r,
And on her daughter,
A regular snorter;
She has washed her neck in dirty water,
She didn't oughter,
The dirty cat."

And Monty, hearing them, whispered one of his delightfully
out-of-place remarks:

"Aren't they wonderful, Rupert? I could hug them all, but I wish
they'd come to Mass."

The moon, moreover, showed us comforting things. There was the old
_Redbreast_ lying off Cape Helles. There were the lighters, crowded
with men, pushing off from the beach to the waiting boat.

"You could get off on any one of those lighters," said I to Monty.
"Why don't you go?"

"Why, because we'll leave this old place together."

After he said this I must have fallen from sheer weariness into a
half-sleep. The next thing I remember was Monty's saying: "Look
alive, Rupert! _We're_ moving now." Glancing round, I saw that my
company was the last left on the beach. I marshalled the
men--twenty-eight of them--on to the lighter.

"Now, get aboard, Rupert," said Monty.

"You first," corrected I. "I'm going to be last off to-night."

"As your senior officer, I order you to go first."

"As the only combatant officer on the beach," I retorted, "I'm O.C.
Troops. You're simply attached to me for rations and discipline.
Kindly embark."

Monty muttered something about "upstart impudence," and obeyed the
O.C. Troops, who thereupon boarded the rocking lighter, and
exchanged with one step the fatal Peninsula for the safety of the
seas.

On the _Redbreast_ we leaned upon the rail, looking back. The boat
began to steam away, and Monty, knowing with whom the thoughts of
both of us lay, said quietly:

"'Tell England--' You must write a book and tell 'em, Rupert, about
the dead schoolboys of your generation--

'Tell England, ye who pass this monument,
We died for her, and here we rest content.'"

Unable to conquer a slight warming of the eyes at these words, I
watched the Peninsula pass. All that I could see of it in the
moonlight was the white surf on the beach, the slope of Hunter
Weston Hill, and the outline of Achi Baba, rising behind like a
monument.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE END OF RUPERT'S STORY

Sec.1

Let Monty have the last word, for he spoke it well. He spoke it a
few days ago, in the late autumn of 1918, that is to say, as the war
breaks up, and nearly three years after we slipped away in the
moonlight from W Beach.

In those inter