Awaking at 5.30 the next morning, I heard a noise as of the anchor’s cable being hauled in.  The engines, too, were throbbing, and overhead there were rattling and movement.  I tumbled Doe out of his top bunk, telling him to get up and see the last of England.  Slipping a British warm over my blue silk pyjamas—­mother always made me wear pale blue—­I went on deck.  Doe covered his pink-striped pyjamas with a grey silk kimono embroidered with flowers—­the chance of wearing which garment reconciled him to this cold and early rising—­and followed me sleepily.  In a minute we were leaning over the deck-rails, and watching the sea, as it raced past the ship’s hull.

Our Rangoon was really off now.  As we left Devonport, two devilish little destroyers gave us fifty in the hundred, caught us up, and passed us, before we were in the open sea.  Then they waited for us like dogs who have run ahead of their master, and finally took up positions one on either side of us.  We felt it was now a poor look out for all enemy submarines.

“Well, ta-ta, England,” said Doe, looking towards a long strip of Devon and Cornwall.  “See, there, Rupert?  Falmouth’s there somewhere.  In a year’s time I’ll be back, with you as my guest.  We’ll have the great times over again.  We’ll go mackerel-fishing, when the wind is fresh.  We’ll put a sail on the Lady Fal, and blow down the breeze on the estuary.  We’ll—­”

“And when’s all this to be?” broke in a languid voice.  We turned and saw our exhausted young table companion, Jimmy Doon, who had arrived on deck, yawning, to assume the duties of Officer on Submarine Watch.

“After the war, sure,” answered Doe.

Mr. Doon looked pained at such folly.

“My tedious lad,” he said, “do I gather that you are in the cavalry?”

“You do not, Jimmy,” said Doe.

“Nor yet in the artillery?”

“No, Jimmy.”

“Then I conceive you to be in the infantry.”

“You conceive aright, Jimmy.”

“Well, then, don’t be an unseemly ass.  There’ll be no ’after the war’ for the infantry.”

“In that case,” laughed Doe, who had been offensively classical, ever since he won the Horace Prize, “Ave, atque vale, England.”

After gazing down the wake of the Rangoon a little longer, we decided that England was finished with, and returned to our cabins to dress in silence.  And then, having read through twice the directions provided with Mothersill’s Sea-sick Remedy, we went down to breakfast.

At this meal the chief entertainment was the arrival of Major Hardy, limping from injuries sustained the previous night, and with an eye the colour of a Victoria plum.  “The old sport!” whispered the subalterns.  And that’s just what he was; for he was a major, who could run amok like any second lieutenant, and he was forty, if a day.

In the afternoon, when the sea was very lonely, the destroyers left us, which we thought amazingly thin of them.  So we searched out Jimmy Doon, and told him that, as Officer on Submarine Watch, he ought to swim alongside in their place.