xcesses of Major
Hardy's mob, even Jimmy Doon's cynical humour at the prospect of
death had much in them like the Mediterranean on a summer day.

Or, say, on a summer night like this. For, as the evening wore on,
we were still passing this long island; and a pale mist had risen in
a narrow ribbon from the sea-line, and hidden a lower belt of its
hills from my view, so that the peaks towered like Mount Ararats
above a rising flood of fog-damp; and, as this bank of mist rose
upward, the sun sank downward, a disc of gold fire.

I followed it with my glasses; and so rapid was its descent that,
before I could count a hundred, it had dipped beneath the
water-line--become a flaming semicircle--then only a glowing
rim--and disappeared. It left a few minutes' afterglow, with the sky
every shade from crimson at the horizon to blue at the zenith.

The world got darker, and the waves, breaking from the ship's bows,
began to spill a luminous phosphorescence on the sea. I watched a
little longer; and then the stars and the phosphorescent wave-crests
glistened in a Mediterranean night.

CHAPTER VI

MAJOR HARDY AND PADRE MONTY FINISH THE VOYAGE

Sec.1

But I must hurry on. Here am I dawdling over what happened indoors
in the minds of two boys, while out of doors nations were battling
against nations, and the whole world was in upheaval. Here am I
happily describing so local a thing as the effort of a big-hearted
priest to rebuild our spiritual lives on the quiet moments of the
Mass and the strange glorious mystery of penance, while the great
Division which captured the beaches of Cape Helles had been brought
to a standstill by the impregnable hill of Achi Baba, and uncounted
troopships like our own were pouring through the Mediterranean to
retrieve the fight.

On with the war, then. One morning I was wakened by much talking and
movement all over the boat, and by Doe's leaping out of his top
bunk, kicking me in passing, and disappearing through the cabin
door. Back he came in a minute, crying: "You must come out and see
this lovely, white dream-city. We're outside Malta."

I rushed out to find Valetta, the grand harbour of Malta, on three
sides of us. We were anchored; and the hull of the _Rangoon_, which
looked very huge now, was surrounded by Maltese bumboats.

Shore leave was granted us. And, ashore, we hurried through the
blazing heat to visit the hospitals and learn from the crowds of
Gallipoli sick and wounde