Page:In Flanders Fields and Other Poems.djvu/111

Going to the Wars first business was to visit the water front and take knowledge of the vessels that lay in the stream or by the docks. One voyage he made to England was in a cargo ship. With his passion for work he took on the duties of surgeon, and amazed the skipper with a revelation of the new technique in operations which he himself had been accustomed to perform by the light of experience alone.

On the present and more luxurious voyage, he remarks that the decks were roomy, the ship seven years old, and capable of fifteen knots an hour, the passengers pleasant, and including a large number of French. All now know only too well the nature of the business which sent those ardent spirits flocking home to their native land.

Forty-eight hours were lost in fog. The weather was too thick for making the Straits, and the Scotian proceeded by Cape Race on her way to Havre. Under date of August 5-6 the first reference to the war appears: "All is excitement; the ship runs without lights. Surely the German kaiser has his head in the noose at last: it will be a terrible war, and the finish of one or the other. I am afraid my holiday trip is knocked galley west; but we shall see." The voyage continues. A "hundred miles from Moville we turned back, and headed South for [89]