BRITISH CRUISER SUNK BY MINES
FULL LIST OF CASUALTIES
The glaring type attracted several passers-by, amongst them a policeman on his beat. When the little old woman came out of the shop her face was screwed up with grief, and she held her apron to her eyes. Red eyes and tear-blotched faces are not uncommon in war-time in a garrison town. The bystanders that gathered round understood as if by common intuition, and the policeman spoke encouragement in a gruff, kindly tone. Standing there on the kerb, she had her cry. A Boy Scout held the jug her son would never carry again to fetch the supper beer.
VII
THE WAY THEY HAVE
(1915)
1
The coastguard was turning over the earth in one of the tiny cabbage patches that belonged to the row of whitewashed cottages on the flank of the headland. The sun was hot and he paused frequently, straightening up and passing the back of his hand across his forehead. Each time he did this his eyes travelled half-mechanically round the blue curve of the horizon, thence along the foreshore, and so back to the cabbage patch, when he resumed his digging.
It was during one of these pauses that he noticed the gulls, and stood motionless for several seconds, shading his eyes from the sun. The tide had turned and left a few yards of sand below high-water mark wet and gleaming in the October sunlight.
Half a mile away a couple of gulls were circling curiously above something that lay in the shallow water, stranded by the fast-receding tide.