"Prinzsessin Ottilie, September 28, 11:10 A. M. Radio via Cherbourg.
"Lépine, Paris.
"No record of Ignace Vard and daughter on Ottilie. Stateroom 514 unoccupied.
"Hausmann, Captain."
CHAPTER X
THE LAND OF FREEDOM
The old town of Cherbourg was experiencing its semi-weekly apotheosis. For five days of the seven a duller place would be difficult to find, but on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when the great trans-Atlantic liners were due to pause in the outer harbour and take aboard the multitudes homeward-bound to America, the town was transfigured. The transfiguration, indeed, began on the previous evenings, for it was then that the less-knowing and more timid of the tourists began to arrive.
The knowing ones, having once tasted the Lethe of Cherbourg, remained in Paris until the last minute, and stepped from the boat-train to the waiting tender. But the less well-informed came on the day before—and never, for the remainder of their lives, forgot the dulness of their last day in Europe. Then there were the nervously-anxious, their peace of mind already wrecked by the vagaries of the European baggage-system, who dared not run the risk of arriving at the last moment. So they, too, journeyed to Cherbourg the day before the sailing-date, in order to have a clear twenty-four hours in which to search for the pieces which were certain to be missing. That day at Cherbourg was always an expensive one, for the hotel-keepers of the place, having to live for seven days on the proceeds of two, arranged their rates accordingly.