The train backed
cautiously for ten minutes and stopped again. Another landslide. The
leave-party remained stationary for thirty hours, eating the rations
thoughtfully provided for such a contingency.

In due course McTurtle found himself on the front seat of a motor
lorry breasting the spurs of Mt. Parnassus. The dizziness of his path
was invisible to him, for in a Grecian summer you can see nothing out
of motor vehicles but dust.

But when the lorry reached the summit of the pass the sea-breeze from
the Gulf of Corinth cleared the air and he saw for the first time the
peaks on one side and the gulfs on the other, with the road writhing
down canyons and gorges like a demoniac corkscrew.

"Fine view, Sir," remarked the driver.

McTurtle gulped assent. "Bit dangerous, 'o course," continued the
driver chattily. "There was a steam roller went over the edge just
'ere three days ago. Nice young fellow as drove it. Beg pardon, Sir?
Oh, I thought you spoke.

"Yes, 'e went too near the edge and it gave like. No nearer than we
'as to go, o' course: you watch while we pass this French-man....
There was a lad took a lorry over three weeks ago. 'Ad an attack of
fever while 'e was driving and went unconscious. 'Ave you 'ad malaria,
Sir? I get it something cruel meself. Comes on sudden like.

"Blimey, you 've got a touch coming on now, 'aven't you?"

At Itea, on the Gulf of Corinth, the party was ordered to return owing
to a German offensive in France. McTurtle went back under chloroform.
A week later it made another attempt, but was stopped by the Austrian
offensive in Italy. McTurtle went back under morphia. At the third
attempt it got through, but without McTurtle.

His nerve is gone, and he is marooned at Salonica. He cannot face the
overland route, and he cannot get home all the way by sea just yet. In
spite of all his endeavours he cannot become a naturalised Greek and
stay there, because of linguistic difficulties.

But what he wants to know is, why can't the medical authorities
recognise "leave-shock" as a disease and send him home by hospital
ship?

* * * * *

[Illustration: _First Girl_. "AN' YER ACTCHERLY MEAN TER SAY THEM
BOOTS COST FIFTEEN SHILLIN'?"

_Second Girl_. "AH, BUT THEY'RE WORF IT--THEY SQUEAK!"]

* * * * *

"The King has awarded a Knight Commandership of the Bath
to Lieutenant-Colonel ----, C.B., in charging
customers