uins. We found green coins, pottery
fragments, and shells with very lovely mother-of-pearl. The Dujail ran
near by, and made a green streak through an arid waste. The whole
landscape seemed one dust-heap, sand and rubbish. But by the brook
were poppies, marguerites, delicate pink campions, wheat and barley
growing as weeds of former cultivation, and thickets of blue-flowered
liquorice. There were many thorns, especially a squat shrub with white
papery globes. A large and particularly fleshy broom-rape, recently
flowering, festered unpleasantly everywhere.

April was well on, and the sun gained power daily. The camp had a
thousand discomforts. We lay under bivvies formed of a blanket,
supported on a rifle and held down uncertainly by stones. Blinding
dust-storms careered over the desert. These _djinns_, with their
whirling sand-robes, would swoop down and whisk the poor shelters away.
If the courts above take note of blasphemy under such provocation, the
Recording Angel's office was hard worked these days. One would be
reading a letter, already wretched enough with heat and flies, and
suddenly you would be fighting for breath and sight in a maelstrom of
dirt, indescribably filthy dirt, whilst your papers flew up twenty feet
and your rifle hit you cruelly over the head. As a Marian martyr
observed to an enthusiast who thrust a blazing furze-bush into his
face, 'Friend, have I not harm enough? What need of that?' One storm at
Harbe blew all night, having made day intolerable and meals out of the
question. As Fowke curled himself miserably under his blanket for the
night, I heard him deliver himself of the opinion quoted at the head of
this chapter.

Flies may be taken for granted. They swarm in these vile relics of old
habitation. Moreover, there had been a Turkish camp at hand. But
snakes and scorpions were found also almost hourly. The snakes were
small asps; the scorpions were small also, but sufficiently painful. My
batman was consumed with curiosity as to what a scorpion was like; he
had 'heard tell of them' in Gallipoli. The listening Gods took account
of his desire, and he was mildly stung the day we left.

We spent the best part of a fortnight at Harbe. Morning and evening
were enlivened by regular hates. So we had to dig trenches. But there
were more memorable happenings at Harbe than the discomforts. Hebden
returned with stores of sorts from Baghdad. Two new subalterns, Sowter
and Keely, came. On Tuesday Hall'