Tell England: A Study in a Generation

Then the piano rings out with ancient dance-tunes, and Harry Fenwick, prince of dancers, seizes Edgar Doe round the waist, and, clasping the slim youth to him, leads the boy (who's as graceful as a girl and as sinuous as a serpent) through the voluptuous movements of the latest dance. Up and down go their outstretched arms like a pump handle, but oh! so sweetly; round and round with eyes half-closed swirl their bodies; and, just as you think they are going round again, they surprise you by teasingly stepping out the music in a straight line across the lounge; and, when you least expect it, they are retracing dainty steps along the same straight line—always seductive, tantalising, enticing.

But stop the dance. Here arrives Major Hardy to a din of welcome. And under his instructions they burn the champagne corks, and therewith decorate their faces. One is ornamented with a pointed beard and the devil's horns, and turned into Mephistopheles. One is given an unshaven chin, and made to represent Moses Ikeystein. Another is a White-eyed Kaffir. And don't think Major Hardy omits himself. Not he. He is Hindenburg.

Jimmy Doon, I regret to say, is undoubtedly drunk. He is walking about seeking someone to fight. To my discomfiture he approaches me as his best friend, and therefore the one most likely to fight him.

"Will you fight?" says he. "There's a decent shap."

I try with a sickly laugh to appear at my ease, and answer: "No, damned if I will," blushing to the roots of my hair, and wishing the painful person would go away.

"And you call yourself a Christian!" retorts Jimmy; which provokes the rest of the subalterns to hold a court-martial on James Doon for being tight. And they court-martial Fishy Fielding, an ugly fellow, whose eyes are like a cod's. What for, you seek to know. Well, they court-martial him because of his face. Both culprits are found guilty.

At 1 a.m. Jimmy staggers to his cabin to rest a swimming head. But he doesn't go to sleep till he has summoned his steward, and instructed him to call him early in the morning—call him early—call him early, for he's to be Queen of the May.

§4

The riot had been still young when Doe entered the lounge from the deck, and, walking up to me, said:

"Come outside a minute."

He moved and spoke with the slight excitement and mysteriousness of one who had discovered something. I followed him out from the noise of the lounge into the silence of the deck.

"Come where it's quiet," he whispered.

We walked to the deserted bows.

"Now listen. Do you hear anything?"

"No," I answered, after awhile.

"Listen again. You won't catch it first go."

I strained my ears, while Doe stared at me.

"Yes, I hear it," I proclaimed at last. "Is it Helles, do you think, or Suvla?"

"I expect some of it is the old Turk trying to resist the invasion of Suvla."

For I had heard a distant throb in the air—no more—like a heart beating miles away. At times the throb became a rumble which could be felt rather than heard. Something in me jumped at the sound. The startled feeling was rather pleasing than otherwise. It was not a small thing to hear for the first time the guns of Gallipoli, to whose mouths our lives had been slowly drawing us during nineteen years.

§5

Padre Monty finished the voyage in his own style. Early the next morning he had a corporate farewell Mass for all his servers and his family. And this is the true story how Major Hardy chanced to limp to the service.

He retired early from the revels of the previous night, and, as Doe and I were getting into our bunks, we heard him in his cabin next door whistling "Home, sweet Home," while he disrobed. We heard the steward ask him:

"What time will you be called in the morning, sir?"

"What time?" answered the Major's voice, when he had finished the tune. "What time? Let's see. I say, Ray," he inquired through the wall, "this padre-fellow's got a service or something in the morning—what?"

"Yes, sir," shouted I.

"Some unearthly hour, seven or what?"

"Seven-thirty, sir."

"Ah yes," said the Major's voice, soft again, to the steward, "call me six-thirty."

"Yes, sir. Will you have shaving water then, sir?"

"Shaving water—what? Yes, surely." And the Major shouted through the wall: "We shave, don't we, Ray?"

"Well, yes, sir," agreed I.

"Of course," continued the Major, reproachfully, to the steward. "Bring shaving water. And there'll be the most deplorable row if it's not hot."

"Will you have a cup of tea to get up with, sir?" asked the steward.

"Tea? What? No, I don't think so. No, surely not." Once more he sought enlightenment through the wall. "We don't have tea, do we, Ray?"

"Well, no, sir. That's as you please."

"No. No tea, steward. Of course not. What nonsense!"

"Very good, sir. Good night, sir."

"Good night, steward.... You see, Ray," shouted Major Hardy, "I am a bit out of this church business. Must get into it again—what. And the padre's a good fellow."

In such wise Major Hardy half apologised to two boys for being present, and limped to the service.

Half a hundred others crowded the smoking room. This last Mass being what Monty called his "prize effort," he insisted on having two servers, and selected Doe and myself, whom he chose to regard as his "prize products." On either side of the altar we took our places, not now clad in white flannels, but uniformed and booted for going ashore. Monty, as he approached the altar, gave one quick, involuntary glance at his packed congregation, ready dressed for war, and slightly sparkled and flushed with pleasure.

After the Creed had been said, Monty turned to deliver a little farewell address. Very simply he told his hearers that, when in a few hours' time the boats came to take them to the Peninsula Beaches, they were to know that they were doing the right thing. There was a tense stillness, as he said with suggestive slowness: "I am only the lips of your Church. She has been with you on this ship, and striven not to fail you. And now to God's mercy and protection she commits you. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord give you His peace this day and evermore."

If Monty desired to fill the room with an unworldly atmosphere, and to raise the cloud "Shechinah" around his little altar, he knew by the solemn hush, as he turned to continue the Mass, that he had succeeded. And at the end of it all he added a farewell hymn, which the congregation rose from their knees to sing. Sung to the tune of "Home, sweet Home," like an echo from the purer parts of the previous night, its words were designed by Monty to linger for many a day in the minds of his soldier-servers.

So they sang: and they went out on to the sunlit deck trailing clouds of glory.

§6

It really did seem the end of the voyage, and the beginning of something utterly new—and something so dangerous withal that our pulse-rate quickened with suspense—when the Military Landing Officer came aboard, laden with papers, and, sitting at a table in the lounge, gave into the hands of boys, who yesterday were playing quoits-tennis, written orders to proceed at once to such places as W. Beach on Helles or the new front at Suvla.

"Here we take our tickets for the tumbrils," murmured Jimmy Doon, as we stood awaiting our turn. "Third single for La Guillotine."

And yet it was with a jar of disappointment that we heard the M.L.O. say to Doe, after consulting his papers:

"Stop at Mudros. Report to Rest Camp, Mudros East."

"Why, sir, am I not going to—" began Doe.

"Next, please. What name?" interrupted the M.L.O. There was war forty miles away, and no time to argue with a young subaltern. "What name, you?"

"Ray, sir. East Cheshires."

"Rest Camp, Mudros."

"But is it for long, sir?" ventured I.

"Next, please. What name, padre?"

"Monty," answered our friend. "East Cheshires."

"Report Rest Camp," promptly said the M.L.O., and, raising his voice, called to the waiting crowd: "All East Cheshire Details detained at Mudros."

"But I have to relieve—" began Monty.

"Next, please. What name?" the M.L.O. burst in, looking up into Jimmy Doon's face.

"Jimmy—I mean, Lieutenant Doon, Fifth East Lancs."

"Held up, Mudros. Report—"

"But my draft, sir, has—"

"Next, please."

And Jimmy came away, hoping he had heard the last of his draft. He joined our Cheshire group, which was discussing the latest thunderbolt.

"Lord, isn't it enormously unseemly?" he grumbled. "I'm left out, too. Why, I've been a year in the Army, and not yet seen a man killed. I hoped I was certain to see one now."

"You detestably gruesome little cad," said Monty.

"I wonder if it's for long," murmured Doe. "I'd take the risk of being killed rather than not be able to say I'd seen the great Cape Helles, or, failing Helles, this new Suvla front."

"As it is," grunted Jimmy, "we shall probably be at Mudros till the end of the world."

The M.L.O. had not been gone an hour before the Navy sent its pinnaces with large lighters in tow for conveying the first drafts to the Peninsula ferry-boats. Each pinnace was in command of a midshipman, generally a fair-haired English boy looking about fifteen. These baby officers, who gave their orders to wide-chested and bronzed Tars, old enough to be their fathers, were stared at by us with romantic interest. For there had been stories in England of the deeds of the middies in the famous First Landing at Helles, when they remained in the bows of the boats they commanded, scorning cover of any kind, as became British officers in charge of men.

After the lighters, the Snaefell, an old Isle of Man steamer, came alongside, and, having taken some hundreds of men aboard, edged away from us, while Major Hardy, his heart ever overthrowing his dignity, said wrathfully:

"Give 'em a cheer or something, damn you."

We raised a cheer. The men responded, though not very effectively, and cheered and waved as the Snaefell carried them away.

"They know what they're going to, poor lads," mumbled Major Hardy.

Next came the Redbreast, whose decks were soon as crowded as the Snaefell's had been. Major Hardy scanned them through his eyeglass, and then turned snuffily upon us and said:

"Damn your English reticence! Damn your unimaginative silence! Why don't you study the psychology of these boys and this moment?"

Leaning over the rail, he cried at the crowd on the Redbreast:

"Good-bye, lads. Let fly! Three cheers for the king! Let 'em go!"

The boys caught his enthusiasm, as boys always will, and followed his lead, cheering the king and singing: "For he's a jolly good fellow.... And so say all of us. With a hip-hip-hip-hurrah!"

And with them cheering and singing thus, the Redbreast slipped quietly away.

Major Hardy dropped his monocle on his chest. A good voyage—a jolly voyage—was over.

And now a little motor-launch puffed alongside to collect the Mudros Details: and we went down the Rangoon's hull to be ferried ashore. We were ferried, as you shall see, out of our dazzling news of the campaign into the darkness of collapsing things.

Part II: The White Heights

CHAPTER VII

MUDROS, IN THE ISLE OF LEMNOS

§1

The motor-launch beat away from the Rangoon. Monty, standing in the stern, lit a pipe, and stared over the match-flame at the empty troopship. Jimmy Doon, sitting in the bows, surveyed the hill-locked harbour, and said to me:

"Well, there's one comfort: we shan't be killed on Gallipoli."

"Why not?"

"Because we shall certainly die at Mudros."

Doe was brooding over the ships of the Navy on the water, and over the white camps of the Army on the dull, bleak hill-slopes.

"I didn't know there were so many ships in the world," he said.

It was a wonderful revelation of sea power. There were battleships, heavy and squat; cruisers, more slender and graceful; low-lying destroyers, coal black or silver grey; and hospital ships, which, in their glistening white paint, were as much more lovely than the men-of-war as ruth is more lovely than ruthlessness. Our little launch was passing heavy-gunned monitors; skirting round submarines that lay above the surface like the backs of whales; and panting along beneath the enormous Aquitania, whose funnels appeared to reach a higher sky than the surrounding hills. Flags flew everywhere: the white ensign from the masts of the Navy, the red ensign from the troopers, and the martial tricolour from the vessels of the Frenchmen.

Jimmy Doon sighed and pointed ashore. "Look at the unseemly hospitals," he said.

As he spoke, we were steering towards a little landing-jetty, called the "Egyptian Pier," and could see the Red Cross floating over the camps.

"Hospitals at Malta," groaned Jimmy, "hospitals at Alexandria, hospital ships all over the Mediterranean and the Ægean—Ray, it's dangerous: we'll go home."

But, instead, we stepped ashore. At once the reflected coolness of the water deserted us; the heady heat off the dusty land hit our flesh like the hot air from an oven; and a glare from the white, trampled dust and the white canvas tents troubled our eyes and set our temples aching. And the rolling hills, empty of growth, except grass burnt brown and thistles burnt yellow, gave us a shock of depression.

"Damn, oh damn," said Jimmy.

"Precisely," agreed Monty.

We walked on, till we reached an array of square tents that formed No. 16 Stationary Hospital. Here pale and emaciated men were wandering in pyjamas between tents marked "Dysentery," "Enteric," and "Infectious Wards."

"Damn," repeated Jimmy.

Then we came upon a barbed-wire compound, and, caught by the morbid fascination of all prisons, looked in. It was full of sick and wounded Turks, who lay on stretchers in bell-tents, and, by a miserable pantomime of raising two fingers to their lips and blowing into the air, besought of our charity a cigarette. We went in, and handed Abdullas among them. And that—now I come to think of it—was our first encounter with the enemy we had been sent to fight.

At the Rest Camp Doe and I were pushed into a tent that, insufficiently supplied with pegs, was flapping irritatingly in a rising wind. Sighing for the cosy cabins of the Rangoon, we tossed off our equipment on to the earthy floor and lounged into the mess for lunch. In the mess tent we sat down to trestle-tables, laid with coarse enamelled plates and mugs.

Monty turned to Jimmy, and asked: "What was that remark you made just now, James Doon?"

"Damn," answered Jimmy with great readiness.

"Thanks," said Monty.

After lunch there came to Doe and myself the only pleasing thing in a day of gloom. That was the joy of dressing up in the true tropical kit worn at Mudros; brown brogue shoes; pale brown stockings, turned down at the calves; khaki drill shorts, displaying bare knees; khaki shirts open at the throats, and with sleeves rolled up above white elbows; our topees, and no more. And, since we were sure we looked very nice, we decided to walk abroad among men. Besides, the shameful whiteness of our knees and forearms must be browned at once by a walk in the toasting sun.

We set off for the village of Mudros East. It proved to be a collection of ramshackle dwellings, as little habitable as English cowhouses; of stores, where thieving Greeks sold groceries to the soldiers; and of taverns, whose vines hung heavily clustered over porch and window. There was an ornate and lofty Greek Orthodox Church, and a little, unconsidered cemetery, where the bones of the dead were working their way above the ground.

In the streets of this tumble-down town walked every type of Gallipoli campaigner: British Tommies, grousing and cheerful; Australians, remarkable for their physique; deep-brown Maoris; bearded Frenchmen in baggy trousers; shining and grinning African negroes from French colonies; stately Sikhs; charming little Gurkhas, looking like chocolate Japanese; British Tars in their white drill; and similarly clad sailors of Russia, France and Greece.

It was while strolling through this fancy-dress fair that we suddenly came upon the camp of the French, and were briskly saluted by a French sentry. We returned a thrilling acknowledgment. For it was the first time that our great Ally had greeted our advent into the area of war.

Lord! how the wind was rising! And with it the dust! The grey motor ambulances, as they purred past with their sick, raised dust storms, that blew away over the roofs in clouds as high again as the houses. The ships and the harbour, though it was a sunny, cloudless day, could only be seen through a flying veil of dust. Quickly the vines, overhanging the porches, became white with dust; our teeth and palates coated with it. We hastened home to the sorry shelter of the mess that we might wash the dust down our throats with tea.

But bah! we went out of the dust into the flies. The mess was buzzing with them; and they were accompanied in their attacks upon our persons by bees, who hummed about like air-ships among aeroplanes. I dropped upon the table a speck of Sir Joseph Paxton's excellent jam, now peppered and gritty with dust, and in a few seconds it was hidden by a scrimmage of black flies, fighting over it and over one another. Other flies fell into my tea, and did the breast-stroke for the side of the mug. I pushed the mug along to Jimmy Doon, and pointed out to him, with the conceit of the expert, that they were making the mistake of all novices at swimming; they were moving their arms and legs too fast, and getting no motive power out of their leg-drive.

"Don't talk to me about 'em," said Jimmy. "I'm fast going mad. I'm not knocking 'em off my jam, but swallowing the little devils as they sit there. If I didn't do that, they'd commit suicide down my throat. Every time so far that I've opened my mouth to inhale the breeze, I've taken down a fly. It's tedious."

Ah! this wit was all forced gaiety, and the more depressing for that. It generated melancholy, as a damp fire generates smoke. I felt there was something wrong around me this afternoon—a shadow of evil. The conversation died: only the flies buzzed monotonously over us, as though we were offal or carrion; and the wind blew the dust in hail-storms against the canvas walls of the tent. And then it came—the terribly evil thing. The O.C. Rest Camp entered the mess, and announced with cynical cheerfulness:

"Well, we've lost this campaign. The great new landing at Suvla has failed."

There was a ghastly silence, and a voice muttered, "God!"

"Yes, and had it succeeded we'd have won. But the Turks have got us held at Suvla beneath Sari Bair, same as they've got us held at Helles beneath Achi Baba. The news is just filtering through."

With horror I listened to the cold-blooded statement. The shock of it produced a beating in the head, and a sickness. And I felt foolish, as though I might do something lunatic, like giving a witless shout, or running amok with a table-knife. I touched Doe, and whispered: "I'm going to get out of this. The old fool doesn't know what he's talking about."

I went away, and flung myself down on my valise in my flapping tent. I lay on my back, my hands clasped behind my head, and gazed up into the tent-roof loud with flies. Suvla had failed! It was a lie—an alarmist lie! Why, only yesterday we had exulted in it as the winning move, declaring that the game was over bar shouting, and regretting that we could not be in at the death. What was it reminding me of—this sudden "black-out," just as the lights had been brightest? Ah, I had it: that moment, when, in the flush of winning the Swimming Cup for Bramhall, I learned that I had lost it. How similar this was! Then the prize had been a silver cup, which had been fought for by a parcel of schoolboys. Now the grander trophy was that silver strip of the Dardanelles which men called "the Narrows," and the combatants were a pack of nations.

Suvla had failed! Why was I identifying my tiny self with a huge thing like Britain, and feeling that, because she had failed in her great fight for the Dardanelles, so I would fail, and purposely, in my little struggle after moral beauty? What a fool I was—but that was how it was working out. Beauty be hanged! Monty was badly wrong in proclaiming that nature was chiefly beautiful, and life on the whole was good. And, if he were wrong, why, then there was no further need to toil after a beauty of character to match the beauty of seas and hills. Good heavens! Beauty in the Mudros Hills! They were but homes of thirsty grass and dying thistles, dust and torturing flies. These ideals of Monty's were vapoury. Why not throw them up—throw up moral effort? I would. There was not more beauty—

It was at this moment that Monty himself stood in the tent door.

"Down, Rupert?" he asked. "What's the matter?"

I looked up into his eyes, and saw in them that inquiring sympathy which could so quickly transfigure him from a lively friend into a gentle priest.

"Oh, nothing," I said. I was in no mood just now to tell him anything. "Bored, that's all."

And then I looked round, and noticed that the tent was full of a violet light. It was as if limelight had been turned on from behind a violet glass.

"Good Lord!" I exclaimed. "The air's all coloured!"

"Yes," said he, "I was coming to tell you to look at the sunset. It's bad old Mudros's one good deed."

Out to the tent door I went, and looked over the harbour to the western shores. And there, very rapidly, the ball of the sun was going down behind the hills with an affair of gold and crimson lights, while all the hills were violet. The colour was so strong that it came out and flushed with violet the black hulls of the ships. And they, strangely motionless, lay mirrored in a water of white and gold.

"Listen!" said Monty.

For from all the camps the British bugles were singing the sad call of "Retreat"; the French trumpets wailing "Sun-down," and their rifles firing a rapid fusillade to speed the departing day. Meanwhile the heat had died into a refreshing coolness; the wind had dropped, leaving the dust undisturbed on the ground; and the flies were roosting in the tops of the tents.

Very soon it was quite dark. Then everything lit up: first, the camps on the hills, their innumerable hurricane-lamps resembling the lights of great cities; then, the vessels in the bay—and, in the quiet of the windless evening, their bells, telling the hour, came clearly over the water. The long hulls of the hospital ships marked themselves off by rows of green lights and large, luminous red crosses. Reflected in the still water, they gave to the basin the appearance of a pleasure lake, gay with red and green fairy lamps. The battleships hid their bellicose features in the darkness, and, since one or two of them had their bands playing, might have been pleasure steamers. And from an Indian encampment behind us came a weird incantation and the steady beat of the tom-tom.

Somehow, in the beauty of the Mudros night, I felt a spring of new hope in our campaign. We would win in the end. And with this re-born confidence went nobler resolutions for myself. To-morrow I would resume moral effort. To-morrow I would begin again.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GREEN ROOM

§1

The story of our two-months' delay at Mudros is largely the story of Monty's eccentricities. As for Doe and myself, we just watched with growing pride our knees burning in the sun to a Maori brown. When we bathed in the bay and saw that, while our bodies as a whole were a pale English pink, our elbows, knees and necks, that were daily exposed to the sun, were turning to this beautiful tint, we would place our limbs side by side to see which of us achieved the greater depth of colour. For this we drew our pay.

Jimmy Doon received early his orders to join his regiment on the Peninsula. He left us, declaring that he only contemplated paying a flying visit to the front, as the very sound of the guns convinced him that he was a civilian at heart. He would be back soon, he said.

Monty appointed himself Chaplain to No. 16 Stationary Hospital, and set to work. And during this period at Mudros he was just about as regrettable and impossible in his behaviour as I have ever known him. He procured a gramophone, and, touring the tents, in which the sick men lay, would set the atrocious instrument playing, "Kitty, Kitty, isn't it a pity in the city you work so hard?" The invalids loved the jingling refrain, and added to the plagues of Mudros by roaring its chorus. Then Monty would return in the worst of tempers to our tent, and, putting the instrument roughly away, sit down and look miserable. If Doe asked permission to feel his pulse or see his tongue, he would shut him up with the words, "Oh, stuff!" But once he laughed sarcastically and burst, with all the Monty enthusiasm and emphasis, into a diatribe against Broad Churchmanship, the ignorance of laymen, the timidity of the clergy, wishy-washy sermons—in short, the criminal lack of dogmatic teaching. Not seeing any connexion between dogmatic teaching and a gramophone, Doe looked so amazed that Monty laughed, and grumbled:

"It's fine priestly work I'm doing for these lads, isn't it? Work any hospital orderly could do. I ought to be hearing their confessions, and saying Mass for them. Instead I play them 'Kitty, Kitty, isn't it a pity—?' But they don't understand—they don't understand."

"But, gracious heavens," said Doe, "you can't be always doing priestly work. And we know to our sorrow that you do have sing-song services sometimes. Why, last night you had at least a couple of hundred bawling hymns at the tops of their voices, and making the night hideous. Wasn't that priestly enough?"

"No," he snapped. "It was a service any layman or hot-gospeller could hold. There they were—a mass of bonny lads, all calling themselves 'C. of E.,' and none of them knowing anything about the Mass or confession. Ah, they don't understand. It breaks my heart, Rupert. All sons of the Church; and they don't know the lines of their mother's face!"

"Well, why on earth," said Doe, impatiently, "do you run your beastly gramophone and your rousing services, if they're not your proper work?"

"Why, don't you see?" murmured Monty, turning away to watch the sun setting behind a sweep of violet hills, "I must pull my weight. I can feel patriotic at times. And, if I can't be a priest to the big majority, I can at least be their pal. That's how a padre's work pans out: a priest to the tiny few, and a pal to the big majority. I suppose it's something. Perhaps it's something."

§2

It was Monty who first called Mudros, "The Green Room." The name was happily chosen, for here at Mudros the actors either prepared for their entry on the Gallipoli stage, or returned for a breather, till the call-boy should summon them again. In it, after the manner of green rooms, we discussed how the show in the limelight was going. We saw much that made us gossip.

We saw the huge black transports bear into Mudros Bay. Many were ships that were the pride of this watery planet. Like a duchess sailing into a ball-room came the Mauretania, making the mere professional warships and the common merchantmen look very small indeed. But even she, haughty lady, was put in the shade, when her young but gargantuan sister, the Aquitania, floating leisurely between the booms, claimed the attention of the harbour, and reduced us all to a state of grovelling homage. And then the Olympic, not to be outdone by these overrated Cunarders, would join the company with her nose in the air.

They were packed with yellow-clad and helmeted soldiers, who were as noisy about their entrance as the great ships were silent. Tommy, coming into harbour at the end of a voyage, had a habit of announcing his approach. So, when we on the land heard over the water shouting, singing, genial oaths, "How-d'ye-do's," and "What-ho's"; and such advices as "Cheerioh! The Cheshires are here!" "We'll open them Narrows for you"; "Here we are, here we are, here we are again," or the simple statement "We've coom!" we left our tents, and just went into our field-glasses, as one goes into a theatre.

The men in the transports were delayed a night in the harbour, and on the following day disgorged into the floating omnibuses that plied nightly to Suvla or Helles. These omnibuses were old Isle of Man passenger steamers, jolly old tubs, doing their bit like papa and uncle and grandad in the National Guard at home. Being due to arrive with their crowds of fighting men at the Peninsula in the darkness of midnight, they would get under way just before dusk. They went out with the sun, travelling straight and slowly between the hulls.

To the lads, thus being drawn to the danger-zone, a send-off would be given in salvos of cheers from the sides of the anchored vessels, the bands of the Navy sometimes playing them out with the old airs of England. And the lads themselves, enjoying their evanescent triumph, and feeling like the applauded heroes on a carnival car, would shout back a merry response, or pick up the chorus of the tune rendered by the distant band.

Many a still evening Doe and I watched their departure, knowing that soon we should go out of the port like that in the red of a sunset. And Monty, hearing the cries of "Good Luck," "Love to Johnny Turk," "Finish it off quickly," "Hi, put yer trust in Gawd, and keep your 'ead down," and the faint strains of "Steady, boys, steady, we'll fight and we'll conquer again and again," would bewail the fact that he was too far off to cheer, and give vent to rising and choking feelings. He wanted to pat these departing lads on the back. For in the Green Room they had dressed for their parts, and were now going through the door on their way to the stage.

§3

Were we really winning on the Peninsula or losing? August, in spite of that black remark of the O.C. Rest Camp, decided that all was well. The fresh arrivals on the troopships brought with them like a breeze from the homeland that atmosphere of glowing optimism which prevailed in England in the early August days. The same news came from the opposite direction. For the streams of wounded, who in the weeks following the Suvla invasion poured into our Mudros hospitals, told us that the Turk was fairly on the run. "It can't last long," they said. "We've only to climb one of them two hills—either Sari Bair on the Suvla front, or old Achi Baba at Helles—and the trick's done. From the top of either of 'em we shall look down upon the Narrows, and blow their forts to glory. Up'll go the Navy, and there y'are!" It would be over by Christmas, they believed; for Christmas was always the pivot of Tommy's time.

So spoke August, drinking deep from cups overflowing with confidence. September detected a taste of doubt in the cheery optimism of the Green Room, and like a loyal British September, spat out the unpalatable mouthful. But the taste remained.

Nothing but stagnation seemed to be prevailing on the Peninsula. The incessant roll of guns could no longer be heard at Mudros. The old-time shifts of wounded ceased to pour into our hospitals. In their stead came daily crowds of dysentery, jaundice and septic cases. And these men told a different tale from the wounded, who, a month before, had returned from the stage like actors aglow with triumph. All reported "Nothing doing" on Gallipoli.

And the Big Rains were fast drawing due. The time was at hand when the ravines and gorges that cracked and spliced the Mudros Hills would roar to the torrents, and the hard, dust-strewn earth would become acres of mud, from which our tent-pegs would be drawn like pins out of butter. We remembered Elijah on Mount Carmel, and looked at the sky for rain.

But we looked in alarm and not hope. For, if the Narrows were not forced before the rains and sea-storms began, the campaign, we understood, would be doomed to disaster. The rain would turn our great Intermediate Base, Mudros, into a useless lagoon, and the sea-storms would beat on the beaches of the Peninsula, smash the frail jetties built at Suvla and Helles, and, by preventing the landing of supplies, condemn the Suvla army and the Helles army to annihilation or surrender.

"Surely, oh surely," said Monty, looking up one day at a cloudy sky, "something largely conceived will be attempted before the rains work havoc among the communications on land, and the storms slash at the communications by sea. We must be going to win."

"O Lord, yes," echoed I.

But September with its dry weather began to wane, the rains started a plaguy pelting, and the winds commenced to excite the placid Ægean, while we still awaited big movements and final things.

§4

Then the evil Peninsula sent straight to Monty's feet something that seemed like a direct message of scornful warning to our little Rangoon group. It was such a message as defiant kings have sent to banter those who contemplated an invasion of their realms. This is how it came.

Day after day (you must know) in the early morning, the dead, sewn up in their blankets, were landed from the ships that had picked them up in a dying condition at Suvla and Helles. They were laid in rows on the little landing-jetty, the "Egyptian Pier." After awhile the men would put them by in a mortuary tent, where they rested till the evening, when a G.S. waggon conveyed them to the cemetery.

Generally Monty, whose duty it was to bury them, would sit on the driver's seat and ride to the cemetery, after persuading Doe and me to ride with him.

On a certain September evening Monty glanced at the Camp Commandant's "chit," and read it aloud to us: "'Seven bodies for burial at 1700.' Are you coming?"

Doe turned towards me. "Coming, Rupert?"

"No. I'm too tired."

"Oh, rot, you scrimshanker. You've been hogging it all the afternoon."

"Yes, come on," said Monty. "We'll drive on the waggon."

The G.S. waggon with its seven blanketed forms was outside waiting for Monty. It was drawn by two teams of mules with mounted drivers. The driver's seat was therefore vacant, and on to it Monty, Doe and I climbed. The waggon started, as Monty whispered: "It's rather like the Dead Cart in the days of the Great Plague, isn't it?" We never spoke loud with that load behind us.

The waggon jolted along the straight white road to the cemetery, which was a little dusty acre on a plain between the hills. We halted at the gate, and Monty, getting down from his seat, robed by the front wheels. And, when the seven bodies had been removed in their stretchers from the waggon and laid in a line upon the road, the corporal of the Burial Party saluted Monty, and said:

"One's an officer, sir. Will you take him first?"

"I'll go in front," answered Monty. "Then the seven bodies, one after another, the officer's body leading. Feet first, of course."

"Very good, sir." The corporal, seeing that the bearers stood ready at the head and foot of each stretcher, said quietly:

"Bearers, raise!"

All the bearers bent in simultaneous motion, and lifted the stretchers from the road.

"Slow—march!"

The procession moved off, Monty in front picking his way between the graves towards those open to receive the day's dead. The Greek grave-diggers rested on their spades, and bared their heads. Some stray French soldiers sprang to attention, and saluted. A few curious British and a tall brown Sikh copied the Frenchmen, remaining at the salute till the procession had passed. And, when the open graves were reached, all these stragglers gathered round to form a little company of mourners.

Having seen the bodies laid by the graves, the corporal bent over the form of the dead officer, and removed from his breast that small piece of paper, which was always pinned to the blanket to state the man's identity: in this case it happened to be a government envelope, marked "On His Majesty's Service." The corporal handed it to Monty.

I recall the moment of his action as the last quiet moment before an unexpected shock. I seem to remember that it was a very graceful body, long and shapely, that lay there, outlined beneath the tightly-wrapped blanket. It looked like an embalmed Egyptian.

Monty read the envelope, and frowned. He read it again, crumpled it up, and looked down at the long, slender form of the dead officer. Then, glancing round for Doe and me, and catching our eyes, as we watched him in curiosity, he handed the envelope to us. We smoothed out its crumpled folds, and read: "On His Majesty's Service. Lieut. James Doon."

This was the message that the Peninsula had contemptuously tossed to us.

Monty began the service, but I scarcely heard him. I was staring at the blanketed form, and thinking of Jimmy as he had been: Jimmy with all his bitter jests about death; Jimmy grumbling on the Rangoon because he would have to stay at Mudros "till the end of the world"; Jimmy leaving for the Peninsula with the words that he would be back soon. I thought how strange it was that we should have been sitting on that G.S. waggon, without knowing that we were taking a last ride with Jimmy Doon. I pictured again Jimmy being borne into the cemetery, feet first, at the head of his six dead men.

"Man that is born of a woman—" Monty was saying, and, as the words fell, the bearers raised with ropes the corpse from off its stretcher, and began to lower it into the grave.

"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust—" At this point the kindly French and British onlookers and the tall brown Sikh picked up their handfuls of earth, and threw them upon the body as their compliment to the dead.

The sight of Jimmy going down into his grave on the lengthening ropes started in me a real grief, and, when the strangers paid their simple respect to the unknown dead, I felt momentarily stricken, and shivered with pride that I had known him whom they thus honoured. But all this passed away, and left a dull indifference. The war was fast teaching me its petrifying lesson—to be incapable of horror. I tried to recover my sorrow, thinking that I ought to do so, but I could feel no emotion at all. "This sort of thing," ran my thoughts, "seems to be the order of the day for the generation in which we were born. It's all very fine, or all very unfair. I don't know. The old Colonel and Monty said it was very glorious, so no doubt it must be. But, whatever it is, we're all in it. Poor old Jimmy."

So I fell into a mood that was partly the resignation of perplexity, partly a sulkiness with fate. With the same blunted mind, perceiving no pain, I watched the Greek diggers, at the end of the service, as they began to shovel the earth on to my friend's body. First they tossed it so that it fell in a little pile on his breast; then they threw it, dust and clods, over his feet, till at last only the head, hooded in its blanket, was uncovered. They turned their attention to that, and the earth fell heavily on Jimmy Doon's face. I turned unfeelingly away.

Poor Jimmy, a mere super in the Gallipoli drama, had played his trifling part on the stage, and was now sleeping in the Green Room.

Was it all very fine, or all very unfair? In my tent that evening I worried the problem out. At first it seemed only sordid that James Doon should have his gracious body returned by that foul Peninsula, like some empty crate for which it had no further use, to be buried without firing party, drums or bugles. But every now and then I caught a glimpse of my mistake. I was thinking in terms of matter instead of in terms of spiritual realities. I must try to get the poetic gift of the old Colonel and Monty, whose thoughts did not prison themselves in flesh but travelled easily in the upper air of abstract ideals like glory and beauty and truth. But it was difficult. Only in my exalted moments could I breathe in that high air.

And I could not climb to-night. Perhaps if they had but sounded the "Last Post" at Jimmy's burial, I should have lost sight of its grossness and caught the vision of its glory. I was wondering if this would have unveiled the hidden beauty, when, very strangely, the bugles in all the camps rang out with the great call. It was dark, and they were sounding the "Last Post" over the close of the day's work. But for those who preferred to think so, it was blown over the day's dead.

CHAPTER IX

PROCEEDING FORTHWITH TO GALLIPOLI

§1

"Look here, Doe," said I, with my finger on a map of the Island of Lemnos. "If you've guts enough to walk with me over these five miles of hills to this eastern coast, it strikes me we shall actually see a distant vision of the Peninsula itself."

Doe looked learnedly at the map.

"With a clear sky and field-glasses we might make out the fatal old spot," said he. "Come on—we'll try."

So we turned our faces eastward through the afternoon, unaware that we were about to take a last bird's-eye view of the great Naval and Military Base of Mudros, and a first peep at the Gallipoli Peninsula, where in less than a hundred hours we should be digging ourselves a home.

We bent our backs to the task of toiling up the hillsides. We found the slopes carpeted with dry grass and yellow thistles, and sprinkled with loose stones and large lumps of rock. Long-haired sheep with bells a-tinkle, sleepy black cows, and tiny mules browsed among the arid thistles, or scratched their backs against the broken rocks.

Down into the valleys we went, and up and over the summits. It was dull prose in the valleys, but fine poetry on the summits. For, whereas in the valleys we saw nothing but thistles and stones, on the summits we enjoyed extensive views of lap-like hollows nursing little white villages; we caught distant specks, brilliantly lighted in the sun, of the encircling sea; and we wondered at the blood-coloured rocks which suggested volcanic disturbances and lava streams.

After dipping into several depressions and surmounting several yokes, we suddenly overtopped the last ridge and looked down upon a tableland, which bore, like a tray of tea-things, the white buildings of a little village. The plateau was the edge of Lemnos, and ran to the brink of a jagged cliff. Beyond lay the empty waters.

"Look," said Doe, a little dreamily; "now we shall see what we shall see."

We lay down on the cliff-edge in the attitude of the sphinx, and brought our powerful field-glasses into play. And through them we saw, in the far-off haze, things that accelerated the beating of our hearts.

There, right away across forty miles of blue Ægean, was a vague, grey line of land. It was broken in the middle as if it opened a channel to let the sea through. The grey land, west of the break, was the end of Europe, the sinister Peninsula of Gallipoli. The break itself, bathed in a gentle mist, was the deadly opening to the Dardanelles. Presumably, one of those hill-tops, just visible, was old Achi Baba, which had defeated the invaders of Helles; and another, Sari Bair, beneath which lay the invaders of Suvla, wondering if they, too, had been beaten by a paltry hill.

The entrancing sight was bound to work upon Doe's nature. Still looking through his glasses, he asked:

"I say, Roop, what's the most appealing name that the War has given to the history of Britain—Mons, or Ypres, or Coronel, or what?"

"Gallipoli," I replied, knowing this was the answer he wanted.

"Just so. And shall I tell you why?"

"Yes, thanks. If you'll be so obliging."

"Well, it's because the strongest appeal that can be addressed to the emotional qualities of humanity is made by the power called Pathos—"

"Good heavens!" I began.

"And there, my boy," pursued Doe, "in picture-form before you, this humid afternoon, is the answer to your question."

"But it was your question," I suggested.

"Don't be a fool, Rupert. Ask me what I mean."

"What the deuce do you mean?"

"I mean this: that the romantic genius of Britain is beginning to see the contour of Gallipoli invested with a mist of sadness, and presenting an appearance like a mirage of lost illusions."

I told him that he was very poetical this afternoon, whereupon he sat up and, having put his field-glasses in their case, made this irrelevant remark:

"Do you remember the central tower of Truro Cathedral, near my home?"

"Yes."

"Well, do you think it's anything like a lily? For mercy's sake say it is."

"Why?" I demanded.

"And it does change colour in the changing light, doesn't it, Rupert? Say 'Yes,' you fool—say 'Yes.'"

"Why?"

"Oh, because I've written—I've written some verses about it—when I was a bit homesick, I s'pose—and I'd like you to tell—"

"Hand them over," sighed I.

"I will, since you're so pressing. They're in the Edgar Doe stanza."

Doe gave me a soiled piece of paper, and watched me breathlessly. I read: