home.

"Gawd!" screamed the sergeant-major. "He's bombed the gun and
exploded the shell-dump. Finish whizz-bang!" And he bellowed with
triumphant laughter.

"I knew he would," cried I. "I knew he would. This way, Doe!"

He was going blindly to his right.

"Message from C.O. to retire at once, sir."

"This way, Doe!" I roared at him, laughing, for I thought he was
well and unhurt.

But no. He pitched, rolled over, and lay still.

I gasped. What was I to do? Ordered to retire, I wanted to jump out
and fetch him in. In those few seconds of indecision, I saw a figure
crash forward, pick up Doe's body, and run back.

"The padre! The padre!" exclaimed the sergeant-major.

"No? Was it?"

"Gawd, yes! The gor-blimey parson!"

"Pass the word to retire," I commanded. "Hang it! We seem to have
done the job we set out to do."

Sec.8

Covered with blood and dust, my jacket torn, I came half an hour
later upon Monty, where he was sitting wearily upon a mound. I had
but one question to ask him.

"Is he dead?"

"No. Hit in the shoulder the first time. Then, after he got up and
bombed the gun, hit four times in the waist."

"Will he die?"

"Of course."

I walked away, as a man does from one who has cruelly hurt him.

"O Christ!" I said, just blasphemously, for in that moment of
tearless agony all my moral values collapsed. "O Christ! Damn
beauty! Damn everything!" Then there came a disorder of the mind, in
which I could only repeat to myself: "The Germans are coming, oh
dear, oh dear. The Germans are coming, oh dear, oh dear. The
Germans--Oh, drop it, for God's sake, drop it!"

A night and a morning passed: and the next afternoon I was sitting
on the Bluff, glumly watching a destroyer flash and smoke, as she
hurled shells over my head to Achi Baba. An officer came up, and
with grim meaning handed me the typed copy of an official telegram.

"Here's the key to yesterday's riddle," he explained.

I took it and read: "Suvla and Anzac successfully evacuated. No
casualties."

The officer waited till I had finished, and then said:

"Well, what's our position on Helles now? A bit dickey, eh?"

Scarcely interested, I looked along the coast of the Peninsula and
saw two great conflagrations, the smoke ascending in pillars to the
sky, at Suvla and Anzac, where the retiring army had fired the
remaining stores.

CHAPTER XV

TRANSIT

Sec.1

Then Monty approached me, as I tossed stones down the slop