ire-beacons to announce the taking of Troy to his Queen,
Clytaemnestra, at Argos--"

Here the little priest, as pleased as a school-boy, scratched a rough
sketch map in the sand--

"All the islands round here are full of historical interest, you know;
`far-famed Samothrace,' for instance." Father S--- talked much of
classical history, connecting these islands with Greek and Roman heroes.

All this was desperately interesting to me. It was picturesque to stand
in the sand-bed of the Salt Lake, lit by the broad flood of silver
moonlight, with the little priest eagerly scratching like an ibis in the
sand with his walking-stick.

I learnt more about the Near East in those few minutes than I had ever
done at school.

But besides the interest in this novel history lesson, I was more than
delighted to find the padre so correct in his sketch of the island and
the coast, and I took down what he told me in a note-book afterwards,
and copied his sand-maps also.

After this I came to know him better than I had. I visited his dug-out,
and he let me look at his books and Punch and a month-old Illustrated
London News, or so. I came to admire him for his simplicity and for his
devotion to his men. Every Sunday he held Mass in the trenches of the
firing-line, and he never had the least fear of going up.

A splendid little man, always cheerful, always looking after his
"flock." Praying with those who were about to give up the ghost;
administering the last rites of the Church to those who, in awful agony,
were fluttering like singed moths at the edge of the great flame, the
Great Life-Mystery of Death.

He wrote beautifully sad letters of comfort to the mothers of
boy-officers who were killed. Father S--- knew every man: every man knew
Father S--- and admired him.

His dug-out was made in a slope overlooking the bay, and was really
a deep square pit in the sand-bank, roofed with corrugated iron and
sandbagged all round. Here we talked. I found he knew G. K. C. and
Hilaire Belloc. Always he wanted to look at any new drawings in my
sketch-books.

It is a relief to speak with some intelligent person sometimes.

Such was Father S---, a very 'cute little man, knowing most of the
troubles of the men about him, noticing their ways and keeping in touch
with them all.

CHAPTER XXIV. THE SHARP-SHOOTERS

Just after the episode of the lost squads we were working our
stretcher-bearers as far as Brigade Headquarters which were