ial plain. South of Baghdad it was reported that a reward of L100
would be paid (by whom I never heard) to the finder of any sort of
stone. And now, after our long sojourn in stoneless lands, these
pebbles were a temptation, and there was a deal of surreptitious
chucking-about. One watched with secret glee while a smitten colleague
pretended to be otherwise occupied, but nevertheless kept cunning eyes
searching for the offender. I enjoyed myself best, for I lay and
watched the daily parade of the troops before breakfast, and could
inquire genially, 'Have you had a good stand-to?' Fowke asked the
wastes in a soaring falsetto, 'Why do the heathen rage?' And he was
returned question for question, with 'Why do you keep laughing at me
with those big, blue eyes?' Then the camp would rock with song as we
fell to shaving and, after, breakfast.

The superstitions which old experience had justified waxed strong as
the days went by. When McInerney marked out a quoits-court and Charles
Copeman dug a mess--these officers found their amusement in singular
ways, and would have been hurt had any one attempted to usurp their
self-appointed duties--and when I put in services for Sunday, the 22nd,
it was recognized that we should march, and fight on the Sabbath. Not
more anxiously did the legionary listen for tales of supernatural fires
in the corn and of statues sweating blood than the regiments asked each
other, 'Have you dug a mess yet? Has the padre put in services?' Two of
us went down with colitis--possibly the Sumaikchah waters were not even
yet done with--and Fowke, as they left us, profaned Royal Harry's
words:

He which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart.

For all this, Shakespeare had a share in the storming of Istabulat, as
will be seen; as the ghost of Bishop Adhemar, who had died at Antioch,
was said to have gone before Godfrey of Boulogne's scaling-ladder when
the Crusaders took Jerusalem. ('Thank God!' said they. 'He was not
frustrate of his vows.')

On Friday rain came, and Charles Copeman, who had, as already
indicated, a passion for digging--caught, perchance, in boyhood from
his father's sexton--dug a funk-hole from the enemy shell-fire.
McInerney helped him. Now this was not an ordinary funk-hole. It was a
very splendid and elaborate hole, and no one was allowed to come near,
lest he cause its perfection to crumble away. So, to dry ourselves
after the rain, we all dug, and the Desert-Gods laugh