Consequently he rode his bicycle carelessly, and was indifferent to tram-lines and some six inches of nice sticky mud on parts of the _pave_.

In the ordinary course, therefore, these things revenged themselves upon him.

He came off neatly and conveniently opposite a small _cafe debit_ at a turn in the dock road, and the mud prevented the _pave_ from seriously hurting him.
A Frenchman, minding the cross-lines, picked him up, and he, madame, her assistant, and a customer, carried him into the kitchen off the bar and washed and dried him.

The least he could do was a glass of French beer all round, with a franc to the dock labourer who straightened his handle-bars and tucked in a loose spoke, and for all this the War Office--if it was the War Office, for it may, quite possibly, have been Lord Northcliffe or Mr.Bottomley, or some other controller of our national life--was directly responsible.

When one thinks that in a hundred places just such disturbances were in progress in ten times as many innocent lives, one is appalled at their effrontery.