“Asleep, Jim?”
“No—not quite.”
“D’you know something? Your people were here quite a while. And they never said one word about gas or war or any silly rot like that!”
“No,” said Jim, drowsily. “Bricks, weren’t they? Go to sleep.”
CHAPTER IV
TO IRELAND
“Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home.”
R. L. Stevenson.
HOLYHEAD pier was in the state of wild turmoil that seethes between the arrival of the mail and its transhipping to the Dublin boat. Passengers ran hither and thither, distractedly seeking luggage, while stolid English porters lent a deaf ear to their complainings or assured them absent-mindedly that everything would be all right on the other side; an assurance always given light-heartedly by the porter who is comfortably certain of the fact that, whatever happens on the other side, he will not be there. First and third class passengers mingled inextricably in the luggage-hunt, with equal lack of success, and divided into two streams when the whistle blew an impatient summons, seeking their respective gangways under the guiding shouts of officials on the upper deck. Through the crowd ploughed the mail trollies, regarding first and third class travellers alike as mere obstructors of His Majesty’s business, and asserting their right-of-way by sheer weight and impetus. Overhead, a grey sky hung darkly, and was reflected in a grey, white-flecked sea.
It was not the usual Ireland-bound crowd of early summer. Comparatively few women were travelling, and except for a few elderly men, there was an entire absence of the knickerbocker-suited, tweed-capped travellers, with golf-clubs and rod-boxes, who make a yearly pilgrimage across the Irish Sea. Most of them were in Flanders or Gallipoli now, and khaki had replaced the rough tweeds; many would never come again. In their stead, khaki sprinkled the crowd thickly. A big detachment of soldiers returning after furlough, crowded the boat for’ard. Officers in heavy great-coats were everywhere; one chubby subaltern in charge of a regimental band, which had been assisting in a recruiting tour in Wales. A small group surrounded a tall old general, whose great-coat showed the crossed sword and baton, while his gold-laced and red-banded cap made him the object of awed glances from junior officers, who forthwith put as much of the ship as possible between themselves and his eagle eye.