"Oh, I can't tell it. It upsets me too much.... No, that's silly, I've got to begin facing realities.... It was just when the Germans were taking Bruges, the Uhlans broke into this convent.... But I think it was in Louvain, not Bruges.... I have a wretched memory for names.... Well, they broke in, and took all those poor defenceless little girls ..." "There's the dinner-bell." "Oh, so it is. I must run and dress. I'll have to tell you later...." Through half-closed eyes, Martin watched the fluttering dress and the backs of the neat little white shoes go jauntily down the deck. * * * * * The smoking-room again. Clink of glasses and chatter of confident voices. Two men talking over their glasses. "They tell me that Paris is some city." "The most immoral place in the world, before the war. Why, there are houses there where ..." his voice sank into a whisper. The other man burst into loud guffaws. "But the war's put an end to all that. They tell me that French people are regenerated, positively regenerated." "They say the lack of food's something awful, that you can't get a square meal. They even eat horse." "Did you hear what those fellows were saying about that new gas? Sounds frightful, don't it? I don't care a thing about bullets, but that kind o' gives me cold feet.... I don't give a damn about bullets, but that gas ..." "That's why so many shoot their friends when they're gassed...." "Say, you two, how about a hand of poker?" A champagne cork pops. "Jiminy, don't spill it all over me." "Where we goin', boys?" "_Oh we're going to the Hamburg show To see the elephant and the wild kangaroo, And we'll all stick together In fair or foul weather, For we're going to see the damn show through!_" CHAPTER II Before going to bed Martin had seen the lighthouses winking at the mouth of the Gironde, and had filled his lungs with the new, indefinably scented wind coming off the land. The sound of screaming whistles of tug-boats awoke him. Feet were tramping on the deck above his head. The shrill whine of a crane sounded in his ears and the throaty cry of men lifting something in unison. Through his port-hole in the yet colourless dawn he saw the reddish water of a river with black-hulled sailing-boats on it and a few lanky little steamers of a pattern he had never seen before. Again he breathed deep of the new indefinable smell off the land. Once on deck in the cold air, he saw through the faint light a row of houses beyond the low wharf buildings, grey mellow houses of four storeys with tiled roofs and intricate ironwork balconies, with balconies in which the ironwork had been carefully twisted by artisans long ago dead into gracefully modulated curves and spirals.