er English or askaris
or Germans. It's surely better to pray about him like you prayed.
I should think the negative work appeals to him more than the
positive, the salvage more than the blotting.'

His voice was clear, and evidently carried. The Maxim's warden
grumbled, and began to sit up in bed.

'Possibly,' this disturber of slumber went on quite
unconcernedly, 'Saint Michael has a clearer notion as to the real
enemy than some clients who invoke him.'

Then the officer in pyjamas accosted me, and the thread of the
other's talk was lost. When I moved off to dress he had already
left his perch among the sand bags. I climbed the ladder, and had
my coffee. Soon after came the scurry to stations. We were coming
into the bay in the glory of that morning under hangings of amber
and rose and feathery grey. The four-inch gun's crew were in
their places. I stood trying to read the Prayer before Action in
its very small print. I murmured what I was doing to my cheery
colleague, so much more enthusiastic than I was about what seemed
to be coming. Then someone came up and spoke to me. It was surely
my friend from the sand bags. I could see him properly now. He
was surely an officer. He stood up slender and shapely in his
khaki, but he was not wearing a single star or a regimental badge
of any kind. Had he forgotten these in the hurry of this eager
morning? With but a few words, he passed on towards the guns'
crews. Soon our four-inch gun was shaking the ship horribly. We
were shelling a trench that ran up a hillside, they said. I sat
under cover of the bulwark near some kneeling riflemen, far from
enjoying myself. Yet no gun roared back in answer to our own. It
seemed to be one-sided enough, this operation of war.

'It's a fearful weapon,' remarked my colleague rather
complacently, as he paced towards the gun platform. One prayed
for those who were naked to its fearsomeness up on the hill
there, and prayed about Saint Michael's intervention to Saint
Michael's Commander-in-Chief. The long-drawn moments slurred by
us. A bell rang as the ship wound her way in slowly. The mournful
cry of him who took the soundings came again and again. Then we
stopped dead anew, and our gun's mouth roared and flamed.

'Such a crowd of askaris; the hill's black with them!' So the
signalman cried to the doctor, as he sped by on a message. I was
interested in watching the gun-layer as he readjusted the dragon
mouth. But what had my friend of the