rent of oaths from Major
Hardy as was only stemmed by the M.L.O.'s assurance that there was
no real doubt about the _Redbreast's_ going to Suvla. We left the
cabin to the sound of a long "Ha-ha-ha!" from its engaging occupant,
who had been tickled, you see, by the Major's outburst.

We were ferried on a steam-tug to the _Redbreast_, and climbed
aboard. She seemed a funny little smack after the huge _Rangoon_. We
could scarcely elbow our way along, so packed was she with drafts of
men belonging to the Lovat Scouts, the Fife and Forfarshire
Yeomanry, and the Essex Regiment.

I was standing among the crowd on her deck, when there was a sound
of a rolling chain and a slight rocking of the boat, which provoked
an indelicate man near me to take off his helmet and pretend to be
sick in it. There was a rumbling of the engines as their wheels
began to revolve, and a throbbing of the _Redbreast's_ heart as
though she found difficulty in getting under way with such a load.
Then a sudden and alarming snort from her siren drew cries of
"Hooter's gone!" "Down tools, lads!" "Ta-ta, Mudros!" "All aboard
for Dixie!" "Hurry up, hurry up, get upon the deck, Find the nearest
girl, and put your arms around her neck, For the last boat's leaving
for home."

With cheering from the anchored ships that we passed; with a band
playing somewhere "The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond"; with greeting
and banter from the _Ermine_, which was steaming out with us on her
voyage to Helles; and with all these things under an overcast sky
that broke frequently into rain, we left Lemnos, the harbour and
the hills, going out through a dulled sunset.

"Put trees on those hills," said Doe, approaching me, "and in this
bad light you could imagine you were going out of the estuary of the
Fal to the open sea."

"Do you wish you were?" asked I, looking at the hills we had climbed
the day before.

"No. I like the excitement of this. It's the best moment in the war
I've had. This is life!"

From the sunset and sounds of the harbour we steamed into the
stillness and dark of the open seas. No lights were allowed on the
decks, for the enemy knew all about these nightly trips to Turkey.
Singing and shouting were suppressed, and we heard nothing but the
noise of the engines, the splatter of the agitated water as it
struck our hull, and the sound, getting fainter and fainter, of the
_Ermine_ ploughing to Helles.

"The stage is in darkness," whispered Doe in his fanc