9 A. M. Over the frontier! Oh, the joy of it—the indescribable relief—the wet-eyed thankfulness! Shall I ever forget it? I did not know until then what depths Tyranny had furrowed into my consciousness. Here were men and women laughing and talking in the streets and people daring to drive in their own carriages, and everybody reading newspapers—I felt as if I would spend my last sou for one.
The day was spent in wandering aimlessly over the old town. The wind was bitterly piercing and a fog hung over the canal but I was not altogether aware of bodily discomfort. My mind, trying to adjust itself to new conditions, was in a haze, staggering back and forth from the consciousness of regained freedom to servitude and from barbarism to freedom again.
At three P. M. the train left for Flushing, where we were to take the boat for Folkestone, England. Just before it pulled out of the station, a friend of Comtesse de M. rushed up to the car window and said, "Madame, must you go? We have just received a dispatch saying that a big boat has been sunk today by a mine near Boulogne." But nothing on earth could have deterred us then.
All through the country of Holland, Dutch soldiers were "preparing" everywhere. We arrived at Flushing at two A. M. and went aboard at once, but not before being well looked over by English commissioners, who examined our foreheads and wrists for German measles. Shall I ever get away from that word?
November 8th, Sunday.
A long day on the Channel and I was seasick—miserably, hopelessly, endlessly seasick, but when somebody shouted I managed to lift my head in time to see a floating mine—just a tiny, black buoy bobbing about, but I did not mind. I asked the stewardess if she were not afraid, making the journey every day, and her answer awed me by its conciseness and its confidence. "Oh, no," she said. "Our Admiralty has arranged a path for us between the mines." That was a sublime faith, but I should choose a more winsome path—bordered with marigolds, perhaps, or phlox.
About four P. M. the gaunt, chalk cliffs of Dover hove into sight, rising up in their grimness and seeming yet to shadow the awful tragedy of the previous day, when an auxiliary cruiser had struck a mine a quarter of a mile from shore and sunk in five minutes.