ily in the upper air of
abstract ideals like glory and beauty and truth. But it was
difficult. Only in my exalted moments could I breathe in that high
air.

And I could not climb to-night. Perhaps if they had but sounded the
"Last Post" at Jimmy's burial, I should have lost sight of its
grossness and caught the vision of its glory. I was wondering if
this would have unveiled the hidden beauty, when, very strangely,
the bugles in all the camps rang out with the great call. It was
dark, and they were sounding the "Last Post" over the close of the
day's work. But for those who preferred to think so, it was blown
over the day's dead.

CHAPTER IX

PROCEEDING FORTHWITH TO GALLIPOLI

Sec.1

"Look here, Doe," said I, with my finger on a map of the Island of
Lemnos. "If you've guts enough to walk with me over these five miles
of hills to this eastern coast, it strikes me we shall actually see
a distant vision of the Peninsula itself."

Doe looked learnedly at the map.

"With a clear sky and field-glasses we might make out the fatal old
spot," said he. "Come on--we'll try."

So we turned our faces eastward through the afternoon, unaware that
we were about to take a last bird's-eye view of the great Naval and
Military Base of Mudros, and a first peep at the Gallipoli
Peninsula, where in less than a hundred hours we should be digging
ourselves a home.

We bent our backs to the task of toiling up the hillsides. We found
the slopes carpeted with dry grass and yellow thistles, and
sprinkled with loose stones and large lumps of rock. Long-haired
sheep with bells a-tinkle, sleepy black cows, and tiny mules browsed
among the arid thistles, or scratched their backs against the broken
rocks.

Down into the valleys we went, and up and over the summits. It was
dull prose in the valleys, but fine poetry on the summits. For,
whereas in the valleys we saw nothing but thistles and stones, on
the summits we enjoyed extensive views of lap-like hollows nursing
little white villages; we caught distant specks, brilliantly lighted
in the sun, of the encircling sea; and we wondered at the
blood-coloured rocks which suggested volcanic disturbances and lava
streams.

After dipping into several depressions and surmounting several
yokes, we suddenly overtopped the last ridge and looked down upon a
tableland, which bore, like a tray of tea-things, the white
buildings of a little village. The plateau was the edge of Lemnos,
and ran