ls as
they sit there. If I didn't do that, they'd commit suicide down my
throat. Every time so far that I've opened my mouth to inhale the
breeze, I've taken down a fly. It's tedious."

Ah! this wit was all forced gaiety, and the more depressing for
that. It generated melancholy, as a damp fire generates smoke. I
felt there was something wrong around me this afternoon--a shadow of
evil. The conversation died: only the flies buzzed monotonously over
us, as though we were offal or carrion; and the wind blew the dust
in hail-storms against the canvas walls of the tent. And then it
came--the terribly evil thing. The O.C. Rest Camp entered the mess,
and announced with cynical cheerfulness:

"_Well, we've lost this campaign._ The great new landing at Suvla
has failed."

There was a ghastly silence, and a voice muttered, "God!"

"Yes, and had it succeeded we'd have won. But the Turks have got us
held at Suvla beneath Sari Bair, same as they've got us held at
Helles beneath Achi Baba. The news is just filtering through."

With horror I listened to the cold-blooded statement. The shock of
it produced a beating in the head, and a sickness. And I felt
foolish, as though I might do something lunatic, like giving a
witless shout, or running amok with a table-knife. I touched Doe,
and whispered: "I'm going to get out of this. The old fool doesn't
know what he's talking about."

I went away, and flung myself down on my valise in my flapping tent.
I lay on my back, my hands clasped behind my head, and gazed up into
the tent-roof loud with flies. Suvla had failed! It was a lie--an
alarmist lie! Why, only yesterday we had exulted in it as the
winning move, declaring that the game was over bar shouting, and
regretting that we could not be in at the death. What was it
reminding me of--this sudden "black-out," just as the lights had
been brightest? Ah, I had it: that moment, when, in the flush of
winning the Swimming Cup for Bramhall, I learned that I had lost it.
How similar this was! Then the prize had been a silver cup, which
had been fought for by a parcel of schoolboys. Now the grander
trophy was that silver strip of the Dardanelles which men called
"the Narrows," and the combatants were a pack of nations.

Suvla had failed! Why was I identifying my tiny self with a huge
thing like Britain, and feeling that, because she had failed in her
great fight for the Dardanelles, so I would fail, and purposely, in
my little struggle af