Somehow we got back to the pier, but I was almost delirious by this time. The last part of the trip was all one drab, dull nightmare to me. This evening my hands were so swollen I was forced to the extremity of bribing a friend to hold the telephone receiver for me when I called up mother. "What have you been doing?" she asked. "Rowing," came my short answer. "What a splendid outing!" she exclaimed. "You had such a lovely day for it, didn't you, dear?" "Hang up that receiver!" I shouted to my friend; "hang it up, or my mother shall hear from the lips of her son words she should only hear from her husband." _May 9th._ I am just after having been killed in a sham battle, and so consequently I feel rather ghastly to-day. I don't exactly know whether I was a Red or a Blue, because I did a deal of fighting on both sides, but always with the same result. I was killed instantly and completely. People got sick of putting me out of my misery after a while and I was allowed to wander around at large in a state of great mystification and excitement, shooting my blank bullets into the face of nature in an aimless sort of manner whenever the battle began to pall upon me. Most of the time I passed pleasantly on the soft, fresh flank of a hill where for a while I slept until a cow breathed heavily in my face and reminded me that it was war after all. My instructions were to keep away from the guns, and get killed as soon as possible. As these instructions were not difficult to follow, I carried them out to the letter. I stayed away from the guns and I permitted myself to be killed several times in order to make sure it would take. After that I became a sort of composite camp follower, deserter and straggler. In my wandering I chanced upon an ancient enemy of many past encounters. "Are you Red or Blue?" I asked, preparing to die for the fifth time. "No," he answered, sarcastically, "I'm what you might call elephant ear gray." "Are you the guy the reporter for the camp paper was referring to in his last story?" I asked him. "Yes," he replied, "the slandering blackguard." "You hit me on the nose with a push-ball," said I. "I'll do it again," said he. "That reporter, evidently a man of some observation, said you didn't wash your neck and that you had the habits of a camel." "But I do wash my neck," he said, stubbornly, "and I don't know anything about the habits of a camel, but whatever they might happen to be, I haven't got 'em." "Yes," I replied, as if to myself, "you certainly should wash your neck. That's the very least you could do." "But I tell you," he cried, desperately, "I keep telling you that I do wash my neck. Why do you go on talking about it as if I didn't! I tell you now, once for all time, that I do wash my neck, and that ends it. Don't talk any more. I want to think." We sat in silence for a space, then I remarked casually, almost inaudibly, "and you certainly shouldn't have the habits of a camel."