d something about the fighting at Helles.
These cheery patients shocked our optimism by telling us that it was
hopeless to expect the capture of the hill of Achi Baba by frontal
assault and that any further advance at Cape Helles was scratched
off the programme. The hosts of troops that were passing through
Malta must, they surprised us by declaring, be destined for some
secret move elsewhere than at Helles, for there was no room for them
on the narrow tongue of land beneath Achi Baba.

"We're wild to know what's in the wind," said a sister. "The stream
of transports has never stopped for the last few days."

That we could well believe. There were two huge liners crammed with
khaki figures in the harbour that morning.

"We are going to win, I imagine?" asked Monty, with a note of doubt.

"O lord, yes," replied a superbly bonny youngster, without a right
arm. "But I don't envy you going to the Peninsula. It's heat, dust,
flies, and dysentery. And Mudros is ten times worse."

"What's Mudros?" asked I.

"Mudros," broke in Doe, blushing, as he aired his classical
learning, "is a harbour in the Isle of Lemnos famous in classical--"

"Mudros," interrupted the one-armed man, proud of his experience,
"is a harbour in the Island of Lemnos, and the filthiest hole--"

"Mudros," continued Doe, refusing to be beaten, "is a harbour in the
Isle of Lemnos, which is the island where Jason and the Argonauts
landed, and found Hypsipele and the women who had murdered their
husbands. Jupiter hurled Vulcan from Heaven, and he fell upon
Lemnos. And it's sad to relate that Achilles and Agamemnon had a bit
of a dust-up there."

"Well, that may be," said the one-armed hero, rather crushed by
Doe's weighty lecture. "But you're going to Mudros first in your
transport, and you'll probably die of dysentery there."

"Good Lord," said I.

We selected the ward where we would have our beds when we came down
wounded, and the particular pretty sister who should nurse us; and
went out into the dazzling sun. Having climbed to a high level that
overlooked the harbour, we leaned against a stone parapet, and
examined the French warships that slept, with one eye open, up a
narrow blue waterway. For Malta in 1915 was a French naval base.

"Sad to see them there, sir," said a convalescent Tommy, pointing to
the grey cruisers flying the tricolour. "They've been bottled up
there, since the submarines appeared off Helles and sank the
_Majestic_ and t'