"Haven't you heard?" shouted a bull-voiced Anzac. "Peace is declared, and we're the first troops home from the Front."
At the prospect of a gigantic hoax others took up the mendacious parable, and long before the men reached their destination for the night the startling news had spread far and wide. It was not until the arrival of the morning papers that the good folk of Southampton realized that they had been "properly had".
The enforced detention at Southampton, was, however, not without certain compensations. The men were allowed out of camp during the following afternoon, a boon they thoroughly appreciated.
Selwyn had seized upon the opportunity to visit his relations, but when fie again invited Malcolm and Fortescue to accompany him they begged to be excused, and wandered round the town instead.
Old Southampton was both a surprise and a revelation to Malcolm Carr. Coming from a country where a fifty-year-old building is considered to be old, the sight of the fourteenth-century walls and fortified gates filled him with enthusiasm, while Fortescue was able to explain the nature of the various architectural features.
Wandering down a narrow and far from clean street they came face to face with an ancient stone building flung athwart the road. On the side of the archway a notice board announced it to be the old Westgate, through which the armies of Edward III and Henry V marched to embark upon the expedition that ended respectively in the victories of Crécy and Agincourt.
"One can imagine the throng of mailed knights leathern-jerkined archers pouring under the double portcullis," remarked Fortescue. "Those armies left this place as enemies of France; to-day ours also leave Southampton, but with a different purpose, to rid French soil of the Hun and all his works."
"And it shows," added Malcolm, "in another way how times change. Unless I'm mistaken, Henry V's army consisted of thirty thousand troops--not a third of the number of men raised in New Zealand alone."
"To carry the comparison still further," continued his companion, "our quota is roughly a fiftieth of the fighting forces of the Empire. For every man who levelled lance or drew bow at Agincourt against the French, one hundred and fifty are to-day fighting side by side with their former enemies. Those chaps--'island carrions, desperate of their bones', as Will Shakespeare aptly puts it--are our ancestors, Malcolm, whether we are New Zealanders, Australians, or Canadians, and although we are up against a big thing I haven't the faintest doubt that blood will tell, as it did in those days. But, by Jove, it's close on four o'clock. We'll have to get back as sharp as we can, or we may have the Muizenberg business all over again."
That evening the troops re-embarked. By this time the lurking U-boats had been dealt with in a most effective way. Their shattered hulls lay on the bed of the English Channel. The route was now clear, and the transport's voyage was practically devoid of incident.