l along, he had conjectured that the
pleasant creature on the _Aragon_ had blundered in sending us to
Suvla.

"Well, why the devil did you come?" inquired the M.L.O.

"Because," answered Monty, imperturbably, "I wanted to see the
world, and Suvla in particular; and I might not have had another
opportunity of visiting your delightful bay."

"You mean to say," said the M.L.O., with his eyes on the badges
of the Army Chaplains' Department, "that you deliberately traded
on a mistake in order to get a holiday trip to Suvla? And
still--ha--still you expect us to go to church."

If he was anxious to discuss the question why men didn't go to
church, nobody was more ready to meet him than Monty, who therewith
sat down upon a box, so as comfortably to do justice to a really
interesting topic, I admit I felt a sudden horror lest he should
hold forth on the Mass and Confession. I went quite cold with
apprehension. It's dreadful the embarrassment you elders cause us
young people lest you say something completely out of place and
impossible. In very fact, youth is the age of embarrassing adults.

What Monty would have said remains a mystery, for at this moment
Major Hardy, who had come in our wake, exploded into the discussion.

"Be damned to you, sir!" he said to the M.L.O., wiping his eyeglass
furiously. "Be damned to you--_what_! I see nothing funny in being
sent to the wrong front by a simpering, defective idiot on the
_Aragon_. Kindly give me a chit to proceed to Helles to-morrow by
some bloody trawler, or something."

"With the utmost pleasure," said the M.L.O.; "Suvla can well be rid
of you. You can go to Helles, or Hell, by the 6 A.M. boat
to-morrow."

Bless these M.L.O.'s! Were we not indebted to them? The mistake of
one conceded us a visit to Suvla Bay, and the discourteous dismissal
of another ensured that we should bear down upon Cape Helles, not,
as normally, in a dead darkness, but in the bright light of an
October morning. I began to understand Monty's unscrupulous
opportunism. It would be a wonderful trip, skirting by daylight the
coastline of the Peninsula, till we rounded the point and looked
upon the Helles Beaches, the sacred site of the first and most
marvellous battle of the Dardanelles campaign. It was a pilgrimage
to a shrine that stretched before us on the morrow. The pilgrim's
route was a path in the blue AEgean from Suvla Bay to Helles Point;
and the shrine was the immortal battleground. Enough;