ing its mind and blowing them to bits. I carefully preserved one of these "duds" for some days, in the hope of getting a gunner to draw its fang, but they weren't for it, and advised its speedy removal to the river. So this, to my regret, had to be done, and at the dead of a dark night it was consigned to a watery grave. But the 9th brought us great news, and the town was all agog. The R.F., the Relieving Force, had beaten the enemy at Sheikh Sa'ad, so the report said, the Turks were retreating, and our people were pursuing them, albeit "slowly," owing to the bad going. Although we had had rain and we knew what silt soil was like when it is wet, yet we didn't altogether like that word "slowly"; it suggested "fatigue" and difficulties. And when the evening came and with it a rumour that we were to be put on "half rations," our optimism got a shock and we felt that the success was not an unqualified one. Next day there was no news, and the weather was vile. It was damp and wet and cold; the roads, or rather unmade lanes, were indescribably muddy and sloppy, and one slipped, splashed, and slithered rather than walked. There was no fuel save for the barest necessities, the sky was overcast, and the outlook grey and miserable. Our "Lancelot " fell sick again, this time with an illness that was to keep him away from us for nearly three months, and poor Lambert was worse. Huddled up in our thickest clothes, we considered

and reconsidered our prospects, conjectured and guessed at what was happening down below; surmised and supposed, and, generally, went through the first of those periods of trying suspense which we were later to become so familiar with from their frequent repetition.

Restless and stiff, I took a walk to the "East End" by the "A" short out, to exchange a word with Gasbard and the "Fat Boy" of the Rajputs, who were quartered down there, and to gain their roof, like Sister Anne, and look around.

or

Of these alley ways "short cuts" through the town from east to west, four or five had been made. They were were labelled alphabetically. Each one had its appropriate letter stuck up on a board at corners or difficult turns, to keep one to the right track. "A" road passed along the south-west or riverside Bazar throughout its length, and then dived through a maze of "khans," stables, private houses, and passages, until it ended in the palm grove in the S.E. of the town. It was the weirdest road. The khan, or inn, was a dirty yard surrounded by a verandah, from which led rooms or stables as the needs of the moment demanded. Crossing it, you cut across the corner of a small hovel which in these days was used to stable a friendly old fleabitten Arab pony, whose unhappy death in April, under the orders of the Food Controller, we all lamented.

Leaving the stable, you passed through a nondescript court on into the courtyard of the R.E. Headquarters, where, if you nosed about, you would find yourself amongst the bomb - makers, with their jam tins. and old nails; the mortar manufacturers, the makers of Roman catapults and other improvised engines of destruction, of scaling-ladders and carpentry of all sorts, and a hundred other evidences of the sleepless activity of the engineers. Leaving them you passed through an open piece of ground shielded from transfluvial snipers by a wall, and full of elaborate dug-outs prepared by the pioneers. Thence the road dipped to cross a weak spot and avoid the attentions of the enemy on the far bank. Up again to ground-level, you passed through some Tommies' quarters, and then dived below one of the main streets. Climbing up on the far side of this you found yourself in the chambers of some Turkish baths, domed and vaulted like a cathedral crypt, and nearly as dark, but now fitfully illuminated by the crude oil lights, or the cooking fires of the Hindu bearers who lived there. Another dip beneath another road brought you to the living-rooms of a house occupied by the Rajputs, and near your journey's end, for across the next street lay the mess, and those you came to see. And so up to the flat roof, by the usual winding stair in the wall of the usual courtyard. The house-top was some twenty-five feet square,

and around three sides of it was a four-foot brick wall. On the fourth or eastern side, a palisade of sheet zinc of the same height had been erected, with a few sandbags around its loophole. The walls were loopholed at intervals of three yards or so, for the convenience of our snipers and observers. Two or three snipers were always on duty here. Each sat on a brick or two close by his loophole, with his eye glued to a telescope. Within reach of his hand he had spare ammunition, and by his side lay an accumulating heap of empty cartridge cases. From time to time the short "plock" of a rifle rang out, as one or other of them spotted an exposed head in the trenches opposite, and loosed off at it.

This particular roof was one of the highest in the place, and commanded a good view of the rest of the town and of the river and the country round about. Immediately below, on the river side, lazed the few "mahelas" that still remained in our hands, and straight across the stream was the mouth of the Shatt-el-Hai, that connecting link between Tigris and Euphrates, which it joins near Suk esh-Shiukh, the residence of the spiritual head of those followers of John the Baptist, the Sabæans.

At this time of the year "the Hai" is nearly dry, but with the coming of the rains it fills up, and is navigable for large native craft for some months, or until the snowwater flood has died away.

On either side of its mouth,

and extending along the bank of the main river nearly to "Woolpress" or the liquorice factory village, could be made out the Turkish trenches. In them we could just see the Turks and Arabs as they moved about and passed by small gaps in their parapet. Farther up lay the village, Occupying a quarter of a mile or so of bank opposite the west end of Kut, and consisting of a hundred or so flatroofed mud houses and the factory chimney. Beyond it, again, bare river - bank and more trenches. Away to the west, on the skyline, could easily be seen the great white camp of the Turks at Shamran, as well as the masts and funnels of two or three of their boats, including the smartlooking monitor Firefly, with its tall "wireless" mast, which we lost at Ctesiphon.

Between their camp and the Sinn ridge on the right bank ran a raised road, and traffic along it could usually be seen; sometimes a camel-train, sometimes a straggling column of wounded coming from down below, but always something. To the north-east the curving river pursued its tortuous way to Megasis Fort and beyond, whilst thirty miles or so away the snow-clad peaks of the Pusht-i-Kuh stood out, milky pink in the evening sunset. Northwards we looked down on a heterogeneous collection of flat house-tops of all shapes and sizes, with here and there

a

watcher gazing earnestly through a telescope, or an Arab woman busied with domestic

duties. Out beyond them, in the middle distance, our gunpits and the brick kilns, and farther still, the open and deserted plain stretching away to our front line and the Fort.

All this through the loopholes, for it did not do to show a head above the wall; the enemy snipers at 500 yards made far too pretty practice at anything showing above the top. But it was good to sit up there for a bit and vie with the sparrows and sand-grouse in their enjoyment of God's good air. Gasbard, too, was a wit of no mean parts, and often wiled away a pleasant hour with his fairy stories and comic anecdotes, so that the roof became a popular resort and a welcome refuge from the ennui of the daily round. Often "of an evening," as the weeks went by and the days grew warmer, did we sit there watching the evening hate and the Turks' attempts to hit the guns on the bank below us.

The 11th passed silently, but on the 12th a message told us that it had been a big action at Sheikh Sa'ad; that the enemy had lost 4500 men and two guns, as well as prisoners and deserters, and that we were following them up. But in the usual way our own losses were left to the imagination, and we guessed they were not inconsiderable. General Nixon, the message continued, had relinquished the army command through ill health. However, the news that our people had given the Turk 8 good hard knock

cheered us greatly, and one man even drew upon his imagination so far as to see shells bursting over the Ess Sinn position.

The 14th brought us more particulars of the great defeat and retreat of the enemy, and the over-sanguine ones saw the smoke of our ships in the distant east.

All day long a straggling column of the enemy's camels and men passed by, just out of range, on the right bank, on their way up to Shamran. They appeared to be wounded, and, so, very tangible evidence of a big "strafe somewhere. Late in the afternoon a column of some 5000 Turks, with guns, was descried in the east, going north-west, so we persuaded ourselves that our deliverance was near, though the Turks, as an antidote, hurled a lot of their spherical shells at us just to show that they were not downhearted.

We were all very cheery, and "Relief" was on every one's lips,-what mattered it that the rations had sunk to a half and the oruse of oil had failed? An order came

out, too, that no Arab was allowed outside his house after 5 P.M., on pain of being shot at sight, and the whole garrison was standing to arms. So the air was tense with excitement, and we waited with what patience we could command for the next development. But the 15th was silent, and that force of 5000 Turks came down again on the other side of the river. On the 16th it leaked out that our people were only just this side of Wady, had lost a good many in a second battle, and were not likely to get on; and the next day the official blow fell.

D.H.Q. issued a communiqué to the effect that, owing to losses and bad weather, the Relieving Force could not get on, and the troops were exhorted to patience against the arrival of more reinforcements. So we reluctantly came to the conclusion that the end was not in sight, and that it was up to us to go on sticking it for yet a week or two. With a sigh of disappointment and a muttered damn, we turned each to his job and carried on."

A FLURRY of sleet came out of the East, where a broad band of light was slowly widening into day.

The tarpaulin cover to the after-hatchway was drawn aside as if by a cautious hand, and the rather sleepy countenance of the Young Doctor peered out into the dawning. An expression of profound distaste spread over it, and its owner emerged on to the quarter-deck. There he stood shivering, looking about him with the air of one who found the universe at this hour a grossly overrated place.

The scene was familiar enough, to him at all events. On all sides lay line upon line of anchored battleships brooding in a kind of sullen majesty, with stripped decks, stark as gladiators, and seen thus in a comfortless halflight, sombre and terrible. The barren islands compassing them on all sides, the snowpowdered hills in the far distance, the restless crying of the gulls above 8 grey sea, all combined to heighten the desolation of the scene.

The Staff Surgeon turned up the collar of his greatcoat, pulled his cap down until it gave him the appearance of a sort of Naval "Artful Dodger," and walked gloomily to the port gangway. The Officer of the Watch, who was partaking of hot cocoa in the

VOL. CCI.-NO. MCCXVIII.

shelter of the after superstructure, sighted this forlorn object.

"'Morning, Pills," he shouted. "She's called away: won't be long now." He wiped his mouth and came across the deck to where the other was standing. "Fine morning for a pull," he observed, throwing his nose into the air and sniffing like a pointer. "Smell the heather? Lor! it does me good to see all you young fellow-me-lads turning up here bright and early with the roses in your cheeks

The Young Doctor turned a gambooge-tinted eye on the speaker.

"Dry up," he said acidly.

The Officer of the Watch was moved to unseemly mirth. "Where's your crew, Pills? I don't like to see this hangingon-to-the-slack the first morning of the training season. You're too easy-going for a cox, by a long chalk, my lad. You ought to be going round their cabins now with a wet sponge, shouting 'Wet Bobs!' and 'Tally-ho!' and all the rest of it."

"Dry up!" was the reply. "An even temper, boundless tact, a firm manner, and an extensive vocabulary - those were the essentials of the cox of a racing-boat when I was a lad at College. Why did they make you cox, Pills ?"

2 H