At the Hotel I find the Commandant very cheerful. He has made Miss ----
his Secretary and Reporter till my return.[37]
He goes down to the quay to make arrangements for my transport and
returns after some considerable time. There have been difficulties
about this detail. And the Commandant has an abhorrence of details, even
of easy ones.
He comes back. He looks abstracted. I inquire, a little too anxiously,
perhaps, about my transport. It is all right, all perfectly right. He
has arranged with Dr. Beavis of the British Field Hospital to take me on
his ship.
He looks a little spent with his exertions, and as he has again become
abstracted I forbear to press for more information at the moment.
We breakfasted. Presently I ask him the name of Dr. Beavis's ship.
Oh, the _name_ of the ship is the _Dresden_.
Time passes. And presently, just as he is going, I suggest that it would
be as well for me to know what time the _Dresden_ sails.
This detail either he never knew or has forgotten. And there is
something about it, about the nature of stated times, as about all
things conventional and mechanical and precise, that peculiarly
exasperates him.