The dark Jersey shore, the little launch, and Dorothy beside me suddenly rose before my eyes, and I was there, and not in the midst of this awful carnage. But it was only for a moment. The pause in the work of destruction ended almost as it began. One after another, twenty-two ships more went down, and the antagonists, who had started with eighty-two of the proudest ships that any empire ever sent forth, were reduced to a shattered remnant of twenty. Then suddenly they gave way. Flesh and blood could stand no more. Slowly, but proudly as ever, and with no haste of flight, the Germans drew off to the north, the English to the south. As they parted, another ship and yet another disappeared. I groaned in impotent agony. “Spare them, spare the rest?” I cried wildly. “Can’t you see they have given up the fight.” Remorseless in his purpose, the man went on. Again and again, with measured blows, he struck the retreating fleet. One by one, their existence ended, and the now sunlit ripples of the Channel rose and fell, where a moment before had sailed these massive hulks. I veiled my eyes at the close, but opened them as I felt a touch on my shoulder. “Are we to be killed too, sir?” said my skipper, with twitching lips and corded brow, where the cold sweat stood in great drops. “Can we go now, sir?” I nodded numbly, and we started. The only boats in sight were two boats of the newspapers, that had lain in apathy near us. As they saw us start, their skippers started, too. The correspondents on their decks sat in stricken attitudes. Not one was writing. They crouched, huddled together, like men dying from cold. The three boats ran towards shore, side by side. With fixed gaze I followed the one on the right. Suddenly, she also disappeared, and I fell into a wild rage. “You fool, you fool,” I cried, shaking my fists. “Don’t you know a non-combatant?” The men on the boat to the left rose in an agony of alarm, shouted incoherently, waved handkerchiefs. My fury suddenly became extinct, and I watched them apathetically. It would be their turn next, or ours. I had lost all faith in Tom’s protective schemes. One thing ran back and forth in my brain. “If I had only married Dorothy before I came, she could have worn black. Now, as it was, would she or wouldn’t she?” That was the only thing which distressed me. They say a man awaiting instant death thinks over all his past life. I didn’t, I only worried as to whether Dorothy would or would not wear black. I looked up wearily. The sea was blank. The other boat had gone. “So you went first,” I said, calmly enough now. “I’ve always wondered what the next world was like. Now, I’m going to know.” Ceaselessly went the chug, chug of the engine. Back and forth into the shuttle of my thought went the Jersey coast, and the problem of whether or not Dorothy would wear black.