und and safe from shells when you crawled in.

I often thought what a fine thing Stevenson would have written from the
local colour of the bay.

Its changing colours were intense and wonderful. In the early morning
the waves were a rich royal blue, with splashing lines of white breakers
rolling in and in upon the pale grey sand, and the sea-birds skimming
and wheeling overhead.

At mid-day it was colourless, glaring, steel-flashing, with the sunlight
blazing and everything shimmering in the heat haze.

In the early afternoon, when Hawk and I used to go down to the shore and
strip naked like savages, and plunge into the warm water, the bay had
changed to pale blue with green ripples, and the outline of Imbros
Island, on the horizon, was a long jagged strip of mauve.

Later, when the sunset sky turned lemon-yellow, orange, and deep
crimson, the bay went into peacock blues and purples, with here and
there a current of bottle-glass green, and Imbros Island stood clear cut
against the sunset-colour a violet-black silhouette.

Queer creatures crept across the sands and into the old Turkish snipers'
trenches; long black centipedes, sand-birds--very much resembling
our martin, but with something of the canary in their colour. Horned
beetles, baby tortoises, mice, and green-grey lizards all left their
tiny footprints on the shore.

"If this silver sand was only in England a man could make his fortune,"
said Hawk. ("We wept like anything to see--!")

I never saw such white sand before. One had to misquote: "Come unto
these SILVER sands." It glittered white in a great horse-shoe round the
bay, and the bed of the Salt Lake (which is really an overflow from the
sea) was a barren patch of this silver-sand, with here and there a dead
mule or a sniper's body lying out, a little black blot, the haunt of
vultures.

I made some careful drawings of the sand-tracks of the bay; noting down
tracks being a habit with the scout.

In these things Hawk was always interested, and often a great help; for,
in spite of his fifty years and his buccaneerish-habits, he was at heart
a boy--a boy-scout, in fact, and a fine tracker.

One of the most picturesque sights I ever saw was an Indian officer
mounted on a white Arab horse with a long flowing mane, and a tail which
swept in a splendid curve and trailed in the sands. The Hindu wore a
khaki turban, with a long end floating behind. He sat his horse bolt
upright, and rode in the proper mili