erranean and the AEgean--Ray, it's
dangerous: we'll go home."

But, instead, we stepped ashore. At once the reflected coolness of
the water deserted us; the heady heat off the dusty land hit our
flesh like the hot air from an oven; and a glare from the white,
trampled dust and the white canvas tents troubled our eyes and set
our temples aching. And the rolling hills, empty of growth, except
grass burnt brown and thistles burnt yellow, gave us a shock of
depression.

"Damn, oh damn," said Jimmy.

"Precisely," agreed Monty.

We walked on, till we reached an array of square tents that formed
No. 16 Stationary Hospital. Here pale and emaciated men were
wandering in pyjamas between tents marked "Dysentery," "Enteric,"
and "Infectious Wards."

"Damn," repeated Jimmy.

Then we came upon a barbed-wire compound, and, caught by the morbid
fascination of all prisons, looked in. It was full of sick and
wounded Turks, who lay on stretchers in bell-tents, and, by a
miserable pantomime of raising two fingers to their lips and blowing
into the air, besought of our charity a cigarette. We went in, and
handed Abdullas among them. And that--now I come to think of it--was
our first encounter with the enemy we had been sent to fight.

At the Rest Camp Doe and I were pushed into a tent that,
insufficiently supplied with pegs, was flapping irritatingly in a
rising wind. Sighing for the cosy cabins of the _Rangoon_, we tossed
off our equipment on to the earthy floor and lounged into the mess
for lunch. In the mess tent we sat down to trestle-tables, laid with
coarse enamelled plates and mugs.

Monty turned to Jimmy, and asked: "What was that remark you made
just now, James Doon?"

"Damn," answered Jimmy with great readiness.

"Thanks," said Monty.

After lunch there came to Doe and myself the only pleasing thing in
a day of gloom. That was the joy of dressing up in the true tropical
kit worn at Mudros; brown brogue shoes; pale brown stockings, turned
down at the calves; khaki drill shorts, displaying bare knees; khaki
shirts open at the throats, and with sleeves rolled up above white
elbows; our topees, and no more. And, since we were sure we looked
very nice, we decided to walk abroad among men. Besides, the
shameful whiteness of our knees and forearms must be browned at once
by a walk in the toasting sun.

We set off for the village of Mudros East. It proved to be a
collection of ramshackle dwellings, as little habitable as