over the rail, he cried at the crowd on the _Redbreast_:

"Good-bye, lads. Let fly! Three cheers for the king! Let 'em go!"

The boys caught his enthusiasm, as boys always will, and followed
his lead, cheering the king and singing: "For he's a jolly good
fellow.... And so say all of us. With a hip-hip-hip-hurrah!"

And with them cheering and singing thus, the _Redbreast_ slipped
quietly away.

Major Hardy dropped his monocle on his chest. A good voyage--a jolly
voyage--was over.

And now a little motor-launch puffed alongside to collect the Mudros
Details: and we went down the _Rangoon's_ hull to be ferried ashore.
We were ferried, as you shall see, out of our dazzling news of the
campaign into the darkness of collapsing things.

_Part II: The White Heights_

CHAPTER VII

MUDROS, IN THE ISLE OF LEMNOS

Sec.1

The motor-launch beat away from the _Rangoon_. Monty, standing in
the stern, lit a pipe, and stared over the match-flame at the empty
troopship. Jimmy Doon, sitting in the bows, surveyed the hill-locked
harbour, and said to me:

"Well, there's one comfort: we shan't be killed on Gallipoli."

"Why not?"

"Because we shall certainly die at Mudros."

Doe was brooding over the ships of the Navy on the water, and over
the white camps of the Army on the dull, bleak hill-slopes.

"I didn't know there were so many ships in the world," he said.

It was a wonderful revelation of sea power. There were battleships,
heavy and squat; cruisers, more slender and graceful; low-lying
destroyers, coal black or silver grey; and hospital ships, which, in
their glistening white paint, were as much more lovely than the
men-of-war as ruth is more lovely than ruthlessness. Our little
launch was passing heavy-gunned monitors; skirting round submarines
that lay above the surface like the backs of whales; and panting
along beneath the enormous _Aquitania_, whose funnels appeared to
reach a higher sky than the surrounding hills. Flags flew
everywhere: the white ensign from the masts of the Navy, the red
ensign from the troopers, and the martial tricolour from the vessels
of the Frenchmen.

Jimmy Doon sighed and pointed ashore. "Look at the unseemly
hospitals," he said.

As he spoke, we were steering towards a little landing-jetty, called
the "Egyptian Pier," and could see the Red Cross floating over the
camps.

"Hospitals at Malta," groaned Jimmy, "hospitals at Alexandria,
hospital ships all over the Medit