nder one eyelid. He lay under a shelf of rock, safe from
shrapnel.

"Come now, Fred," says I, "you're not going to snuff it yet."

"Weak as a rat--can't eat nothink, PRACtically... nothink; but see here,
John,"--he seldom called me John--"if I do slip off the map, an' I
feel PRACtically done for this time--if I SHOULD--you see that
ration-bag"--he pointed to a little white bag bulging and tied up and
knotted.

"Yes?"

"It's got some little things in it--for the kiddies at home--a little
teapot I found up by the Turkish bivouac over there, and one or two more
relics--I want 'em to have 'em--will you take care of it and send it
home for me if you get out of this alive?"

Of course I promised to do this, but tried to cheer him up, and assured
him he would soon pull round.

In a few days he threw off the fever and was about again.

Hawk and I had lived for some weeks in this overgrown water-course.
It was a natural trench, and at one place Hawk had made a dug-out. He
picked and shovelled right into the hard, sandy rock until there was
quite a good-sized little cave about eight feet long and five deep.

The same sickness got me. It came over me quite suddenly. I was
fearfully tired. Every limb ached, and, like all the others, I began to
develop what I call the "stretcher-stoop." I just lay down in the
ditch with a blanket and went to sleep. Hawk sat over me and brought me
bovril, which we had "pinched" on Lemnos Island.

I felt absolutely dying, and I really wondered whether I should have
enough strength to throw the sickness off as Hawk had. I gave him just
the same sort of instructions about my notes and sketches as he had
given me about his little ration-bag.

"Get 'em back to England if you can," I said; "you're the man I'd
soonest trust here."

If Hawk hadn't looked after me and made me eat, I don't believe I should
have lived. I used to lie there looking at the wild-rose tangles and the
red hips; there were brambles, too, with poor, dried-up blackberries. It
reminded me of England. Little green lizards scuttled about, and great
black centipedes crawled under my blanket. The sun was blazing
at mid-day. Hawk used to rig me up an awning over the ditch with
willow-stems and a waterproof ground-sheet.

Somehow you always thought yourself back to England. No matter what
train of thought you went upon, it always worked its way by one thread
or another to England. Mine did, anyway.

It was better to be up with