e fat policeman. I
passed out of one period of my life and entered upon another.

The first period that remained outside the tall walls of the
dockyard was made up of chapters of boyhood and schooldays; and a
gallant last chapter of playing at soldiers. Ah! this last
chapter--it had tennis and theatres and girls and kisses: a great
patch of life! And I left it all outside the docks.

The second period, on to which I now abruptly set foot, was to be
intense, highly-coloured, and scented; a rush of rapidly moving
pictures of the blue waters of the Mediterranean, the bleak hills of
Mudros, and the exploding shells on the peninsula of Gallipoli.

The fat policeman had a revolver slung over his shoulder, and his
businesslike weapon expressed better than anything else that England
was at war and taking no risks. He suitably challenged me:

"Your authority to go through, sir?" demanded he.

"That's where I've got you by the winter garments," said I vulgarly;
and, diving my hand into my pocket, I drew out my Embarkation
Orders. They were heavily marked in red "SECRET," but I judged the
policeman to be "in the know," and showed them to him. Properly
impressed with the historic document, he turned to a fair-haired
young officer who was with me, and asked:

"You the same, sir?"

"Surely," answered my companion, which was a new way he had acquired
of saying "yes."

"Right y'are, sir," said the policeman, and we crossed the line.

My fair-haired companion was, of course, Second Lieutenant Edgar
Gray Doe; and it was in keeping with the destiny that entwined our
lives that we should pass the fat policeman together. And now I had
better tell you how it happened.

Sec.2

On August 3, 1914, eleven months before my solemn admission into
Devonport Dockyard, I was a young schoolboy on my holidays, playing
tennis in a set of mixed doubles. About five o'clock a paper-boy
entered the tennis-club grounds with the _Evening News_. My male
opponent, although he was serving, stopped his game for a minute and
bought a paper.

"Hang the paper!" called I, indifferent to the fact that the Old
World was falling about our ears and England's last day of peace was
going down with the afternoon sun. "Your service. Love--fifteen."

"By Jove," he cried, after scanning the paper, "we're in!"

"What do you mean," cried the girls, "have the Germans declared war
on us?"

"No. But we've sent an ultimatum to Germany which expires at twelve
to