uld have warned me. Chaucer wasn't the man to keep a batman
who was a fool.

It must have been about 3 A.M. when I was waked by my man helping
Chaucer dress.

"What's the matter?"

"Your fellow says my man's ill."

"What is it?"

"I dunno, Sir," my man said. "'E 's groanin' an' rollin' about an'
keepin' all us others awake."

When I got to the men's hut I found Chaucer kneeling beside the sick
man, who was holding his head and groaning. All the other men were
sitting up and looking on. After a minute or two Chaucer got up and
beckoned me outside.

"Look here," he said, "I don't want to scare you, but suppose that
chap's got anything infectious. Is there a doctor handy?

"Nowhere nearer than Sailly."

"Well, Gubson tells me they were expecting the M.O. at our camp today.
He may have stayed the night. Can you send somebody up to see?"

I sent off an orderly at once, and in half-an-hour a young doctor
arrived, and ordered all the other men out of the hut. Then he pulled
a gaudy handkerchief out of his pocket, sprinkled it with some stuff
out of a small phial, tied it over his mouth and only then began to
fiddle about the sick man, feeling his pulse and sounding him.

Then he got up, readjusted his handkerchief-respirator and mumbled
that it was cerebro-spinal-something. Spotted fever.

We all got out of that hut in double-quick time, believe me. The
doctor was full of orders--half a hundred things to do at once. The
man must be strictly isolated. All the contacts--every blessed man who
had been in the hut with him--must be placed under supervision. The
hut must be put out of bounds. And when he found half the men had gone
under the tarpaulin shelter he put that out of bounds too.

We were a full hour trying to separate the contacts; but when the
doctor found the cook getting breakfast ready and heard he had been in
the sick man's hut he threw his hand in.

"I won't answer for a single one of you," he said; "the place is
no better than a pest-house. Throw that breakfast away. It's sheer
poison. Clear out, all of you."

It was Chaucer started the panic. I saw him sneaking away up the
slope, so I thought it better to make a move too. I didn't ask the
doctor where we were to go; he'd have had us all sleeping out on the
open grass for a week if I had. So the whole lot of us, half asleep,
trekked back to Ripilly village and turned into our old billets again.

* * * * *

It wa