They will come up time after time pleading for a second. "I've a wife and a mother," says one; while the wilier will ask: "Can I have a second for the company sergeant-major, who is outside the tent?"
"What, the same company sergeant-major?" I inquired, after the twentieth application of this kind.
If you are cutting up loaves or buttering bread you become breathless in your haste as the many hungry eyes gaze eagerly at the food.
Many of the men have gone foodless since they embarked, ten hours ago, and some, who have eaten, have been so sea-sick as to be quite collapsed. They are alternately full of anticipation and trepidation about the Great Unknown, and a quiet "It isn't nearly as bad as it was at the beginning" sends many of them away more reassured.
The turf inside the tent is an odd mixture of slush where the rain beats in, and almost concrete mud where the trampling is worst. It has been found necessary to put up a barrier by the "counter," which is made of empty packing-cases, but often, where the crowd is greatest, it literally gets rooted up.
It is hard to say which is the more impressive sight: to arrive at dawn and watch the shivering figures emerge from their tents, wrapped in those fine new blankets of theirs, and cluster round our quarters, held back by the stern arm of the military policeman until six o'clock announces that we are prepared—or nominally so—for the rush; or to watch them march off at night.
On Sunday there was a service. The men came running to the tents and called for their favourite hymns. There were two oil lamps in the centre, and someone secured a candle for my counter. Never can I forget that scene—averted eyes, tense set mouths, and rugged faces with the tears rolling down. Men who had never prayed before prayed then, for they had the Unknown to face and they knew it. They lifted the tent with their voices. Then, seeing I was the last English girl many of them would ever set eyes on, a number came up to shake hands and say good-bye and "Thank you." Heaven knows for what!
Then we watched them march off. The camp gleamed white in the moonlight. A crescent moon was over the silver sea, across which the lights of England were plainly discernible.
By the flare of one great lamp they came up out of the dark, and, company after company, like a phantom army, passed into the night.
It seemed like a dream. The receding tramp, tramp, tramp, the distant sound of drums, the deserted tents. And only the lazy flap of the canvas in the breeze remained to remind us of those heroes who have gone up to "carry on" the great game.