from its ways in terms of grave humour, Monsieur Duchemin passed peaceably
on his lawful occasions, took life as he found it, made the best of irksome
circumstances.

This last idiosyncrasy stood him in good stead. For the _Assyrian_ failed
to clear upon her proposed sailing date and for a livelong week thereafter
chafed alongside her landing stage, steam up, cargo laden and stowed,
nothing lacking but the Admiralty's permission to begin her westbound
voyage--a permission inscrutably withheld, giving rise to a common
discontent which the passengers dissembled to the various best of their
abilities, that is to say, in most cases thinly or not at all.

Yet they were none of them unreasonable beings. They had come aboard one
and all keyed up to a high nervous pitch, pardonable in such as must commit
their lives to the dread adventure of the barred zone, wanting nothing
so much as to get it over with, whatever its upshot. And everlasting
procrastination required them day after day to steel their hearts anew
against that Terror which followed its furtive ways beneath the leaden
waters of the Channel!

Alone among them this Monsieur Duchemin paraded successfully a false face
of resignation, protesting no predilection whatsoever for a watery grave,
no infatuate haste to challenge the Hun upon his chosen hunting-ground. In
the fullness of time it would be permitted to him to go down to the sea in
this ship. Meanwhile he found it apparently pleasant and restful to explore
the winding cobbled ways of that antiquated waterside community, made over
by the hand of War into a bustling seaport, or to tramp the sunken lanes
that seamed those green old Cornish hills which embosomed the wide harbour
waters, or to lounge about the broad white decks of the _Assyrian_ watching
the diurnal traffic of the haven--a restless, warlike pageant.