No news.

* * * * *

Still no news, and we sail in forty-eight hours.




_At sea, off the Isle of Wight_.


It is some days since I turned for solace and enjoyment, amidst the
discomforts of this life, to my pen and notebook.

What strange tricks fate plays with us, and how lucky it is that one
cannot foresee the future.

Here I am in U.39--but I must start at the beginning. My last entry was
the depressing one of still no news. Well, I have had news, but it was
like a drop of water in the mouth of a parched-up man. Another
agonizing twenty-four hours passed, and I was sitting in my room about
ten o'clock, trying to resign myself to the idea that the next night I
should be starting out for my third trip without news of her, when the
telephone bell rang. I lifted the receiver and to my amazed joy heard a
voice that I could have recognized in a thousand. It was Zoe!

I was quite incapable of any remark, and my confusion was further
increased when, after a few "Hello's," which I idiotically repeated,