“Ray, sir.  East Cheshires.”

“Rest Camp, Mudros.”

“But is it for long, sir?” ventured I.

“Next, please.  What name, padre?”

“Monty,” answered our friend.  “East Cheshires.”

“Report Rest Camp,” promptly said the M.L.O., and, raising his voice, called to the waiting crowd:  “All East Cheshire Details detained at Mudros.”

“But I have to relieve—­” began Monty.

“Next, please.  What name?” the M.L.O. burst in, looking up into Jimmy Doon’s face.

“Jimmy—­I mean, Lieutenant Doon, Fifth East Lancs.”

“Held up, Mudros.  Report—­”

“But my draft, sir, has—­”

“Next, please.”

And Jimmy came away, hoping he had heard the last of his draft.  He joined our Cheshire group, which was discussing the latest thunderbolt.

“Lord, isn’t it enormously unseemly?” he grumbled.  “I’m left out, too.  Why, I’ve been a year in the Army, and not yet seen a man killed.  I hoped I was certain to see one now.”

“You detestably gruesome little cad,” said Monty.

“I wonder if it’s for long,” murmured Doe.  “I’d take the risk of being killed rather than not be able to say I’d seen the great Cape Helles, or, failing Helles, this new Suvla front.”

“As it is,” grunted Jimmy, “we shall probably be at Mudros till the end of the world.”

The M.L.O. had not been gone an hour before the Navy sent its pinnaces with large lighters in tow for conveying the first drafts to the Peninsula ferry-boats.  Each pinnace was in command of a midshipman, generally a fair-haired English boy looking about fifteen.  These baby officers, who gave their orders to wide-chested and bronzed Tars, old enough to be their fathers, were stared at by us with romantic interest.  For there had been stories in England of the deeds of the middies in the famous First Landing at Helles, when they remained in the bows of the boats they commanded, scorning cover of any kind, as became British officers in charge of men.

After the lighters, the Snaefell, an old Isle of Man steamer, came alongside, and, having taken some hundreds of men aboard, edged away from us, while Major Hardy, his heart ever overthrowing his dignity, said wrathfully: 

“Give ’em a cheer or something, damn you.”

We raised a cheer.  The men responded, though not very effectively, and cheered and waved as the Snaefell carried them away.

“They know what they’re going to, poor lads,” mumbled Major Hardy.

Next came the Redbreast, whose decks were soon as crowded as the Snaefell’s had been.  Major Hardy scanned them through his eyeglass, and then turned snuffily upon us and said: 

“Damn your English reticence!  Damn your unimaginative silence!  Why don’t you study the psychology of these boys and this moment?”

Leaning over the rail, he cried at the crowd on the Redbreast: