in the late afternoon,
crossed a narrow swing foot-bridge, and found himself on the main outer
sea-wall.

Following directions, he turned to the right and walked as if going out
to the harbour mouth a mile or so ahead. It seemed impossible that his
camp should be here, for on the one hand he was close to the harbour, and
on the other, over a high wall and some buildings, was plainly to be
espied the sea. A few hundred yards on, however, a crowd of Tommies were
lined up and passing embarkation officers for a big trooper, and Peter
concluded that this was the leave boat by which he was to mark his camp
across the road and more or less beyond it.

He crossed a railway-line, went in at a gate, and was there.

The officers' quarters had a certain fascination. You stepped out of
the anteroom and found yourself on a raised concrete platform at the
back of which washed the sea. Very extensive harbour works, half
completed, ran farther out in a great semicircle across a wide space of
leaden water, over which gulls were circling and crying; but the thin
black line of this wall hardly interrupted one's sense of looking
straight out to sea, and its wide mouth away on the right let in the
real invigorating, sea-smelling wind. The camp itself was a mere strip
between the railway-line and the water, a camp of R.E.'s to which he was
attached. He was also to work a hospital which was said to be close by.

It was pointed out to him later. The railway ran out all but to the
harbour mouth, and there ended in a great covered, wide station. Above
it, large and airy, with extensive verandahs parallel to the harbour,
was the old Customs, and it was this that had been transformed into a
hospital. It was an admirable place. The Red Cross trains ran in below,
and the men could be quickly swung up into the cool, clean wards above.
These, all on one level, had great glass doors giving access to the
verandahs, and from the verandahs broad gangways could be placed, running
men, at high tide, on to the hospital ship alongside. The nurses'
quarters were beyond, and their sitting-room was perched up, as it
were, sea on one side and harbour on the other.

At present, of course, Peter did not know all this. He was merely
conducted by an orderly in the dusk to the anteroom of the mess, and
welcomed by the orderly-officer, who led him into a comfortable room
already lit, in a corner of which, near a stove, four officers sat at
cards.

"Hearts three,