and evoking roars
of laughter from the whole house. It did not take MacTavish long to
realise that, no matter what he said, he would never again be taken
seriously in that place; he was, in fact, the world's stock joke, a
sailor on horseback (Ha, ha, ha!).

He set his jaw and was determined that he would not be caught tripping
again; there should be no more reminiscences. Once clear of Ireland he
would bury his past.

All this happened years ago.

When I came back from leave the other day I asked for Albert Edward.
"He and MacTavish are up at Corpse H.Q.," said the skipper; "they're
helping the A.P.M. straighten the traffic out. By the way you'd
better trickle up there and relieve them, as they're both going on
leave in a day or so."

I trickled up to Corpse and eventually discovered Albert Edward alone,
practising the three-card trick with a view to a career after the War.
"You'll enjoy this Mess," said he, turning up "the Lady" where he
least expected her; "it's made up of Staff eccentrics--Demobilizing,
Delousing, Educational, Laundry and Burial _wallahs_--all sorts, very
interesting; you'll learn how the other half lives and all that. Oh,
that reminds me. You know poor old MacTavish's secret, don't you?"

"Of course," said I; "everybody does. Why?"

Albert Edward grinned. "Because there's another bloke here with a dark
past, only this is t'other way about; he's a bumpkin turned sailor,
Blenkinsop by name, you know, the Shropshire hackney breeders. He's
Naval Division. Ever rub against those merchants?"

I had not.

"Well, I have," Albert Edward went on. "They're wonders; pretend
they're in mid-ocean all the time, stuck in the mud on the Beaucourt
Ridge, gummed in the clay at Souchez--anywhere. They 'come aboard'
a trench and call their records-office--a staid and solid bourgeois
dwelling in Havre--_H.M.S. Victory_. If you were bleeding to death and
asked for the First Aid Post they wouldn't understand you; you've got
to say 'Sick bay' or bleed on. If you want a meal you've got to call
the cook-house 'The galley,' or starve.

"This _matelot_ Blenkinsop has got it very badly. He obtained all his
sea experience at the Crystal Palace and has been mud-pounding up and
down France for three years, and yet here we have him now pretending
there's no such thing as dry land."

"Not an unnatural delusion," I remarked.

"Well," resumed Albert Edward, "across the table from him sits our old
MacTavish, lisping, 'Wh