nd was before, and the intervening time,
monotonous though it was, passed quickly with that absorbing thought.
My chief impression is that of living in an eternal jostle; forming
interminable _queues_ outside canteens, washing-places, and stuffy
hammock-rooms in narrow alleys, and of leisure hours spent on deck
among a human carpet of khaki, playing euchre, or reading the
advertisement columns of ancient halfpenny papers. There was physical
exercise, and a parade every day, but the chief duty was that of
sentry-go, which recurred to each of us every five days, and lasted
for twenty-four hours. The ship teemed with sentries. To look out for
fire was our principal function, and a very important one it was, but
I have also vivid recollections of lonely vigils over water-tight
doors in stifling little alley-ways, of directing streams of traffic
up troop-deck ladders, and of drowsy sinecures, in the midnight hours,
over deserted water-taps and empty wash-houses. These latter, which
contained fourteen basins between fourteen hundred men, are a good
illustration of the struggle for life in those days. That a sentry
should guard them at night was not unreasonable on the face of it,
since I calculated that if every man was to appear washed at the ten
o'clock parade, the first would have had to begin washing about six
o'clock the night before, allowing ten minutes for a toilet, but
unfortunately for this theory, the basins were always locked up at
night. Another grim pleasantry was an order that all should appear
shaved at the morning parade. Luckily this cynical regulation was
leniently interpreted, for the spectacle of fourteen hundred razors
flashing together in those narrow limits of time and space was a
prospect no humane person could view with anything but horror.

There was plenty of time to reflect over our experiences in the last
nine months. Summing mine up, I found, and thinking over it at home
find still, little but good in the retrospect. Physically and
mentally, I, like many others, have found this short excursion into
strict military life of enormous value. To those who have been lucky
enough to escape sickness, the combination of open air and hard work
will act as a lasting tonic against the less healthy conditions of
town-life. It is something, bred up as we have been in a complex
civilization, to have reduced living to its simplest terms and to have
realized how little one really wants. It is much to have learnt