possible to secure my personal safety in a risky calling. It isn't such
a bad thing to lead a life of hard toil and plain duty within the four
corners of an honest Act of Parliament. And I am glad to say that its
seventies have never been applied to me.

In the year 1878, the year of "Peace with Honour," I had walked as lone
as any human being in the streets of London, out of Liverpool Street
Station, to surrender myself to its care. And now, in the year of the
war waged for honour and conscience more than for any other cause, I was
there again, no longer alone, but a man of infinitely dear and close ties
grown since that time, of work done, of words written, of friendships
secured. It was like the closing of a thirty-six-year cycle.

All unaware of the War Angel already awaiting, with the trumpet at his
lips, the stroke of the fatal hour, I sat there, thinking that this life
of ours is neither long nor short, but that it can appear very wonderful,
entertaining, and pathetic, with symbolic images and bizarre associations
crowded into one half-hour of retrospective musing.

I felt, too, that this journey, so suddenly entered upon, was bound to
take me away from daily life's actualities at every step. I felt it more
than ever when presently we steamed out into the North Sea, on a dark
night fitful with gusts of wind, and I lingered on deck, alone of all the
tale of the ship's passengers. That sea was to me something
unforgettable, something much more than a name. It had been for some
time the schoolroom of my trade. On it, I may safely say, I had learned,
too, my first words of English. A wild and stormy abode, sometimes, was
that confined, shallow-water academy of seamanship from which I launched
myself on the wide oceans. My teachers had been the sailors of the
Norfolk shore; coast men, with steady eyes, mighty limbs, and gentle