Page:Biggers and Ritchie - Inside the Lines.djvu/353



IVE o'clock at the quay, and already the new day was being made raucous by the bustle of departure—shouts of porters, tenders' jangling engine bells, thump of trunks dropped down skidways, lamentations of voyagers vainly hunting baggage mislaid. Out in the stream the Saxonia—a clean white ship, veritable ark of refuge for pious Americans escaping the deluge.

In the midst of a group of his countrymen Henry J. Sherman stood, feet wide apart and straw hat cocked back over his bald spot. He was narrating the breathless incidents of the night's dark hour:

"Yes, sir, a soldier comes to our rooms about three-thirty o'clock and hammers on our door. 'Everybody in this hotel's under arrest,' he says. 'Kindly dress as soon as possible and report to Major Bishop in the office.' And we 325