Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/61

Rh Ireland loomed out of a haze touched by the first grey light. The haze seemed a veil for sinister things. The passengers arose and stretched themselves, as if emerging from the shadow of one disaster to gather strength to elude another.

And at the dock the confusion, for us at any rate, culminated. Here it had the whimsical, lovable quality of the country. An officer stopped us at the gangplank.

"Where are you going?"

“Ashore for breakfast, for a lodging, to look around.”

"You can't land without a pass from the provost marshal in Kingstown."

"You mean," I asked, "that we will have to go back on this boat?"

"Oh, no," he answered scriously, “because you can't leave on this boat without a pass from the provost marshal in Kingstown."

By strategy and fair words we got ashore and to the provost marshal. Of the confusion there, as I have suggested, enough has been written already. When I left on a clear, ruddy evening it occurred to me that rather too much undemocratic order was emerging from the hurly-burly, for I had to run a gauntlet of Scotland