Next morning I had my breakfast in bed, and had to remain there until I had been visited by the doctor, after which I got up. By the time I was dressed my spirits had drooped to a very low ebb. The cabin was a most comfortless apartment, sparsely furnished and with its only window giving on to a gloomy enclosed courtyard where the rain pattered dismally down from a leaden square of sky. I felt as though I was in prison "doing time" for some sordid and wholly uninteresting crime.
However, about four o'clock came a joyful surprise in the shape of a telegram from my mother, saying that she was coming over to see me and would arrive next day. On the moment depression vanished, for I felt certain that she would devise some means to relieve the tedium of my confinement. Sure enough, as soon as she arrived she interviewed the doctor and soon persuaded him that I was quite well enough to go home, and after she had signed the requisite form undertaking to be responsible for any further medical treatment I might require, she returned to Portsmouth, where I joined her on the following day.
That night, December 8, we crossed over to our island, and I recollect a rather funny episode on that journey. Some swollen-headed Jack-in-office in the passport department at Southampton said he could not pass me because I had no document from the hospital authorities showing that I was on sick leave. The Lord only knows if the fool thought I was a deserter, or if he was merely a confirmed obstructionist making trouble for the fun of the thing. Anyway he was sullenly obstinate, entrenched in his "little brief authority," and declared that he could not and would not pass me! It looked like being a pretty muddle, for it was 10 P.M. and raining cats and dogs. Then mother came to the rescue with a perfectly gorgeous piece of "bluff." Declaring that she had not the smallest intention of remaining indefinitely at Southampton, or of going on without me, she calmly requested him to ring up the Admiralty, when she would get him orders from headquarters. He could not have looked more amazed if she had demanded a trunk call to Heaven. But she was as firm as if she knew she held a royal flush to his pair of knaves, and so he hurriedly climbed down, and said he would take the responsibility of passing me, and we proceeded in triumph aboard the L.S.W.R.'s steamer which was lying alongside the quay, and so reached home the next morning without further incident.
I may here remark that I was perfectly certain that the man was wrong, for if any such document had been really required, the hospital authorities would have provided it. The Navy does not neglect detail.
I had been granted sick leave to extend over Christmas, which was a tremendous stroke of luck, but the time passed all too quickly, and on January 4, 1916, we went to London for my medical survey. I was passed fit on the 5th, and expected to have to rejoin at once. However, to my intense surprise and delight, I ran into one of our Snotties in Bond Street that afternoon, and he told me that our ship was in dock and they had all been granted ten days' leave, so I had that extra time in London, where we did some theatres and enjoyed ourselves royally.
CHAPTER III
FOG
When the water's countenance
Blurs 'twixt glance and second glance;