“I’ve cold feet to-night,” he grumbled.  “Roll on Peace, and a passage home.  Let’s cheer ourselves up by thinking of the first dinner we’ll have when we get back to England. Allons, I’ll begin with turtle soup.”

“And a glass of sherry,” added I from my pillow.

“Then, I think, turbot and white sauce.”

“Good enough,” I agreed, “and we’ll trifle with the wing of a fowl.”

“Two cream buns for sweets,” continued the Brigade Bombing Officer, “or possibly three.  And fruit salad. Ah, mon dieu, que c’est beau!”

“And a piece of Stilton on a sweet biscuit,” suggested the Captain of D Company, “with a glass of port.”

“Yes,” conceded the Bombing Officer, “and then cafe noir, and an Abdulla No. 5 in the arm-chair. Sapristi! isn’t it cold?” He turned round sulkily in his bed.  “If it’s like this to-morrow I shan’t get up—­no, not if Gladys Cooper comes to wake me.”

So he dropped off to sleep....  And, with Doe asleep, I can say that to which I have been leading up.  Always before the war I used to think forced and exaggerated those pictures which showed the soldier in his uniform, sleeping on the field near the piled arms, and suggested, by a vision painted on the canvas, that his dreams were of his hearth and loved ones.  But I know now of a certain Captain-fellow, who, on that first night of the blizzard, after he had received a letter from his mother, dreamt long and fully of friends in England, awaking at times to find himself lying on a lofty wild Bluff, and falling off to sleep again to continue dreams of home.

CHAPTER XIV

THE NINETEENTH OF DECEMBER

Sec.1

The grand incident in the last act of the Gallipoli Campaign—­the grand motif—­was the Germans’ successful break through Servia.  They had driven their corridor from Central Europe through Servia to Constantinople; and, for all we knew, the might of Germany in men and guns were pouring down it.  Of course they were coming; they must come.  Never had the generals of Germany so fine an opportunity of destroying the British Divisions that languished at Suvla and Helles.  What chance had the Haughty Islanders now of escaping?  The wintry storms were already cutting their frail line of communications by sea, and smashing up their miserable jetties on the beaches.  The plot should unravel simply.  The German-Turk combine would attack in force, and the British, unable to escape, would either surrender or, in good Roman style, die fighting.

We knew the Germans were coming.  When the blizzard rolled away and left behind a glorious December, we began to hear their new guns throbbing on the distant Suvla front.  Doubtless more guns were rumbling along the streets of Constantinople, and troops concentrating in its squares.  They were out for the biggest victory of the Central Empires since Tannenberg.  Six divisions from Suvla and four from Helles would be a good day’s bag.  Perhaps the Turks were not without pity for the tough little British Divisions that, depleted, exhausted, and unreinforced, lay at their mercy on the extremities of the Gallipoli Peninsula.