X
THE HIGHER CLAIM
1
All night long the wind, blowing in across the dunes from the North
Sea, had brought the sound of firing.
At times it was hardly perceptible: a faint reverberation of the ether that could scarcely be defined as sound; it would resolve itself into a low, continuous rumble, very much like distant thunder, that died away and recommenced nearer and more distinct. Then the sashes of the open window trembled, and Margaret, who had lain awake all night, every nerve strained to listen, leaned on one elbow to stare from her bed out into the darkness.
She had tried not to listen. For hours she had lain without moving, with limbs tense beneath the coverings, the palms of her hands pressed against her ears. But imagination sped through the dark passages of her mind, brandishing a torch, compelling her at length to listen again.
She had no very clear idea, of course, what a naval action was like. A confused recollection of pictures seen in childhood only suggested stalwart men, stripped to the waist and bare-footed, working round the smoking guns of ships whose decks blazed up in flame to taunt the quiet heavens; while the ships' scuppers ran red.
Modern naval warfare could be nothing like that, though.
She had only seen the results of modern warfare. Men tortured till they came near to forgetting their manhood; burnt, deaf, scalded, torn by splinters, blinded; she had seen them smiling under circumstances that thrilled her to feel they shared a common Flag.
On the outbreak of war the training institute on the East Coast, of which Margaret was the matron, had, on account of its position near the coast and other advantages, been converted into a Naval Hospital. Miss Dacre, the principal, Margaret, and a few others who had already qualified in nursing, were retained as Red Cross sisters, and it was not long before the classrooms and dormitories were occupied by very different inmates from those for whom they were intended. Only the more serious cases reached these wards. The less dangerously hurt passed by rail or hospital ship to the base hospitals in the South.