Peter could hardly believe his ears, but he could barely keep a straight face either.  The D.A.Q.M.G. hung up the receiver and repeated the latter part of the message.  Peter thanked him and departed, walking on air.  A day later an orderly from the group informed him at 11 a.m. that the order had been applied for and might be expected that day, and at 1 o’clock he received it.  Such is the humour of the high gods who control the British Army.  But he never saw Colonel Lear again, and was thankful.

Peter reached his new base, then, early in March in a drizzle of rain.  He was told his camp and set off to find it, and for an hour walked through endless docks, over innumerable bridges, several of which, being open to admit and let out ships, caused him pretty considerable delay.  It was a strange, new experience.  The docks presented types of nearly every conceivable nationality and of every sort of shipping.  French marines and seamen were, of course everywhere, but so were Chinese, South African natives, Egyptians, Senegalese, types of all European nationalities, a few of the first clean, efficient-looking Americans in tight-fitting uniforms, and individual officers of a score of regiments.

The old town ended in a row of high, disreputable-looking houses that were, however, picturesque enough, and across the pave in front of them commenced the docks.  One walked in and out of harbours and waterways, the main stretch of harbour opening up more and more on the right hand, and finally showing two great encircling arms that nearly met, and the grey Channel beyond.  Tossing at anchor outside were more than a dozen ships, waiting for dark to attempt the crossing.  As he went, a seaplane came humming in from the mists, circled the old town, and took the harbour water in a slither of foam.  He had to wait while a big Argentine ship ploughed slowly in up a narrow channel, and then, in the late afternoon, crossed a narrow swing foot-bridge, and found himself on the main outer sea-wall.

Following directions, he turned to the right and walked as if going out to the harbour mouth a mile or so ahead.  It seemed impossible that his camp should be here, for on the one hand he was close to the harbour, and on the other, over a high wall and some buildings, was plainly to be espied the sea.  A few hundred yards on, however, a crowd of Tommies were lined up and passing embarkation officers for a big trooper, and Peter concluded that this was the leave boat by which he was to mark his camp across the road and more or less beyond it.

He crossed a railway-line, went in at a gate, and was there.

The officers’ quarters had a certain fascination.  You stepped out of the anteroom and found yourself on a raised concrete platform at the back of which washed the sea.  Very extensive harbour works, half completed, ran farther out in a great semicircle across a wide space of leaden water, over which gulls were circling and crying; but the thin black line of this wall hardly interrupted one’s sense of looking straight out to sea, and its wide mouth away on the right let in the real invigorating, sea-smelling wind.  The camp itself was a mere strip between the railway-line and the water, a camp of R.E.’s to which he was attached.  He was also to work a hospital which was said to be close by.