“Good-bye, lads.  Let fly!  Three cheers for the king!  Let ’em go!”

The boys caught his enthusiasm, as boys always will, and followed his lead, cheering the king and singing:  “For he’s a jolly good fellow....  And so say all of us.  With a hip-hip-hip-hurrah!”

And with them cheering and singing thus, the Redbreast slipped quietly away.

Major Hardy dropped his monocle on his chest.  A good voyage—­a jolly voyage—­was over.

And now a little motor-launch puffed alongside to collect the Mudros Details:  and we went down the Rangoon’s hull to be ferried ashore.  We were ferried, as you shall see, out of our dazzling news of the campaign into the darkness of collapsing things.

Part II:  The White Heights

CHAPTER VII

MUDROS, IN THE ISLE OF LEMNOS

Sec.1

The motor-launch beat away from the Rangoon.  Monty, standing in the stern, lit a pipe, and stared over the match-flame at the empty troopship.  Jimmy Doon, sitting in the bows, surveyed the hill-locked harbour, and said to me: 

“Well, there’s one comfort:  we shan’t be killed on Gallipoli.”

“Why not?”

“Because we shall certainly die at Mudros.”

Doe was brooding over the ships of the Navy on the water, and over the white camps of the Army on the dull, bleak hill-slopes.

“I didn’t know there were so many ships in the world,” he said.

It was a wonderful revelation of sea power.  There were battleships, heavy and squat; cruisers, more slender and graceful; low-lying destroyers, coal black or silver grey; and hospital ships, which, in their glistening white paint, were as much more lovely than the men-of-war as ruth is more lovely than ruthlessness.  Our little launch was passing heavy-gunned monitors; skirting round submarines that lay above the surface like the backs of whales; and panting along beneath the enormous Aquitania, whose funnels appeared to reach a higher sky than the surrounding hills.  Flags flew everywhere:  the white ensign from the masts of the Navy, the red ensign from the troopers, and the martial tricolour from the vessels of the Frenchmen.

Jimmy Doon sighed and pointed ashore.  “Look at the unseemly hospitals,” he said.

As he spoke, we were steering towards a little landing-jetty, called the “Egyptian Pier,” and could see the Red Cross floating over the camps.

“Hospitals at Malta,” groaned Jimmy, “hospitals at Alexandria, hospital ships all over the Mediterranean and the AEgean—­Ray, it’s dangerous:  we’ll go home.”

But, instead, we stepped ashore.  At once the reflected coolness of the water deserted us; the heady heat off the dusty land hit our flesh like the hot air from an oven; and a glare from the white, trampled dust and the white canvas tents troubled our eyes and set our temples aching.  And the rolling hills, empty of growth, except grass burnt brown and thistles burnt yellow, gave us a shock of depression.