Leonard Niell Cook, a Rugby and Oxford boy who had newly exchanged his student's gown for khaki, writing of 'Plymouth Sound,' tells how from the greensward he looked out across the sea he was on the eve of crossing, heard the harbour gun sound at sunset, saw
The homing traffic on the water's breast
Fold up their tawny wings and take their rest,
and, with the stars rising above him and 'God's quietness' about him, he thought of how soon he would be yonder in 'the gloomy courts of Fear' destined to be cut down,
Perchance to crown the pallid brow of Death.
In the 'Envoi,' addressed to his parents before he went out from Edinburgh, Hamish Mann writes:
Be calm. I follow where my friends have gone.
Have nought to fear,
I go to herald in the Glorious Dawn
Which breaks not here.
Be brave. A myriad mothers' sons before
Have trod this path...
and he bids them to be proud in his pride
