From Skagen our passage home was arranged by the British Consular authorities. The journey from Skagen to Copenhagen was rather trying, since we had to leave the too well-heated train during the night and embark on train ferries when crossing from mainland to island and from one island to another. It was bitterly cold. We made our first acquaintance with bread and butter tickets at Skagen, and found them also in use on the railways and train ferries in Denmark and Scandinavia.
We arrived at Copenhagen about 8.30 on the following morning. When at Skagen I had written to Sir Ralph Paget, K.C.M.G., His Britannic Majesty's Minister to Denmark--whom we had known some years before when filling a similar position in Siam--telling him of our rescue. Lady Paget and he were waiting at the station to meet us. They straightway took my wife and myself off to the British Legation in Copenhagen, and insisted on us remaining there as their guests during our stay in the Danish capital. They were the personification of kindness to us, and helped us in every possible way, and it would be quite impossible for us to express adequately our great indebtedness to them. We obtained fresh _visés_ for our passports from the British, Swedish, and Norwegian Consulates, and my wife, who had been unable in Siam to obtain a passport to travel to England, was granted an "emergency passport," on which she was described as an "ex-prisoner." The Germans had, quite unintentionally, it is true, helped her to get to England when our own Government had forbidden it.
We left Copenhagen on the evening of March 4th, and once more during the night embarked in a train ferry to cross to Sweden at Helsingborg. The next morning found us at Goteborg. The old Mauritius woman and her grandchild had been accommodated in a sleeping carriage with two berths. Not being used to such luxuries and not knowing what to do in such surroundings, they had deposited their garments on the bunks and slept on the floor, which doubtless came more natural to them!
The same evening we arrived at Christiania; unfortunately we saw nothing of this capital, as we arrived late at night, crossed to a hotel near the railway station, and returned to the station to resume our journey on the next morning before it was fully light. The whole of the next day we were travelling through Norway in brilliant dazzling sunshine, over snowclad mountains--some so high that vegetation was absent--finally leaving Bergen in the late afternoon of March 7th on the S.S. _Vulture_. From the _Wolf_ to the _Vulture_ did not look very promising!