m,
which made him look matter-of-fact and almost commonplace--one of
a pattern, as they stamp all armies. But have you seen a strong
swimmer on his way to the beach--a man who feels himself already
in the sea, so that his clothes are no more than a loose shell
that he will cast off presently? Don't you know how you see the
man stripped already, as he feels himself?

So it was with Grim that morning. Each time I looked away from
him and glanced back it was a surprise to see the khaki uniform.

The country, that about a week ago had been carpeted with flowers
from end to end, was all bone-dry already, and the naked hills
stood sharp and shimmering in heat-haze; one minute you could
see the edges of ribbed rock like glittering gray monsters'
skeletons, and the next they were gone in the dazzle, or hidden
behind a whirling cloud of dust. Up there, three thousand feet
above sea-level, there was still some sweetness in the air, but
whenever we looked down through a gap in the range toward the
Dead Sea Valley we could watch the oven-heat ascending like fumes
above a bed of white-hot charcoal.

"Some season for a picnic!" Grim commented, as cheerfully as if
we were riding to a wedding. "You've time to crawl out yet. We
cross that valley on the first leg, and that's merely a sample!"

But it's easy enough to be driven forward in comfort to a new
experience, never mind what past years have taught, nor what
imagination can depict; if that were not so no new battles would
be fought, and women would refuse to restock the world with
trouble's makings. A reasoning animal man may be, but he isn't
often guided by his reason, and at that early stage in the
proceedings you couldn't have argued me out of them with anything
much less persuasive than brute force.

We rolled down the white road into Hebron in a cloud of dust
before midday, and de Crespigny, the governor of the district,
came out to greet us like old friends; for it was only a matter
of weeks since he and we and some others had stood up to death
together, and that tie has a way of binding closer than
conventional associations do.

But there were other friends who were equally glad to see us.
Seventeen men came out from the shadow of the governorate wall,
and stood in line to shake hands--and that is a lengthy business,
for it is bad manners to be the first to let go of an Arab's
hand, so that tact is required as well as patience; but it was
well worth while standing