hen raising his voice he chanted:

"_Put me upon an island where the girls are few..._"

"Right," retorted the Indian-rubber Man. "We'll go round this little
headland. Ready about! Check the fore sheet! Come aft out of the
bows, Pills, you clown, unless you want us to miss stays."

"I don't want to go to an island," cried the Surgeon plaintively,
"where the girls are few." He surveyed the heather-crowned islets
surrounding them on all sides, the lonely haunts of cormorants and
black-backed gulls. "I'm all for houris and sirens and whatnots----"

The foresail swung across and knocked him into the bottom of the boat.

"You frail Ulysses!" exclaimed Thorogood, as they set sail on the new
course. "You aren't to be trusted in these populous parts. We must
lash you to the mast!"

"And stop his ears with cotton-wool," said a Midshipman whose
acquaintance with the classics was still a recent, if sketchy
acquisition.

A party set off into the bows to put the proposal into immediate
execution, but the imminence of land and a shout from the helmsman
arrested them in their purpose:

"Down foresail. Top up mainsail!" The cutter, with the skiff towing
peacefully astern, glided into a little bay where miniature cliffs,
some twenty feet in height, rose from a narrow shale-strewn beach. The
anchor plashed overboard.

"_Here we are, here we are, here we are again!_" carolled the Surgeon
lustily. "Come alongside, skiff! The landing of the Lancashire
Fusiliers is about to commence under a withering fire!"

A letter received that morning from a soldier brother who had taken
part in that epic of human gallantry had apparently inspired the Young
Doctor. He pointed ahead with a dramatic gesture at the cliffs.
"Yonder are the Turks! See, they fly, they fly!" A pair of agitated
cormorants, sunning themselves on the rocks, flew seaward with
outstretched necks. "Lead on, brave lads, and I will follow!"

The skiff came bumping alongside, and Mouldy Jakes, galvanised into
wakefulness by the confusion and laughter, found himself inextricably
entangled in the fishing-line, holding a kettle that someone had thrust
upon him in one hand and a frying-pan in the other. Half a dozen
partly clad forms, followed by the Doctor, flung themselves headlong
into the skiff and made for the shore. The bows grated on the shingle
and they sprang out.

"For drill purposes only," explained the Surgeon breathlessly, "we are
Turks!"

U