Even I, whose second departure to the war this
was, had after the feeblest resistance surrendered myself to the drama
of the occasion. I should have been no gentleman had I done otherwise.
After the waters had closed above my head for, perhaps, five minutes
of strangled, half-protesting, half-willing surrender I was suddenly
compelled, by what agency I know not, to struggle to the surface, to
look around me, and then quite instantly to forget my immersion. The
figure of Trenchard, standing exactly as I had left him, his hands
uneasily at his sides, a half-anxious, half-confident smile on his
lips, his eyes staring straight in front of him, absolutely compelled
my attention. I had forgotten him, we had all forgotten him, his own
lady had forgotten him. I withdrew from the struggling, noisy group
and stepped back to his side. It was then that, as I now most clearly
remember, I was conscious of something else, was aware that there was
a strange faint blue light in the dark clumsy station, a faint
throbbing glow, that, like the reflection of blue water on a sunlit
ceiling, hovered and hung above the ugly shabbiness of the engines and
trucks, the rails with scattered pieces of paper here and there, the
iron arms that supported the vast glass roof, the hideous funnel that
hung with its gaping mouth above the water-tank.
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