At about three there was a great shouting and heaving of the crowd, and the High Commissioner came on the scene, and walked down the quay through a guard of honour which we and the Infantry had contributed to form, industriously kinematographed on his progress by a fat Jew.  Several staff-officers were with Milner, and a grey-bearded gentleman, whom we guessed to be Sir Gordon Sprigg.  Milner, I heard, made a speech somewhere.  Then a band was playing, and we were allowed half an hour off the ship.  Williams and I had our last talk on the quay, in a surging crowd of khaki and civilian grey, mingled with the bright hats and dresses of ladies.  Then bells began to ring, the siren to bellow mournfully, and the band to play valedictory tunes ("Say au revoir and not goodbye,” I thought rather an ominous pleasantry).  We two said good-bye, and I squeezed myself up the gangway.  Every inch of standing room aboard was already packed, but I got a commanding position by clambering high up, with some others, on to a derrick-boom.  The pilot appeared on the bridge, shore-ropes were cast off, “Auld Lang Syne” was played, then “God save the Queen.”  Every hat on board and ashore was waving, and every voice cheering, and so we backed off, and steamed out of the basin.

Sober facts had now to be considered.  There were signs of a heavy swell outside, and something about “the lift of the great Cape combers” came into my head.  We all jostled down to tea, and made the best of our time.  There was no mistake about the swell, and a terrific rolling soon began, which first caused unnatural merriment, and then havoc.  I escaped from the inferno below, and found a pandemonium on deck.  The limited space allotted to the troops was crammed, and at every roll figures were propelled to and fro like high-velocity projectiles.  Shell-fire was nothing to it for danger.  I got hold of something and smoked, while darkness came on with rain, and the horrors intensified.  I bolted down the pit to get some blankets.  One glance around was enough, and having seized the blankets, up I came again.  Where to make a bed?  Every yard, sheltered and unsheltered, seemed to be carpeted with human figures.  Amidships, on either side of the ship, there was a covered gallery, running beneath the saloon deck (a palatial empty space, with a few officers strolling about it).  In the gallery on the weather side there was not an inch of lying room, though at every roll the water lapped softly up to and round the prostrate, indifferent bodies.  On the lee side, which was dry, they seemed to be lying two deep.  At last, on the open space of the main deck aft, I found one narrow strip of wet, but empty space, laid my blankets down, earnestly wishing it was the dusty veldt, and was soon asleep.  It was raining, but, like the rest, misery made me indifferent. Montfort experience ought to have reminded me that the decks are always washed by the night watch.  I was reminded of this about 2 A.M. by an unsympathetic seaman, who was pointing the nozzle of a hose threateningly at me.  The awakened crowd was drifting away, goodness knows where, trailing their wet blankets.  I happened to be near the ladder leading to the sacred precincts of the saloon deck.  Its clean, empty, sheltered spaces were irresistibly tempting, and I lawlessly mounted the ladder with my bed, lay down, and went to sleep again.