he troops by disguising yourself as a disease and making
noises indicative of pain."

Derek Vane stretched himself and stood up. "We are feeling well, thank
you--and require nourishment. Does tea await me, and if not--why not?"
He took his mail and glanced through it. "How they love me, dear old
boy! What it is to be young and good looking, and charm. . . ."

There was a loud shout and the deck chair became the centre of a
struggling mob. Shortly afterwards a noise of ripping canvas announced
that it had acted as deck chairs have acted before when five people sit
on them at the same moment.

"Look out, you mugs, you've broken it." Vane's voice came dimly from
the ground. "And my face is in an ants' nest."

"Are you good looking and charming?" demanded an inexorable voice.

"No. Get off, Beetle; you've got bones on you like the human skeleton
at Barnum's."

"What are you like?" pursued the same inexorable voice.

"Horrible," spluttered Vane. "A walking nightmare; a loathly dream."

"It is well--you may arise."

The mass disintegrated, and having plucked the frame of the chair from
the body of an officer known to all and sundry as the Tank--for obvious
reasons--they moved slowly towards the mess for tea.

In all respects an unwarlike scene, and one which would disappoint the
searcher after sensation. Save for the lorries which bumped
ceaselessly up and down the long straight road below, and the
all-pervading khaki it might have been a scene at home before the war.
The yellow fog had cleared away from Kemmel, and over the flat country
the heat haze rose, shimmering and dancing in the afternoon sun. In
the field next to the camp an ancient Belgian was ploughing, his two
big Walloon horses guided by a single cord, while from behind the farm
there came the soft thud-thud of a football.

And then it came. In a few seconds the air was filled with the
thumping of Archie and the distant crackle of machine-guns.

"By Jove! there he is," cried the Tank. "He's got him too."

The officers halted and stared over the dead town of Poperinghe, where
flash after flash of bursting shrapnel proclaimed a Boche aeroplane.
They saw him dive at a balloon--falling like a hawk; then suddenly he
righted and came on towards the next. From the first sausage two black
streaks shot out, to steady after a hundred feet or so, and float down,
supported by their white parachutes. But the balloon itself was
finished. From one