Below, the swift currents of the Garonne ran from us, swift as the currents of time. Faces of blue-shirted dock hands grew blurred. Flashes of red trousers, gray-blue uniforms, brown and black of women’s dresses merged into a momentary tapestry. The ungainly, lumbering motor-boat, with a hulking colossus balanced at the tiller, dropped behind. Blue-tiled roofs slipped away. Cathedral spires came out against the horizon, like the spoutings of huge sea monsters. The grassy shores flowed back with the current. Wharves, factories, lean shipyards with naked iron arms extended, tilted ships discharging cargoes, brown vineyards combing the aged slopes, tramp steamers in dusty garments, Swedish and Greek, under the imperial banner of Britain, the Tricolor, the Stars and Stripes; tubs, derelicts, old men of the sea, reclaimed and pressed into service,—all the multiple, incongruous aspects of war crowded about our passing, and always that revelation of the human note, the swarming sea adventurers, undaunted, incredulous of the odds, contemptuous of man’s malignant genius for slaying man.
I hazarded another glance at my companion and, perceiving her still oblivious to our presence, my glance remained, my sympathies quickened by a hundred remembered scenes of parting. I could not see her eyes for the veil that hid them but, instinctively, I divined the yearning of their backward look.
Heavens, how I knew that last look! How many times, in crowded depot or passing train, I had seen on the faces of women, dry-eyed and staring, that look of the soul’s rebellion, the last renunciation, the last groping for a final memory to bear down the lonely years. France, land of her childhood and girlish dreams; France, of precious sorrows and what affections: France, of her long race and living prayers, was receding before the weakening vision that rebelled.
“I say, Davy.”
I came to myself at the touch of Mr. Brinsmade’s hand.
“I don’t think we’ve a right here, do you?”
Then, and then only, I realized how profound had been my absorption.
“No, no, guess you’re right.”
As we started to withdraw, a couple of sailors, preparing to swing the lifeboats for the night’s perilous dash into haunted seas, came shuffling up.