but
it may be I'll tell you more of John later in this book ! My pen runs
awa' with me, and my tongue, too, when I think of my boy John.
We came to the pier at Dunoon, and there she lay, the
little ferry steamer, the black smoke curling from her stick straight up
to God. Ah, the braw day it was! There was a frosty sheen upon the
heather, and the Clyde was calm as glass. The tops of the hills were
coated with snow, and they stood out against the horizon like the great
big sugar loaves.
We were a' happy that day! There was a crowd to see
us off. They had come to bid me farewell and God-speed, all my
friends and my relations, and I went among them, shaking them by the
hand and thinking of the long while it would be before I'd be seeing
them again. And then all my good-byes were said, and we went aboard, and
my voyage had begun.
I looked back at the hills and the heather, and I
thought of all I was to do and see before I saw those hills again. I was
going half-way round the world and back again. I was going to wonderful
places to see wonderful things and curious faces. But oftenest the
thought came to me, as I looked at my son, that him I would see again
before I saw the heather and the hills and all the friends and the
relations I was leaving behind me. For on his trip around the world he
was to meet us in Australia ! It was easier to leave him, easier to set
out, knowing that, thinking of that!
Wonderful places I went to, surely. And wonderful
things I saw and heard. But the most wonderful thing of all that I was
to see or hear upon that voyage I did not dream of nor foresee. And it
was the most terrible thing the world has ever seen. How was a mortal
man to foresee it? How was he to dream of it?
Could I guess that the very next time I set out from
Dunoon pier the peaceful Clyde would be dotted with patrol boats,
dashing hither and thither! Could I guess that everywhere there would be
boys in khaki, and women weeping, and that my boy, John------! Ah, but
I'll not tell you of that now.
Peaceful the Clyde had been, and peaceful was the
Mersey when we sailed from Liverpool for New York. I look back on yon
voyage—the last I took that way in days of peace. Next time ! Destroyers
to guard us from the Hun and his submarines, and to lead us a safe
course through the mines. And sailor boys, about their guns, watching,
sweeping the sea every minute for the flash of a sneaking pirate's
periscope showing for a second above a wave!
But then! It was a quiet trip, with none but the ups
and doons of every Atlantic crossing-more ups than doons, I'm telling
you!
I was glad to be in America again, glad to see once
more the friends I'd made. They turned out to meet me and to greet me in
New York, and as I travelled across the continent to San Francisco it
was the same. Everywhere I had friends; everywhere they came crowding to
shake me by the hand with a "How are you the day, Harry?"
It was a long trip, but it was a happy one. How long
ago it seems now, as I write, in this new day of war! How far away are
all the common, kindly things that then I did notice, and that now I
would give the world and a' to have back again!
Then, everywhere I went, they pressed their dainties
upon me whenever I sat down for a sup and a bite. The board groaned with
plenty. I was in a rich country, a country where there was enough for
all, and to spare. And now, as I am writing I am travelling again across
America. And there is not enough. When I sit down at table there is a
card of Herbert Hoover's, bidding me be careful how I eat and what I
choose. Aye, but he has no need to warn me! Well I know the truth, and
how America is helping to feed her allies over there, and so must be
sparing herself.
To think of it! In yon far day the world was all at
peace. And now that great America, that gave so little thought to armies
and to cannon, is fighting with my ain British against the Hun!
