esy with which an officer, on meeting a private carrying
two overflowing buckets of kitchen refuse, steps down into the mud to
let his humble brother-in-arms pass. Where there are no duck-walks, we
employ planks laid across the mud. In comparatively dry weather these
planks lie some two or three inches below the mud, and much innocent
amusement may be derived from trying to locate them. In wet weather,
however, the planks float to the surface, and then of course
everything is plain sailing. When it snows, we feel for the planks
with our feet. If we find them we perform an involuntary and
unpremeditated ski-ing act: if we fail, we wade to our quarters
through a sort of neapolitan ice--snow on the top, mud underneath.

Our parade-ground is a mud-flat in front of the huts. Here we take our
stand each morning, sinking steadily deeper until the order is given
to move off. Then the battalion extricates itself with one tremendous
squelch, and we proceed to the labours of the day.

Seriously, though--supposing the commanding officer were to be delayed
one morning at orderly-room, and were to ride on to the parade-ground
twenty minutes late, what would he find? Nothing! Nothing but a great
_parterre_ of glengarries, perched upon the mud in long parallel rows,
each glengarry flanked on the left-hand side by the muzzle of a rifle
at the slope. (That detached patch over there on the left front,
surrounded by air-bubbles, is the band. That cavity like the crater
of an extinct volcano, in Number one Platoon of A Company, was once
Private Mucklewame.)

And yet people talk about the sinking of the _Birkenhead!_

* * * * *

This morning some one in the Department has scored another ten points.
Word has just been received that we are to move again to-morrow--to a
precisely similar set of huts about a hundred yards away!

They are mad wags on Olympus.

XII

AND SOME FELL BY THE WAYSIDE

"_Firing parrty, revairse arrms_!"

Thus the platoon sergeant--a little anxiously; for we are new to this
feat, and only rehearsed it for a few minutes this morning.

It is a sunny afternoon in late February. The winter of our discontent
is past. (At least, we hope so.) Comfortless months of training are
safely behind us, and lo! we have grown from a fortuitous concourse of
atoms to a cohesive unit of fighting men. Spring is coming; spring is
coming; our blood runs quicker; active service is within measur