I obtained permission to make a "voyage" in an ambulance train.

On a grey, drizzling morning one of the Royal Naval trains glided into a siding at Queensferry—a dozen miles from Edinburgh. In less than ten minutes six hefty stretcher-bearers steadily and silently bore the first cot patient from a waiting ambulance to the war-coloured train. Cot then followed cot with precision, only two of the patients being in the open at a time; and as quickly as mortals could accomplish it these cots were set swinging in the "eyes" set for the lanyards.

Being about half-past eight o'clock, nobody had much to say. The faces of the sick and wounded bluejackets told you nothing as they lazily gazed around them while being hoisted into the hospital train. They looked like men sewed into white sailcloth sacks. Surgeons, with two and three gold stripes, between which runs the red—blood red, some say—denoting their department in the Navy, glanced occasionally at the patients.

"Carry on, there," then came from the R.N.V.R. lieutenant in charge of the stretcher-bearers, when one of the coaches had received its quota of sick and wounded. Then the sliding doors of the next coach yawned for its measure of sick men, who presented an interesting rather than a pathetic picture, for every bluejacket wore his cap, looking like a sailor who had gone to bed with his clothes on. That cap travels with him like his papers. The bluejacket has many important things which he conceals in it, and the most important of all is his package of "gaspers," as he terms his particular brand of cigarettes. The cap is placed firmly on his head, and occasionally a flannelled arm protruded from the cot. No moan or groan escaped from these plucky patients, for the sailor always lives up to the traditions of the Royal Navy.

From one of the cots there showed a head covered in bandages with only two small openings for the patient's eyes. His cap was on his bed. As this sailor was being hoisted into the train a deep voice came from the bed:—

"Mind yer eye, Bill, or yer'll get yer feet wet."

Bill was a "sitting case." He had come up on the same ambulance as his pal. He had been in the same fo'castle and had been hurt in the same accident. And now they were going aboard the same train to the same port. Bill paid little heed at that moment to his chum as he picked his way through the water and mud. His right arm was in a sling and the comforting cigarette between his teeth. Standing on the last rung of the little ladder before going into the car, I heard him say to another sailor:—

"She's over yonder. Bye-bye for the present."

His cap came off as he looked in the direction of the great deep water where lay the hazy forms of ships. Others looked, but said nothing about the sailor doffing his cap to his grey-steel sweetheart who had weathered the fight against odds.

"That makes 110," said the train surgeon. "Six, four, seventy-three, twenty-seven—what?"

The first two numerals denote officers, sitting and cot cases, and the latter two those of the men.

"Right-o," quoth the officer of the stretcher-bearers.

Soon the grey train steamed out, with orders to make a stop for a couple of cot cases in Edinburgh. In the Waverley Station a few minutes later the train took aboard the patients, and then sped on south.

Before "she" had been under way very long, the surgeon in charge and his assistant walked through the coaches, observing the cases on board and noting whether any of them needed any special attention.

At noon the cooks and stewards were hustling, giving food to men who, I supposed, would only require toast and beef-tea. But it takes a lot to make a bluejacket lose his hunger.

"They're all 'Oliver Twists,'" declared the train surgeon.

Now, there is nothing that a sailor of His Majesty's Navy likes so much to look at as a pretty girl. Hence it was not surprising when I heard a voice from one of the cots, after the train had stopped at Newcastle, in enthusiastic tones blurt out:—

"From 'ere I can see the purtiest gal I ever laid eyes on."

Business, then, of a movement in every cot. Eyes were all front, gazing in the direction of a golden-haired beauty, who blushed a deep pink when she realised how many pairs of eyes from the train were focussed on her. Soon horny hands were being kissed in her direction. Shyly, she sent a kiss or two back, and then retired to the shadows.

As I said before, the train is considered a ship. It is a case of going to "Sick Bay" and of "out pipes" at nine o'clock. They talk of "darkening the ship" when the blinds are pulled and the lights covered. We arrived at Hull when it was dusk, and at the station was, among other persons, Lady Nunburnholme, whose husband is the chief owner of the Wilson Line of steamships, and who takes a deep interest in the ambulance trains and the sailors' hospital in her town. No matter at what hour one of the Royal Naval trains is due, Lady Nunburnholme is at the depot, always eager to have a word with the men, and give them cigarettes and cheer them up.

By error, that evening a clergyman or naval chaplain, who had been hurt on a warship, was put in the coach with the men. The surgeon made the discovery, and said he would have the padre moved into the officers' quarters at the next stop.

"I'm a humbug," said the cheery pastor. "There's nothing wrong with me. Just go ahead looking after the men."

Plymouth was to be the next stop. We were due there at half-past seven o'clock the following morning. At midnight the chief surgeon walked through the train to see that all was well, and he was attracted by a man coughing. He directed that something be given to this patient.

"Don't want to have one man keep half a dozen awake needlessly," said the surgeon.

Then there was an officer who could not go to sleep. He was a medical case, suffering from rheumatism. But what kept him awake was the thought that he might lose his ship. There was a sailor who had fallen on his vessel, knocked four of his teeth out, and cut his head. Why he had to go to "Sick Bay" for such a trifle was beyond him. In the dark hours of the early morning one might have seen the faithful surgeon again going through his train, speaking in whispers to those who lay awake, asking them if there was anything they needed and what pain they had.

"I've got pains all over me, and me 'ead feels scorchin' with the bangin' that's goin' on inside," said one man.

"That's a grumble to get a drink," said the surgeon, who told the man to try to go to sleep.

Devonshire was the scene of gladsome sunshine when the train steamed into the station, delivered certain patients, and picked up others for another port. In his anxiety to get a truck out of the way to permit the stretcher-bearers uninterrupted passage to the ambulances, a porter tipped over six and a half dollars' worth of milk. The patients grinned at this, and the Surgeon-General on the platform appeared to be sorry that so much good milk had gone to waste.

The terminus of the train was reached at half-past seven in the evening. There the coaches were cleared of all patients and the train split in two to permit of traffic passing. The train-surgeon, having delivered the valuables of the patients, walked with me to the naval barracks, where for the first time in thirty-six hours he had a chance to really rest.

"Chin-chin," said he, lifting his glass. "Another run over, and the Germans have not come out yet for the real fight."