er the crests and
plunged away down into the troughs. The spray lifted over the bows and
swept along the decks, the wind howled dismally through the rigging,
and the ship was wet and comfortless. All was grey--the ships, the
sky, the sea and the long trails of smoke fleeing away to leeward. Mac
had found a good job on board, together with Joe of the Canterbury
Squadron and Jock of his own squadron, in charge of the fodder. Both
were from the sheep country and real fine fellows, though Joe had had a
college education, while Jock claimed only to have been dragged up in
the bush. Three times a day, about an hour before their own meals,
they weighed out for the horses the rations of chaff, oats, hay,
linseed and so forth, and issued them to fatigues from the troops, the
service corps and the mounted machine-gunners, who came slipping and
sliding along the deck in heavy gum-boots.

The second-class dining saloon of peace days had descended to becoming
a fodder room for the horses, and outside its door gathered the boys
clamouring for their loads, laughing and swearing and generally
hindering Mac and his cobbers at their work. Everything had gone like
clockwork in port, but, for the first few days at sea, these practical
sons of the bush and the sheep-stations were for the moment put out of
their stride. Hefty men lay huddled helplessly on their bunks and
others moped about searching for the drier, warmer corners. But the
horses had to be fed, though many of them, too, hung their heads in the
deepest dejection. The men who were not seasick turned to with a will,
and many who were went to work with bold hearts, though feeling too
utterly miserable for description when down below on the stuffy,
reeling horse-decks.

Mac, in the foolishness of his abandonment, had flung himself at the
first spasm of seasickness on to the top of some of his bales of hay;
the sweet fragrance of the hay aggravated the evil effects of the
rolling, and three days passed like an interminable nightmare.
Sometimes the bales and bags slid about the place with the rolling of
the ship, occasionally he made weak though desperate attempts to help
Joe and Jock who struggled on nobly; but eventually Mac managed to drag
himself and two blankets to the top of the horse-boxes high on the
boat-deck. There lay rows of men like corpses in their blankets, with
pinched white faces peeping out, which smiled pathetically with the
bashfulness of returning spi