They ran down to the city—found a restaurant where coffee was still obtainable, and then a motor that hurried them smoothly back to the ship. The fog was still heavy at the wharf. The Perseus was noisy with the clamour of cargo-machinery and shouting men, and the decks hummed with hawkers, chaffering over ostrich feathers and native karosses and curios. There was little sleep for anyone on board.
Very early next morning they were off. The fog hung densely over the city. The tug took them out through the dim harbour, and beyond to the open sea—and about twenty miles out they suddenly ran out of the fog-belt into sunlight, and blue sea and sky, all sparkling to greet them.
The captain, heavy-eyed after his long vigil, paused beside Norah’s deck-chair.
“Well, Miss Norah—you evidently weren’t meant to see the beauties of Cape Town!”
“I don’t know,” said Norah, soberly. “I think I had the best view of all. And it was worth the fog!”
CHAPTER XVI.
WAR!
THE passengers of the good ship Perseus were holding what they bravely called a gymkhana. Their numbers had been slightly reinforced in South Africa; some people had left the ship, but those who had joined had brought the total to nearly forty. The newcomers included two or three cheerful girls, and some energetic young Englishmen, who declared frankly that they found the ship far too quiet, and entered with vigour in the process of waking things up. They organised dances in the moonlight, to the strains of the captain’s gramophone; concerts, at which most people performed extremely badly, amidst the enthusiastic plaudits of the audience; and finally a sports committee, which drew up an ambitious programme of deck-game competitions, to culminate in a “special-event” day. No one was allowed to stand out. The quiet ones grumbled and fled to the sanctity of the boat-deck—where no games were permitted—in the intervals of making themselves look more or less foolish at deck billiards or bull-board. The younger members grew enthusiastic by force of example, and things went merrily enough until the day of the final display.
The officers—especially the captain and the doctor—looked with approval on the new activity. At all times the journey up the West Coast of Africa is dull and long. No ports are touched at between Cape Town and Las Palmas; and it was quite possible that even the latter would be forbidden the Perseus by wireless orders by the time she arrived at the Canary Islands, since German ships were known to be active in the neighbourhood. The long and dreary stretch included the crossing of the Equator, and a spell of tropical heat which, if not so bad as the Red Sea, was apt to be sufficiently trying under ordinary circumstances, but ten times more so when complicated by the lack of fresh air entailed by war precautions. Therefore the Captain, keeping a silent watch on his passengers’ nerves, and the doctor, directing his guardianship more particularly to their livers, smiled on the games, and incited them to antics yet more enlivening.
War seemed very far away. The first few days out from Cape Town had been hard to bear in their complete isolation from news—especially as Cape Town had provided an assortment of rumours, principally unconfirmed, which gave unlimited food for tantalising speculation. But gradually war talk slackened for lack of any food, and people agreed that it was really more practical to be as busy as possible, and wait as patiently as might be for definite news at Las Palmas. What risk there was, was accepted as part of the general routine; to speculate on it was useless, to worry about it as practical as worrying over a possible earthquake or cyclone. Any smoke on the horizon might be a German man-of-war; it might also be a peaceful British tramp steamer, jogging down to Australia. But they were far off their course, and scarcely a sign of a ship had been seen since leaving Africa—two or three dark smoke smudges many miles off, a timber ship which went close by them, and once a collier, with a couple of lighters in tow: useful black slaves, the captain said, waiting to coal British cruisers. All the coast was well patrolled by the Allies’ ships; they kept out of sight, but sometimes the wireless operator, listening at his own silent instrument, heard their code signals, comfortably close at hand.