A quiet gentleman seated opposite to me on a leather lounge—I met him afterwards at the British Embassy in Paris—caught my eye and smiled.
"They don't seem to worry about the international situation. Perhaps it will be easier to get to Paris than to get back again!"
"And now drinks all round, lads!" said one of the trippers.
On deck there were voices singing. It was the hymn of the Marseillaise. I went up towards the sound and found a party of young Frenchmen standing aft, waving farewells to England, as the syren hooted, above a rattle of chains and the crash of the gangway which dropped to the quayside. They had been called back to their country to defend its soil and, unlike the Englishmen drinking themselves fuddled, were intoxicated by a patriotic excitement.
"Vive l'Angleterre!"
An answer came back from the quayside:
"Vive la France!"
It was to this shout that we warped away from the jetty and made for the open sea. A yacht with white sails all agleam as it crossed the bar of a searchlight so that it seemed like a fairy ship in the vision of a dream, crept into the harbour and then fluttered into the darkness below the Admiralty pier.
"That's a queer kind of craft to meet to-night!" I said to the second mate. "What is she doing?"
"I'd like to know. She's got a German skipper and crew. Spies all of them, I guess. But nobody seems to bother."