ruments. There was another school near by where bombers practised
their craft, making a great deal of noise. So far as sound was
concerned, we really might have been living on some very quiet
section of the front line.

We were in no peril of life or limb. There were only two ways in
which the enemy worried us. His submarines occasionally raided the
neighbourhood of our harbour. Then our letters were delayed and our
supply of English papers was cut off. And we had Zeppelin scares now
and then. I have never gone through a Zeppelin raid, and do not want
to. The threat was quite uncomfortable enough for me.

My first experience of one of these scares was exciting. I had dined,
well, at a hospitable mess and retired afterwards to the colonel's
room to play bridge. There were four of us--the colonel, my friend
J., the camp adjutant, and myself. On one side of the room stood the
colonel's bed, a camp stretcher covered with army blankets. In a
corner stood a washhand-stand, with a real earthenware basin on it. A
basin of this sort was a luxury among us. I had a galvanised iron pot
and was lucky. Many of us washed in folding canvas buckets. But that
colonel did himself well. He had a stove in his room which did not
smoke, and did give out some heat, a very rare kind of stove in the
army. He had four chairs of different heights and shapes and a table
with a dark-red table-cloth. Over our heads was a bright, unshaded
electric light. Our game went pleasantly until--the colonel had
declared two no-trumps--the light went out suddenly without warning.

The camp adjutant immediately said nasty things about the Royal
Engineers, who are responsible for our lights. J. suggested a
Zeppelin scare. The colonel, who wanted to play out his hand,
shouted for an orderly and light. The orderly brought us a miserably
inefficient candle in a stable lantern and set it in the middle of
the table. It was just possible to see our cards, and we played on. I
remembered Stevenson's shipwrecked crew who gambled all night on
Medway Island by the light of a fire of driftwood. I thought of the
men in Hardy's story who finished their game on the grass by the
light of a circle of glow-worms. Our position was uncomfortable but
picturesque.

Another orderly came in and said that the camp adjutant was wanted at
once in his office. We questioned the man and he confirmed J.'s fear
that a Zeppelin scare was in full swing. The adjutant was in the
position of dum