People were disposing themselves after the varied fashion of ’cross-Channel passengers. Apprehensive ladies and a few men cast a despondent look at the grey sea and the white horses tumbling off-shore, and prudently sought the shelter of the cabins, hoping, by prompt lying down, to cheat the demon of sea-sickness. More seasoned travellers selected chairs on the main decks, pitched them where any gleams of sun might reach them, and settled down, rolled in rugs, to read through the boredom of the passage. On the railings, small boys perched themselves with the fell determination of small boys all the world over, while anxious mothers rent the air with fruitless appeals for them to come down, and wrathful fathers emphasized the commands with blows, or else smoked stolidly in the conviction that a small boy who was meant to fall in the sea would certainly fall there, in spite of his parents. Babies wailed dismally, until borne off to the cabin by mothers and nurses; sirens rent the air with hoarse shrieks; cranes, loading luggage, rattled and banged, and above their din rose the shouts of newsboys hawking London and Dublin papers. Every hand on the ship was working furiously, for the mail has no time to spare, and nothing matters to it but the time-table. They were off presently, slipping away almost imperceptibly from the wharf, and nosing out to sea through the grey waves. The ship thrust her bow into them doggedly. The mail-boat’s line is a straight line, and she takes no account of the foaming billows and the anguish of passengers, thrusting through everything from port to port. Several people who had settled down on deck more in hope than certainty cast sad glances on the sea, and disappeared hurriedly below. Jim and Wally turned up their coat-collars as the breeze freshened, and stood swaying easily to the motion of the ship. They still bore traces of the ordeal they had undergone in the trenches; each was unnaturally pale and heavy-eyed, and recurring attacks of throat-trouble had kept them from regaining full strength. Wally’s eyes, too, were weak: he was under orders to rest them altogether, and was therefore openly jubilant because he could not read war news—which, as he said, was one of the most wearying occupations, only you couldn’t cease doing it without a decent excuse. “Vetted” by a Medical Board, the pair had been given six weeks’ leave, at the end of which time they were to report progress.