sound of hurrying feet. I could make out three stumbling figures,
apparently urged along by a fourth. "Who are they?" I asked the
steward.

"They must be the three Tommies who escaped from Germany. Brave
lads they are. A couple more days and we'll have them hack in
England."

"A couple of days?" I exclaimed. "Why, it's only eight hours to
the Thames estuary, isn't it?"

"Eight hours in peace time; and eight hours for Dutch boats
now--when the Germany don't kidnap them away to Zeebrugge. But the
course to the Thames is not our course. The old fourteen-hour trip
to Hull often takes us forty now. Every passage is different, too.
It isn't only on the sea that the Germans try to bother us; they
also keep after us when we are in port here. Only yesterday the
Dutch inspectors did us a good turn by arresting five spies
monkeying around the boat--three Germans and two Dutchmen."

The little vessel was headed into the stream now, the three Tommies
had gone inside, followed a little later by the two men who were on
the deck when I arrived, men who talked French. When the steward
left I was alone on the deck.

I watched the receding lights of Rotterdam till they flickered out
in the distance. The night was misty and too dark to make out
anything on shore. My thoughts went back to the last time, nearly
a year before, when I had been on that river. I saw it then, in
flood of moonlight as I stepped on the boat deck of the giant liner