le over the notes.

"What shall it be?" he asked, and then, without waiting for the answer,
played. It was a reverie by Chopin, I think, and somehow it seemed to
cleanse our souls a little of things seen and smelt. It was so pitiful that
something broke inside my heart a moment. I thought of the last time
I had heard some music. It was in a Flemish cottage, where a young
lieutenant, a little drunk, sang a love-song among his comrades, while
a little way off men were being maimed and killed by bursting shells.

The music stopped with a slur of notes. Somebody asked, "What was
that?"

There was the echo of a dull explosion and the noise of breaking
glass. I looked out into the square again from the open window, and
saw people running in all directions.

Presently a man came into the room and spoke to one of the doctors,
without excitement.

"Another Taube. Three bombs, as usual, and several people
wounded. You'd better come. It's only round the corner."

It was always round the corner, this sudden death. Just a step or two
from any window of war.

27

Halfway through my stay at Dunkirk I made a trip to England and
back, getting a free passage in the Government ship Invicta, which
left by night to dodge the enemy's submarines, risking their floating
mines. It gave me one picture of war which is unforgettable. We were
a death-ship that night, for we carried the body of a naval officer who
had been killed on one of the monitors which I had seen in action
several times off Nieuport. With the corpse came also several
seamen, wounded by the same shell. I did not see any of them until
the Invicla lay alongside the Prince of Wales pier. Then a party of
marines brought up the officer's body on a stretcher. They bungled
the job horribly, jamming the stretcher poles in the rails of the
gangway, and, fancying myself an expert in stretcher work, for I had
had a little practice, I gave them a hand and helped to carry the
corpse to the landing-stage. It was sewn up tightly in canvas, exactly
like a piece of meat destined for Smithfield market, and was treated
with no more ceremony than such a parcel by the porters who
received it.

"Where are you going to put that, Dick?"

"Oh, stow it over there, Bill!"

That was how a British hero made his home-coming.

But I had a more horrible shock, although I had been accustomed to
ugly sights. It was when the wounded seamen came up from below.
The lamps on the landing-stage,