Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/23

Rh and at the convalescent pallor of her face, as striking as that of the boy wounded at Ypres. She wanted, moreover, to talk about her experience. That, too, was in her eyes. Because of the past, possibly because of something she approached, she desired to tell her story.

The last evening as we crept up the channel she yielded to the growing tenseness that fought reserve. She sat with her mother on deck, staring at the boats which had been swung out, listening to talk of the extra life belts that had been distributed—mere italics for possibilities of which the women were, patently, trying not to think.

The sun sank behind a low brown mass on the horizon—the coast of Ireland. We reviewed the crimes and the tragedies it had witnessed since the commencement of the war. We fancied the round backs of indifferent submarines, and black specks of humanity struggling in the yellowish, menacing water. A multitude of fishing trawlers pitched and reeled drunkenly. It was difficult to realise that their only game was submersibles, their only task the protection of such craft as ours.

Groups of people still lined the rails, scanning the dusky water. All afternoon they had seen periscopes. Each piece of driftwood in the forbidden zone had attained an importance never dreamed of in the scheme of things.