water they had raised huts on
piles. In front of these huts was a ledge or balcony. They looked like
overgrown bird-houses on stilts.

One fisherman waited in a boat to pick up the dead ducks, and the other
hurled stones from a sling. It was the same kind of a sling as the one
with which David slew Goliath. In Athens I saw small boys using it to
throw stones at an electric-light pole. The one the fisherman used was
about eight feet long. To get the momentum he whirled it swiftly above
his head as a cowboy swings a lariat, and then let one end fly loose,
and the stone, escaping, smashed into the mass of ducks. If it stunned
or killed a duck the human water-spaniel in the boat would row out and
retrieve it. To duck hunters at home the sport would chiefly recommend
itself through the cheapness of the ammunition.

On the road we met relays of water-carts and wagons that had been up the
hills with food for the gunners at the front; and engineers were at work
repairing the stone bridges or digging detours to avoid those that had
disappeared. They had been built to support no greater burden than a
flock of sheep, an ox-cart, or what a donkey can carry on his back, and
the assault of the British motor-trucks and French six-inch guns had
driven them deep into the mud.

After ten miles we came to what a staff officer would call an "advanced
base," but which was locally designated the "Dump." At the side of the
road, much of it uncovered to the snow, were stores of ammunition,
"bully beef," and barb-wire. The camp bore all the signs of a temporary
halting place. It was just what the Tommies called it, a dump. We had
not been told then that the Allies were withdrawing, but one did not
have to be a military expert to see that there was excellent reason why
they should.

They were so few. Whatever the force was against them, the force I saw
was not strong enough to hold the ground, not that it covered, but over
which it was sprinkled. There were outposts without supports, supports
without reserves. A squad was expected to perform the duties of a
company. Where a brigade was needed there was less than a battalion.
Against the white masses of the mountains and the desolate landscape
without trees, houses, huts, without any sign of human habitation, the
scattered groups of khaki only accented the bleak loneliness.

At the dump we had exchanged for the impromptu motor-truck, automobiles
of the French staff, and as "Jimmie" Hare and