photographers; correspondents by the score--female correspondents; story
writers, novelists, real war correspondents, and real
draughtsmen--artists, indeed; and a host of lesser men with spurs yet
to win--all crowding the hotel day and night, night and day.

And outside, to the sea--camped in fine white sand dust, under thick
stars and a hot sun--soldiers, soldiers everywhere, lounging through the
streets and the railway stations, overrunning the suburbs;
drilling--horseback and on foot--through clouds of sand; drilling at
skirmish over burnt sedge-grass and stunted and charred pine woods;
riding horses into the sea, and plunging in themselves like truant
schoolboys. In the bay a fleet of waiting transports, and all over dock,
camp, town, and hotel an atmosphere of fierce unrest and of eager
longing to fill those wooden hulks, rising and falling with such
maddening patience on the tide, and to be away. All the time, meanwhile,
soldiers coming in--more and more soldiers--in freight-box, day-coach,
and palace-car.

That night, in the hotel, Grafton and Crittenden watched the crowd from
a divan of red plush, Grafton chatting incessantly. Around them moved
and sat the women of the "House of the Hundred Thousand"--officers'
wives and daughters and sisters and sweethearts and army
widows--claiming rank and giving it more or less consciously, according
to the rank of the man whom they represented. The big man with the
monocle and the suit of towering white from foot to crown was the
English naval attaché. He stalked through the hotel as though he had the
British Empire at his back.

"And he has, too," said Grafton. "You ought to see him go down the steps
to the café. The door is too low for him. Other tall people bend