The men on the other ships bayed to us like packs of wolves, in part to give encouragement but principally jealous.

We began to expect to see France now at any minute--I, who can draw a map of the world and set the chief cities in the proper place, being as foolish as the rest.
There lay work as well as distance between us and France.
We began to pass men laboring to make the canal banks ready against attack, but mostly they had no news to give us.

Yet at one place, where we tied to the bank because of delay ahead, a man shouted from a sand-dune that the kaiser of Germany has turned Muhammadan and now summons all Islam to destroy the French and British.

Doubtless he mistook us for Muhammadans, being neither the first nor the last to make that mistake.
So we answered him we were on our way to Berlin to teach the kaiser his new creed.

One man threw a lump of coal at him and he disappeared, but presently we heard him shouting to the men on the ship behind.