To get out of France after getting in, a man has to go to Paris, see the prefect of police, various consuls, and so on. It was all interesting—the life in Paris—but it had nothing to do with U-boats. I had to go to England, and to make England, I had to go to Havre.
And I was in Havre. Looking out the window at a roof across the narrow street was a sign which read Hotel of the Six Allies. The Six looked as though it had been painted over. The head waiter told me later that it had. It had begun at three, then it became four—five—now six. But there were more than six now—did not the great United States count? Oh, yes, truly yes—but the paint and painters! They were growing more scarce. The war—yes. Everything was the war.
The head waiter was a little old fellow with a round back, a quizzical eye, and the hair of a first violin. After I beat my way by main strength through three table-d'hôte meals with him he let me know that he could talk English. Why hadn't he told me so before? Oh! Did I not wish to practise my French? So many did, and if they made him understand, the tips were sometimes more inspiring.
The steamer for England had been scheduled to leave the night of the day our train arrived, but she did not leave. We did not learn whether it was the full moon or the U-boats shifting their hunting-grounds or the late air-raids on the south coast of England. Whatever the cause, no one growled much. The steamship people and the government were doing their best with a difficult service. The delay gave us another day to look the port over. I had been there years before. Then it was all French; now it seemed to be mostly British. The streets, the shops, the cafés, were crowded with English, Canadian, and Australian soldiers. British soldiers were running the tram-cars. In the country outside was a large British camp. The French owners of the ships and of the cafés in the narrow streets near the jetties catered especially to the British soldier and sailor. English tobacco, English rosbif—they advertised these in quaintly worded signs.
Ships lay between the jetties and the breakwater, coasting and deep-water steamers, and the little fishing-cutters with the tanned sails. There was a fleet (or a flock) of seaplanes all ready to take to either the water or the air. They took to both while we looked, hurdling the breakwater from the basin to get more quickly to some smoke on the horizon. They were brand-new planes all, with the most beautiful polished maple pontoons and bright varnish over paint that still smelled fresh.
Soldiers not so worn and weary as those on the hospital veranda came down to the jetty promenade. Priests, nursing sisters, other soldiers and sailors came also. What interested them most was the sun shining on the bright new wood of the planes flying out to see what the smoke meant. It was a ship from across the ocean somewhere, and the planes circled it into the basin—one more ship which had beat the U-boat game and brought home something needed. There was some noise along the jetty and yet more noise in the wide and narrow streets of the town—clanging trams, whip-cracking fiacres, yelling newsboys, honking taxis, and soldiers and sailors tramping the pavements. Noise enough, and of the kind befitting a Channel port in war time; but for a time at least we heard the noise let down, and the bustle softened.
In a wide street of shops appeared a white-haired priest with a white crucifix held high before him. Behind him was another priest reading from a book of prayer. Two laymen came next, bearing a little white-painted table with a little white coffin—a cheap board coffin—resting on it. There was a canopy of plain white boards over the little coffin. There were a few white blossoms on the canopy and beside the coffin a few lilies of the valley—only a few.
Two other laymen followed the coffin bearers. All the men were bareheaded. Three women—young women and young mothers to look at—followed the two men. One of the young women was in deep black. A group of little girls followed the young woman. Two very old women came last. No more than that, walking through a crowded street at two o'clock of a bright day!
It was on us almost before we saw it. Men took off their hats as it passed; women blessed themselves. Sometimes men's lips murmured a short prayer; always the women did. The soldiers and sailors, when they were French, saluted nearly always; the British sometimes. The officers, if anything, saluted more profoundly than the enlisted men, and, when they did not stop dead, held a hand to their caps for eight or ten paces in passing.
Two soldiers were talking with two girls of the streets. One of the soldiers took off his cap. One of the girls stopped talking to say a little word of prayer. Both soldiers faced about, and all four gazed in silence for long after the little cortège had passed on. Then the first soldier put on his cap, all faced about, and resumed their talk, but more slowly and not quite so loudly as before.