express consent by the inclination of his head and sirens will blow,
turbine engines will operate as they would never operate for anybody
else, thousands of tons of shipping will rearrange itself, and even
the sea will become less obstreperous and more circumspect in its
demeanour, adjusting, if need be, its tides to suit his wishes.

I take it my condition is typical when I am "proceeding" (one will
never come and go again in our time; one will always proceed)--when
I am proceeding to the U.K. The whole thing is too good to believe,
and I don't believe it till I have some written and omnipotent
instructions, in my pocket and am actually moving towards the sea.
The youngest and keenest schoolboy returning home for his holidays
is a calm, collected, impassionate and even dismal man of the world
compared to me. I see little and am impressed by nothing; all things
and men are assumed to be good, and none of them is given the
opportunity of proving itself to be the contrary. As for the A.M.L.O.
at any other port but this one, I remark nothing about him except
his princely generosity in letting me have an embarcation card. He
is just one more good fellow in the long series of good fellows who
have authorised my move. I am borne out to sea in a dream--a dream
of England and all that England means to us, be that a wife or a
reasonable breakfast at a reasonable hour. Not until I am on my way
back does it occur to me that landing and transport officers have
identities, and by that time I have lost all interest in transport
and landing and officers and identities and everything else.

At the port of ----, however, it is very different. I may arrive on
the quay in a dream, but I'm at once out of it when I have caught
sight of Greatness sitting in its little hut with the ticket window
firmly closed until the arrival of the hour before which he has