when in France not to know any French. M. is
wholly unaffected when the proprietor of an hotel, the proprietor's
wife, the head waiter, and several housemaids assure him with one
voice that a bath is _tout a fait impossible_. He merely smiles and
says: "Very well then, bring it along or show me where it is." In the
end he gets it, and, fortunate in his companionship, so do I.

CHAPTER IV

SETTLING DOWN

There are, or used to be, people who believe that you can best teach
a boy to swim by throwing him into deep water from the end of a pier
and