The hall was full, and the guests included a fair sprinkling of soldiers from neighbouring camps and a good many N.O.'s from ships in harbour. At one end of the room clustered a dozen freshly joined subalterns: they whispered constrainedly amongst themselves and eyed the assembly with furtive interest. "Straight out of the egg," observed Milsom. "Mammy's darlings, every one of 'em. They shall sing us Songs of Araby after dinner or I'll eat my hat." I had my own ideas how Milsom should amuse himself after dinner, but I said nothing. "Watch them gloating over Markham and his V.C." Markham, according to his kindly nature, had gone over and was talking to the new-comers. They clustered round him in the unabashed hero-worship of youth, their shyness perceptibly evaporating: clean, robust striplings with down on their upper lips and the stamp of the Public School plain upon them. The swing doors opened and the Commandant tossed away his cigarette and rose as the guest of the Mess entered. He was a youthful Colonel of Marines on leave from the Western Front, a tall, lean man with a scar across his forehead and the look of wearied habitual alertness you always see in the faces of men fresh from the trenches, and also of our patrol Destroyer Officers. I had never seen him in the flesh, though the illustrated papers have by now made him a familiar figure enough. For this was Henry Havelock, destined to wear before he died every gallantry award in the gift of England and France. He was a contemporary of Milsom's, and when presently we adjourned to the vast arched messroom, I found myself sitting between them at the Commandant's end of the table. The talk was war, of course, because war made up every man's experience of life for the past three years and a half. But the range and variety of the fields which were being discussed down the shining length of the mahogany table made it unique. In one sector it was Antwerp and the raging inferno that had once been Lierre held for a live-long night against the headlong onslaught of the Hun. In another, Gallipoli held sway, and as the wine circulated and tongues were loosened, tales of that splendid failure were told that assuredly will never find their way into any printed history of the Great War. The hum of voices under the old beams of the vaulted roof was the echo of strife carried from Serbia to the Cameroons, with Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf thrown in. The only man who appeared disinclined to talk war was Havelock; he and Milsom were exchanging pre-war reminiscences of a visit paid by the Mediterranean Fleet to Monte Carlo; how a certain lady with an impulsive temperament lost her heart to the embarrassed Milsom, who was challenged to a duel by an indignant husband; this worthy Havelock plied with absinthe until he (the husband) was all for Havelock running off with the lady and thus easing a complicated situation; and as the evening wore on and the assiduous Corporal of