e afternoon, and they would return to camp, to
"stables" and evening. Palmerston normally was never anything else
than a quiet country town of sober habits and eminent respectability,
but now the echoing emptiness of her streets was gone, the lights shone
brilliantly across the Square, the air was full of the murmur of the
crowd, the tread of heavy boots, the tinkling of spurs and glasses and
the laughter of merry parties. Perspiring waiters and flustered
waitresses fed the hordes in the hotels, while the baths worked
overtime. The road to the camp lay like a searchlight beam across the
landscape--the cloud of never-resting dust lit by the strong headlights
of a thousand taxis which careered along the rough road, careless of
life or of their own future. Happy and weary, the men came streaming
back to camp, entering by the front if before "Lights Out," through the
pine plantations if after.

At length embarkation orders became concrete and remained so.

The camp buzzed with excitement, and, when night came, all were busy
getting the gear ready. No one slept, and, in the dark, silent hours
before the dawn, the camp was struck. The neat lines of tents became
merely small bundles and odd poles, while hundreds of figures passed
hither and thither amid blazing fires of straw. In the early light the
Regiment moved away from the pleasant camp of Awapuni, the first of
many such abodes. In the middle of the morning, struggling engines
creaked away with the long lines of horse-trucks and carriages of rowdy
troopers who cheered wildly as they set out at last upon their
adventures. They crawled along the low country of the Manawatu, then
along the rough cliffs above the sea, over the hills, and at length
down the rocky gorge to Wellington. The troops detrained, watered and
fed the horses, hung about for a while, and eventually led the horses
to the wharves. Four great grey transports lay alongside, and the sun
shone down hotly on a scene of seething activity, a crowd of troops
working with the energy of enthusiasm, long strings of horses filing up
huge gangways and disappearing into lines of horse-boxes around the
bulwarks, or swinging aloft singly by cranes to be lowered swiftly into
the black depths of holds.

Mac led his terrified mare up the steep gangway and down into a hold
where he left her with regret. Mac's squadron was to embark on another
ship, except some men who were to look after the horses. This
transp