The piers had changed their gala attire. The departure from this country for another was no longer a matter of mere rejoicing and congratulatory leave-taking. The gangways no longer swarmed with friends shouting, “Bon voyage!” There was no free voicing of anticipation, no effervescing of good humor. The Spirit of Adventure was there, but he had changed his costume and his make-up. So had the good ships. Their black paint and white trimmings were gone; gone were the gay red funnels; and in their stead were massed the grays and blues, the greens and blacks of camouflage. The piers were deserted. A thin stream of travelers sifted in; there were a few officials and deckhands; and far outside, beyond hail of ship or sea or traveler, in a barbed-wire inclosure, guarded by military police, stood a few scattered, silent figures. They were the remnants war had left of the once-upon-a-time jocose band of waving, shouting friends.
All this Sheila O’Leary felt as she stood on the upper deck of a French liner with Peter Brooks and watched their fellow-passengers board the ship. She was tingling from head to foot with almost as many emotions as there are ganglia in the nervous system. It was as if she had suddenly claimed the world for a patient and had laid fingers to its pulse for the first time. Eagerly, impatiently, she was waiting to count each successive beat until she should be able to read into the throbbing rhythm of it all a meaning for herself.
As Sheila thought in terms of her work, so Peter thought in terms of his. It was all copy to him. Each group that followed another up the gangway carried the promise of a story to Peter. There were Red Cross nurses, canteen workers, a college unit for reconstruction work, a hospital unit, scores of detached American officers going over for the first time, scores of French and British returning, a few foreigners getting back to their respective countries, and hosts of non-descripts whose civilian clothes gave no hint of their missions. Last of all came a sudden, swift influx of celestial blue.
Peter smiled at them with anticipation, “Look, Leerie, the Blue Devils of France! There ought to be the making of a good yarn.”
But Sheila barely heard. The mass had captured her imagination on the instant with a dramatic intensity too overpowering to be denied. Unconsciously she smiled. They were going back to fight again—to be wounded. Who knew—in a month she might be nursing some of them. The Blue Devils had reached the gangway; they were just below them when one looked up. Black eyes as unfathomable as forest pools looked into Sheila’s quiet gray ones. For a moment there was almost a greeting flashed between them; as if they recognized something common to them both that lay in the past or the future. It was one of those gossamer threads of fate that a few glimpse rarely in their lives.
Peter saw, and was on the point of giving tongue to his astonishment when a voice from behind interrupted them: “The ship sails at ten; it lacks thirty seconds of that. There is the typical instance of the way these Devils obey their orders. Is it not so?”
The voice savored of France. Sheila and Peter turned together to find a little man, with a small, pleasant face, topped with shaggy brown hair, and dabs of mustache and beard placed like a colon under his nose. His shrug was the conclusive evidence of his nationality.
“Well, thirty seconds is enough,” laughed Sheila. “Time is as precious as food, gold, or gunpowder these days. Why waste it?”
“And men,” supplemented the little man. “Perhaps, mad’moiselle already knows Bertrand Fauchet, the young captain who passed below?”
Sheila shook her head.