An hour and a half later, when the navigator gave me a spell, a black cloud on the northern horizon marked the funeral pyre of another of our victims. When I went below, the Captain had just finished playing with his precious old chart.
We received a message at 2 a.m. last night from Heligoland to return forthwith; it is now 2 a.m. and we are approaching the redoubtable Dover Barrage. We had no trouble coming up channel to-day, which seems singularly empty, at any rate in mid-channel, where we were.
We got back about three hours ago, and as I was appointed temporary to the boat, Von Weissman kindly allowed me to leave her and come up to Bruges as soon as we got into the shelters at Zeebrugge.
I got up here just, in time for a late dinner. Hunger satisfied, I retired to my room and, needless to say, at once rang up my darling Zoe.
By the mercy of providence she was in, but imagine my sensations when I heard that that accursed swine of a Colonel was also back from the front, and expected in at the flat at any moment, being then, she thought, engaged in his after dinner drinking bouts at the cavalry officers' club. I could only groan.
A laugh at the other end stung me to furious rage, appeased in an instant by her soothing tones as she told me that I should be glad to hear that he was only up from the Somme on a four-days leave, and was returning next morning by the 8 a.m. troop train. Glad! I could have danced for joy. I breathed again.
As the Colonel was expected back at any moment she thought it advisable to terminate the conversation, which was done with obvious reluctance on her part, or so I flatter myself.
He goes to-morrow, so far so good, but what of the intervening period?