an' all goes well, and when they was just 'alf
finished, the bloomin' picket comes along an' pushes us out. I tries
to get yer dressed but you was thinkin' you knew more about it than I
did, an' you wasn't far wrong. I dunno meself how we got home.
Anyhow, cobber, we both had our pockets gone gently through, for me
feloose is gone as well as yours. I didn't have much, but wot I had's
now somebody else's.'

"'Yer a b---- fine cobber, you are,' I says, 'Not to have choked 'em
off.'

"'You've got ter thank me, anyway, fer not letting 'em put somethin' on
yer which yer wouldn't care to let the world or yer missis, when you
have one, gaze at.'

"An' that's how this lovely work in red and blue decorates me manly
chest. The Doc he always smiles and twinkles his eyes so merry like
when he sounds me chest. I'm thinkin' of havin' it turned inter a
risin' sun. Me troop thinks it is an 'ell of a good joke, an' I reckon
it would be too if it was on some one else's chest. Them b----
Manchesters!"

Mac and Mick wandered abroad together occasionally to investigate the
land--Mac more for the pleasure of getting away from the hot dusty
camp, and Mick for the prospects of raising more tolerable refreshment
than luke-warm rusty water from ships' tanks. They wandered to far
villages where the stolid Greek peasant life was not in the least
disturbed by the activity in the harbour nor the distant rumble of
Gallipoli guns--except that eggs and vegetables brought wonderful
money. These villages were out of bounds and they found them empty of
troops except for a solitary mounted policeman in each who could be
easily dodged in the narrow lanes and shady fig-trees.

At the end of the first week in the field hospital both Mac and Mick
were transferred to a new camp about three miles inland. It was less
afflicted with flies, but there was only sufficient water for drinking
purposes and enough food for about half the three hundred patients.
The only water for washing was to be had occasionally in the early
morning hours at the bottom of a well about a third of a mile away.
About ten minutes of angling with a canvas bucket on the end of a rope
brought Mac about two inches of very muddy water. But on their first
day's ramble Mac and Mick discovered about two miles from the camp a
fine pool of stagnant water. It lay in the bottom of a rocky gorge, a
shallow basin at the foot of what was a small waterfall during the
winter rains. It