To sail on this ship through the Mediterranean under present conditions would be, for a rank civilian, just like committing suicide. Of course for a soldier, whose job is war, it would be all right—all in the day's business—justifiable.
Then after she reached Gibraltar (of course this was supposing the improbable chance of her ever getting so far as Gibraltar) she would have to sail out into the Atlantic through the Bay of Biscay, and up the Thames, and the telegraph said the Germans had slipped over and mined the mouth of the Thames—for a man anxious to get home this was a bad ship to sail on. That was the encouragement held out to book for passage on this ship.
I met a man at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay (I'd met this man two weeks previously at Calcutta)—an American, a machinery salesman from the United States.
He told me he was on his way home, had crossed India to Bombay to connect with this P. & O. liner, but none of this ship for him.
He had been filled as full, if not fuller, than myself of the dire disasters that would, in all probability, overtake this ship.
Just like committing suicide
"Why, Mr. Allen," he said, "that ship will have about as much chance to get to London as a celluloid dog would have to catch an asbestos cat racing through——" "Oh, say, my friend," I said, "don't say it.
"Aside from that illustration having gray whiskers, it makes me nervous and discourages me, because I want to get home, and that is the ship I ought to sail on. But let's go and see our Consul; he may be able to throw a little optimism on the situation."
