“Ours, Dick?” said Clarissa.

“The Mediterranean Fleet,” he answered.

“The Euphrosyne was slowly dipping her flag.  Richard raised his hat.  Convulsively Clarissa squeezed Rachel’s hand.

“Aren’t you glad to be English!” she said.

The warships drew past, casting a curious effect of discipline and sadness upon the waters, and it was not until they were again invisible that people spoke to each other naturally.  At lunch the talk was all of valour and death, and the magnificent qualities of British admirals.  Clarissa quoted one poet, Willoughby quoted another.  Life on board a man-of-war was splendid, so they agreed, and sailors, whenever one met them, were quite especially nice and simple.

This being so, no one liked it when Helen remarked that it seemed to her as wrong to keep sailors as to keep a Zoo, and that as for dying on a battle-field, surely it was time we ceased to praise courage—­“or to write bad poetry about it,” snarled Pepper.

But Helen was really wondering why Rachel, sitting silent, looked so queer and flushed.

Chapter V

She was not able to follow up her observations, however, or to come to any conclusion, for by one of those accidents which are liable to happen at sea, the whole course of their lives was now put out of order.

Even at tea the floor rose beneath their feet and pitched too low again, and at dinner the ship seemed to groan and strain as though a lash were descending.  She who had been a broad-backed dray-horse, upon whose hind-quarters pierrots might waltz, became a colt in a field.  The plates slanted away from the knives, and Mrs. Dalloway’s face blanched for a second as she helped herself and saw the potatoes roll this way and that.  Willoughby, of course, extolled the virtues of his ship, and quoted what had been said of her by experts and distinguished passengers, for he loved his own possessions.  Still, dinner was uneasy, and directly the ladies were alone Clarissa owned that she would be better off in bed, and went, smiling bravely.

Next morning the storm was on them, and no politeness could ignore it.  Mrs. Dalloway stayed in her room.  Richard faced three meals, eating valiantly at each; but at the third, certain glazed asparagus swimming in oil finally conquered him.

“That beats me,” he said, and withdrew.

“Now we are alone once more,” remarked William Pepper, looking round the table; but no one was ready to engage him in talk, and the meal ended in silence.

On the following day they met—­but as flying leaves meet in the air.  Sick they were not; but the wind propelled them hastily into rooms, violently downstairs.  They passed each other gasping on deck; they shouted across tables.  They wore fur coats; and Helen was never seen without a bandanna on her head.  For comfort they retreated to their cabins, where with tightly wedged feet they let the