it decks, and Grecian battlegrounds, which I had been
describing, that I actually ceased to hear the bombardment. And the
atmosphere of the well-loved places and well-loved friends remained
all about me. It was the atmosphere that old portraits and fading
old letters throw around those who turn them over. So I took up
again my pencil and my paper.

I thought I would add a paragraph or two, in case I go down in the
morning. If I come through all right, I shall wipe these paragraphs
out. Meanwhile, in these final hours of wonder and waiting, it is
happiness to write on.

I fear that, as I write, I may appear to dogmatise, for I am still
only twenty-two. But I must speak while I can.

What silly things one thinks in an evening of suspense and twilight
like this! One minute I feel I want to be alive this time to-morrow,
in order that my book, which has become everything to me, may have a
happy ending. Pennybet fell at Neuve Chapelle, Doe at Cape Helles,
and one ought to be left alive to save the face of the tale. Still,
if these paragraphs stand and I fall, it will at least be a _true_
ending--true to things as they were for the generation in which we
were born.

And the glorious bombardment asserts itself through my thoughts, and
with a thrill I conceive of it--for we would-be authors are persons
obsessed by one idea--as an effort of the people of Britain to make
it possible for me to come through unhurt and save my story. I feel
I want to thank them.

Another minute I try to recapture that moment of ideal patriotism
which I touched on the deck of the _Rangoon_. I see a death in No
Man's Land to-morrow as a wonderful thing. There you stand exactly
between two nations. All Britain with her might is behind your back,
reaching down to her frontier, which is the trench whence you have
just leapt. All Germany with her might is before your face. Perhaps
it is not ill to die standing like that in front of your nation.

I cannot bear to think of my mother's pain, if to-morrow claims me.
But I leave her this book, into which I seem to have poured my life.
It is part of myself. No, it _is_ myself--and I shall only return
her what is her own.

Oh, but if I go down, I want to ask you not to think it anything but
a happy ending. It will be happy, because victory came to the
nation, and that is more important than the life of any individual.
Listen to that bombardment outside, which is increasing, if
possible, as the darkness