Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/29

Rh you'll get wetter than though a tarpedo struck us in the bloomin' witals."

Some of them laughed then. At least there was nothing else to do, so they went. And in the morning the women weren't alone in surrendering signs of a sleepless night spent in bed fully clothed. A vast relief shone in the eyes of the young wife and her mother. Only a few hours away the convalescent waited to welcome them back to England.

To most of the passengers, indeed, the brown mass of Holyhead, rising to starboard, appeared a beacon of safety. A deck steward, who had grown communicative, grinned.

"Just as well they think that way," he said.

Without thought for my own feelings, he assured me that the really dangerous part of the trip lay just ahead.

Yet without adventure we raised above the sands the gigantic skeleton of the Birkenhead tower, and swung in across the bar of the Mersey.

Liverpool's suburbs stretched their uninteresting rows as a foreground for the routine activity of a war-time seaport. Remembered steamships lay in the docks or at anchor, painted a dead grey, converted into transports or auxiliaries. One of the best known of all wore a livery of white and