A long day on the Channel and I was seasick—miserably, hopelessly, endlessly seasick, but when somebody shouted I managed to lift my head in time to see a floating mine—just a tiny, black buoy bobbing about, but I did not mind. I asked the stewardess if she were not afraid, making the journey every day, and her answer awed me by its conciseness and its confidence. "Oh, no," she said. "Our Admiralty has arranged a path for us between the mines." That was a sublime faith, but I should choose a more winsome path—bordered with marigolds, perhaps, or phlox.

About four P. M. the gaunt, chalk cliffs of Dover hove into sight, rising up in their grimness and seeming yet to shadow the awful tragedy of the previous day, when an auxiliary cruiser had struck a mine a quarter of a mile from shore and sunk in five minutes.