re
silenced with their nosebags, and then we asked our cook what
about it? That dauntless artist in bully-beef promptly brought our
far-travelled mess-table into action in the open, and thus publicly we
sat round it on our valises and drank Vichy water until the novelty
palled. Then the rain began and the men once more united in wishing
themselves in Tennessee.

The Captain was now driven from the bosom of the mess to find a Camp
Commandant, and to tell him, with the Major's compliments, that even
the personnel of Army Brigades were liable, in the words of the book,
to deteriorate rapidly if unprotected from damp. The officer, whom he
found lurking in a neighbouring Nissen hut, was tall and stately, but
admitted, under pressure, that to him was entrusted the stewardship
of our mud-flat and the adjacent camps, and that he could give us a
mess. Through the insistent drizzle this person, smiling now very
pleasantly, led us to a depressed wooden building that suggested
a derelict Noah's Ark with a sinister look about the windows. The
bad-tempered sky scowled between the planks of the roof; the querulous
wind whined up through the floor; rats backed snarling into the
corners on our entrance.

"This is the place," said the C.C. "You'll soon make yourselves very
comfortable."

That night I dreamed I was a "U" boat, and started up, snorting, to
find myself under a cascade, while the felt upon the roof banged and
rasped and flapped. It sounded as if the ark were trying to fly, but
found its wings rusty. At dawn we sent the Captain out, and refused
him breakfast till by some resource of ingenuity or crime he obtained
certain sausages of new felt. These our fearless batmen unrolled and
nailed upon the roof. After his porridge we pushed him out again with
a strong party under orders to carry the nearest R.E. dump by force
or fraud, and secure large quantities of timber, nails, canvas and,
if possible (the up-to-date R.E. dump secretes many unexpected
commodities), Turkey carpets, wall-paper, sofa-cushions and
bedroom-slippers.

The batmen were sent out with a limbered cart, some smoke shell and
the total establishment of billhooks, and forbidden to return without
sufficient material for bedsteads, window-shutters, bookshelves and
chairs. By evening the place began to feel habitable, and the C.C.,
when he looked in to borrow a horse, endeared himself to us all by
his obvious pleasure in our comparative comfort. We lent him the