pert, my boy, did you say that the Special Order
about holding Helles was _extensively_ published?"

"Yes, rather. Hung in the very traverses of the trenches."

"I thought so." He nodded with irritating mysteriousness. "What
fools you and I are! Stop firing at those Taubes. Or fire wide of
them--fire wide."

"Why?"

"Because our Staff will want them to get home and report all that
they've seen. That's why."

Of a truth Monty was quite objectionable, if he was excited with
some secret discovery, and thought it amusing not to disclose it.
And when, later that afternoon, a message came round saying that
irresponsible units were not to fire at hostile aircraft, owing to
the danger of spent bullets, he bragged like any pernicious
schoolboy.

"I told you so. O Rupert, my silly little juggins, you're as dense
as a vegetable marrow. I mean, you're a very low form of life."

Sec.2

The weather broke. Two days of merciless rain turned the trenches
into lanes of red clayey mud, and the floor of the Gully Ravine into
a canal of stagnant brown water. And one evening Monty returned from
his visitations, limping badly. He had slipped heavily, as he
paddled through the ankle-deep mud, and had hurt his back. I sent
him at once to bed, and on the following morning announced that I
was going to no less terrifying a place than Brigade Headquarters
to insist on his being given a pair of trench-waders. He enjoined
me not to be an ass, and I rebuked him severely for speaking to his
doctor like that, and, going out of the dug-out, broke off all
communication with one so rude.

Reaching Brigade Headquarters, which were on the slope across the
Gully, I asked the least alarming of the Staff Officers, the Staff
Captain, for a pair of trench-waders.

"Sorry," answered he, "we've had orders to return them all." He
looked most knowing, as he said it, and seemed to think it a remark
pregnant with excitement.

"Oh, I see," I replied, quite inadequately.

"Yes," he continued, staring whimsically at me, "we've been ordered
to shift our quarters to-night."

"Good Lord!" I said, still confused.

"Yes, we leave--_by ship_--at midnight. It's the Evacuation. The
other two brigades of our Division have already gone, and we go
to-night!"

"The devil!" exclaimed I. "Then I'll go and pack."

"Of course; and tell the padre to meet the battalion at W Beach at
ten o'clock."

Down the hillside I went, across the Gully, forging like a
steam