But Fal is short, full, deep, and very wide,
Nor old, nor sleepy, when it meets the tide;
Through hills and groves where birds and branches sing
It runs its course of sunny wandering,
And passes, careless that it soon shall be
Lost in the old, gray mists that hide the sea.

Ah, they were good, those up-stream reaches when
Ourselves were young and dreamed of being men,
But Fal! the tide had touched us even then! 
One tribal God, we bow to, thou and we,
And praise Him, Who ordained our lives should be
So early tidal with Eternity._

BOOK II AND THE REST—­WAR

Part I:  “Rangoon” Nights

CHAPTER I

THE ETERNAL WATERWAY

Sec.1

The most clearly marked moment of my life was when I passed the fat policeman who was standing just inside the great gateway of Devonport Dockyard.  I was to embark that morning on a troopship bound for the Dardanelles.  As I stepped out of the public thoroughfare, and walking through the gate, saw the fat policeman.  I passed out of one period of my life and entered upon another.

The first period that remained outside the tall walls of the dockyard was made up of chapters of boyhood and schooldays; and a gallant last chapter of playing at soldiers.  Ah! this last chapter—­it had tennis and theatres and girls and kisses:  a great patch of life!  And I left it all outside the docks.

The second period, on to which I now abruptly set foot, was to be intense, highly-coloured, and scented; a rush of rapidly moving pictures of the blue waters of the Mediterranean, the bleak hills of Mudros, and the exploding shells on the peninsula of Gallipoli.

The fat policeman had a revolver slung over his shoulder, and his businesslike weapon expressed better than anything else that England was at war and taking no risks.  He suitably challenged me: 

“Your authority to go through, sir?” demanded he.

“That’s where I’ve got you by the winter garments,” said I vulgarly; and, diving my hand into my pocket, I drew out my Embarkation Orders.  They were heavily marked in red “SECRET,” but I judged the policeman to be “in the know,” and showed them to him.  Properly impressed with the historic document, he turned to a fair-haired young officer who was with me, and asked: 

“You the same, sir?”

“Surely,” answered my companion, which was a new way he had acquired of saying “yes.”

“Right y’are, sir,” said the policeman, and we crossed the line.

My fair-haired companion was, of course, Second Lieutenant Edgar Gray Doe; and it was in keeping with the destiny that entwined our lives that we should pass the fat policeman together.  And now I had better tell you how it happened.