“Can you see anything?” I said. “I can’t see a thing or hear a damned thing either.”
“No, there’s nothing doing yet,” they answered.
“I thought we were to pass the French about four o’clock?”
“We did pass them a long time ago, but too far out. They’re looking for the English landing now; but I heard a bloke say we wouldn’t pass it before breakfast.”
I went on to the troop deck after that, for a towel and soap. There were still a good many fellows rolled up in the hammocks or on the floor or the mess tables. Any who were awake called out to know what was going on, and hearing nothing, settled down to another ten minutes. I had my wash and a hairbrush, and next went to the parade deck, and stayed leaning over the rails listening for the guns until the trumpeter blew “Stables.”
For an hour we were in stables doing the usual things; and I think affairs went less wearily. On the way to breakfast not a man did not linger to discover what might be seen or heard; but no sign or sound of battle did we obtain. The sea rolled away on every side, as it had done a score of mornings before; and now the horizon was quite clear, and proved void of battleships or any craft at all.
I forget what there was for breakfast. It was curry, I think. I know there was less of a scramble than usual, as a number of fellows stayed above hoping to see something, and others were excited and off their appetite. For my part I filled up well, not being overcertain of the next meal, and when I could tackle no more I went straight up on deck again.
All along the starboard side of the boat fellows were hanging over the rails: there was a great crowd of them, half the boat’s company at least. I edged a way in among them, asking what was doing. “Can’t you hear the guns?” someone said. And nobody said anything else.
There was absolutely nothing to be seen, so I put my head on one side and listened. Beyond the breathing and coughing of the others, the many noises of the vessel and the shifting of the seas, I distinguished nothing, certainly no sound of guns; and then all at once I picked it up, and afterwards never lost it. It was faint, faint, ever so far away, an endless, tireless grumbling or murmuring. I drank the sound rather than heard it. It was like a draught of thunder and champagne.