The sunset-light was fading as the troop-ship moved out, and the seas had that peculiar iridescent smoothness, as of a delicately tinted skin of very faintly burning oils, which they so often wear when the wind falls at evening. On one side of the ship a destroyer was plowing through white mounds of foam; and overhead there was one of the new silver-skinned scouting air-ships. Away to the east, a great line of transports was returning home with the wounded, and the horizon was one long stream of black smoke. It was all so peaceful that the life-belts seemed an anomaly, and it was difficult to realize the full meaning of this traffic. The white cliffs of England wore a spiritual aspect that only the hour and its grave significance could lend them; and May Margaret thought that England had never looked so beautiful. There were other troop-ships all crowded, about to follow, and their cheers came faintly across the water. The throb of the engines carried May Margaret's ship away rhythmically, and somewhere on the lower deck a mouth organ began playing, almost inaudibly, "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary." The troops were humming the tune, too softly for it to be called singing, and it all blended with the swish of the water and the hum of the engine-room, like a memory of other voices, lost in France and Flanders. May Margaret looked down at the faces. They, too, were grave and beautiful with evening light; and the brave unquestioning simplicity of it all seemed to her an inexpressibly noble thing. She thought for a moment that no pipes among the mists of glen or mountain, no instrument on earth, ever had the beauty of that faint music. It was one of those unheard melodies that are better than any heard. The sea bore the burden. The winds breathed it in undertone; and its message was one of a peace that she could not understand. Perhaps, under and above all the tragedies of the hour, the kingdom of heaven was there. The cliffs became ghostly in the distance, and suddenly on the dusky waters astern there shone a great misty star. It was the first flash of the shore searchlights, and May Margaret watched it flashing long after the English coast had disappeared. Then she lost the searchlight also; and the transport was left, with the dark destroyer, to find its way, through whatever perils there might be, to the French coast. Millions of men--she had read it--had been transported, despite mines and submarines, without the loss of a single life. She had often wondered how it was possible. Now she saw the answer. A little black ship loomed up ahead of them and flashed a signal to their escort. Far through the dusk she saw them, little black trawlers and drifters, _Lizzie_ and _Maggie_ and _Betsy Jane_, signaling all that human courage could discover, of friend or foe, on the face of the waters or under them.