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Updated: May 5, 2025
On the quay we find ourselves in a great crowd of grey uniformed soldiers, many of them mere lads, carrying their kit, and drawn up in lines waiting their turn to march on board the towering troopship anchored alongside, while some of them wind up the gangway like a great grey snake.
Nurses wearing the Red Cross, religious workers with a look of wonder in their eyes, a few sent by the Government on some particular mission, but all were taking part in the great War which was staggering the world. Perhaps a mile or more out at sea a great Destroyer proudly spurned the waves; she was to guard the troopship along her perilous passage. Presently they landed at Boulogne.
In process of time, thanks to his intimate knowledge of drill and musketry exercise, the excellent Mulcahy, wearing the corporal's stripe, went out in a troopship and joined Her Majesty's Royal Loyal Musketeers, commonly known as the 'Mavericks, because they were masterless and unbranded cattle-sons of small farmers in County Clare, shoeless vagabonds of Kerry, herders of Bally-vegan, much wanted 'moonlighters' from the bare rainy headlands of the south coast, officered by O'Mores, Bradys, Hills, Kilreas, and the like.
We turn with relief to Scott, though not to 'Scott's Works, in the sense in which the phrase is generally used, as though they were a foundry from which everything is issued of the same workmanship and excellence; whereas there is as much difference between them as there was in her Majesty's ships of old between the gallant seventy-four and the crazy troopship.
Under these circumstances Sir Hercules Robinson proved a friend in need; and, having admonished us to secrecy, he told us that the P. and O. Victoria, the troopship we had noticed in the harbour, was under orders to leave at once for Durban to pick up Dr.
The 'Cardigan Castle' had been a swagger liner until she was impounded by Government to act as troopship, and she was provided with splendid bathrooms. Carrington opened the door quietly, and was feeling for the switch of the electric, when he noticed, to his great surprise, that a port hole opposite was open. Needless to say, this was absolutely forbidden.
Now a squadron of men-of-war: not the hideous, shapeless ironclad of to-day, but the traditional three-decker, with its tiers of snarling teeth and its beauty of white-bellying canvas and majestic spar. Now a troopship with its consorts, two, or three, or more, tightly packed with their living cargo whole regiments of red-coated soldiers on their way to Malta and beyond.
Troopship after troopship had crossed the Channel carrying Sir John French's little army to the Continent, while the boasted German fleet, impotent to menace the safety of our transports, lay helpless bottled up, to quote Mr. Asquith's phrase, "in the inglorious seclusion of their own ports."
When they sailed into harbour the Four Hundred immediately arrested two or three of the Parali and, taking the vessel from the rest, shifted them into a troopship and set them to keep guard round Euboea.
"My only wish is to please you." He paused for a reply, but as Evadne had nothing more to say, he was obliged to recommence: "The regiment," he said, "is going to Malta at once, and I must go with it. And what I would venture to suggest is, that you should follow when you feel inclined, by P. and O. Fellows will understand that I don't care to have you come out on a troopship.
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