read before him, clean
and unwritten on. At last things have come to pass.

And very faintly, like music heard across the water in the evening,
blurred into strange harmonies, his old watchwords echo a little in his
mind. Like the red flame of the sunset setting fire to opal sea and sky,
the old exaltation, the old flame that would consume to ashes all the
lies in the world, the trumpet-blast under which the walls of Jericho
would fall down, stirs and broods in the womb of his grey lassitude. The
bow rises and falls gently in rhythm with the surging sing-song of the
broken water, as the steamer ploughs through the long swell of the Gulf
Stream, eastward.

"See that guy, the feller with the straw hat; he lost five hundred
dollars at craps last night."

"Some stakes."

It is almost dark. Sea and sky are glowing claret colour, darkened to a
cold bluish-green to westward. In a corner of the deck a number of men
are crowded in a circle, while one shakes the dice in his hand with a
strange nervous quiver that ends in a snap of the fingers as the white
dice roll on the deck.

"Seven up."

From the smoking-room comes a sound of singing and glasses banged on
tables.

"_Oh, we're bound for the Hamburg show,
To see the elephant and the wild kangaroo,
An' we'll all stick together
In fair or foul weather,
For we're going to see the damn show through!_"

On the settee a sallow young man is shaking the ice in a whisky-and-soda
into a nervous tinkle as he talks:

"There's nothing they can do against this new gas.... It just corrodes
the lungs as if they were rotten in a dead body. In the hospitals they
just stand the poor devils up against a wall and let them die. They say
their skin turns green and that it takes from five to seven days to
die--five to seven days of slow choking."

* * * * *

"Oh, but I think it's so splendid of you"--she bared all her teeth,
white and regular as those in a dentist's show-case, in a smile as she
spoke--"to come over this way to help France."

"Perhaps it's only curiosity," muttered Martin.

"Oh no.... You're too modest.... What I mean is that it's so splendid to
have understood the issues.... That's how I feel. I just told dad I'd
have to come and do my bit, as the English say."

"What are you going to do?"

"Something in Paris. I don't know just what, but I'll certainly make
myself useful somehow." She beamed at him provocati