We couldn't get military passes, for military passes take time; and the train was due in about fifteen minutes.
And the fatherly porter had vanished, taking with him the secret of our luggage.
It was a fatherly old French gentleman who advised us to go to the British Consulat. And it was a fatherly old French cocher who drove us there, or rather who drove us through interminable twisted streets and into blind alleys and out of them till we got there.
As for our luggage, we renounced it and Mr. Foster's and Dr. Hanson's luggage in the interests of our own safety.
At last we got to the British Consulat. Only I think the cocher took us to the Town Hall and the Hospital and the British Embassy and the Admiralty offices first.
At intervals during this transit the British Red Cross lady explained again that she was doing the right thing in leaving Ostend. It wasn't as if she was leaving her post, she was going on a hospital ship. She was sure she had done the right thing.
It was not for me to be unsympathetic to an obsession produced by a retreat, so I assured her again and again that if there ever was a right thing she had done it. My heart bled for this poor lady, abandoned by the organization that had brought her out.
In the courtyard of the Consulat we met a stalwart man in khaki, who smiled as a god might smile at our trouble, and asked us why on earth we hadn't got a passage on the naval transport Victoria, sailing at three o'clock. We said nothing would have pleased us better, only we had never heard of the Victoria and her sailing. And he took us to the Consul, and the Consul—who must have been buried alive in detail—gave us a letter to Captain King of the Victoria, and the cocher drove us to the dock.
Captain King was an angel. He was the head of a whole hierarchy of angels who called themselves ship's officers.
There is no difficulty about our transport. But we must be at the docks by half-past two.