The next to go are from the Second Compound, and they make a different picture—ill-clad, ill-shod, without an overcoat among them, with nothing in their pockets except the little money they have drawn at the last moment from the camp bank, and nothing in their hands except the canvas bags which contain all their belongings.
It is a miserable January morning, with drizzling rain and a thick mist over the mountains. At a sharp word of command the men go tramping towards the gate, a silent and melancholy lot, totally unlike the singing and swaggering gang who came up the avenue four years ago.
Later in the day the captain of the guard (the new captain) who has seen the men off by the steamer tells Mona a wretched story. The prisoners had passed through Douglas with heads down like men going to execution; they had been drawn up like sheep on the pier, while the ordinary passengers went aboard to their cabins, and then they had been hurried down the gangway to the steerage quarters. And as the steamer moved away they had looked back with longing eyes at the island they were leaving behind them.
“Poor devils! They used to talk about the camp as a hell, but inside six months they’ll be ready to crawl on their stomachs to get back to it.”
“But why ... why are they all to be sent to Germany?” asks Mona.
“It’s the order of the congress, miss. No country wants to harbour its enemies—not a second time—unless they have something to make them friends.”
“But if they have?”
“Well, if a German has an English wife and an English business....”
“They let him remain—do they?”
“I believe they do, miss.”