“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 the stretcher-squads in the firing line than lying there sick, and thinking those long, long thoughts. This is how I would think--