The yacht topped the crest. On the moor to the left a vast assemblage of huts and tents broke upon the view. By the roadside was parked a row of motor lorries. Here and there men were moving about. They stared and shouted to one another at the sight of the strange vehicle sailing towards them, or rather running now merrily on the last gill of petrol. Templeton narrowly escaped colliding with the nearest lorry, then slowed down and enquired the way to the commandant’s office. "You go in between them huts till you come to a swanky hut with a flag flying atop," replied the private addressed. "A rum turn-out, this here." Driving on to the moor, Templeton was checked by the sentry, to whom, however, the Irishman explained that he was Patrick O’Reilly, come to tender for the camp waste. "Pass: you’d better tender for the lot of us: we’re all waste here," said the sentry. "Perhaps if you offered to buy us up they’d demob." "I don’t like that," said Templeton, gravely, as he drove on. "It’s subversive of discipline." "Don’t worry," said Eves with a smile. "He saluted all right. It’s two minutes to twelve: we did jolly well, old man." Templeton drew up at the commandant’s hut. O’Reilly sprang out, and after a brief colloquy with the sentry, who looked doubtfully at his bare head and touzled hair, was allowed to enter. In five minutes he returned, in animated converse with the colonel. That officer, acknowledging the punctilious salutes of Eves and Templeton, smiled at the smutty face of the latter, and remarked: "This is a queer contrivance of yours, my man. I thought Mr. O’Reilly was a lunatic when he told me he’d arrived in a yacht, without being sick, and himself a bad sailor——" "I am that," put in O’Reilly, parenthetically. "I wouldn’t like to say how much the Irish Sea is owing me." "But I see he’s not so mad as I supposed," the colonel went on. "Sure you’d be the better of a voyage in her yourself," said O’Reilly. "Thank you. I think I prefer the real article. Not many of these machines in the market, are there?" "None, sir," replied Eves, promptly. "It’s the first, a brand-new invention of my friend Templeton here, second lieutenant in the Blankshire Rifles. He’s a repatriated prisoner of war, employing his leave in working out ideas that germinated in captivity. That accounts for his being improperly dressed." "Indeed! Is this the Mr. Templeton who narrowly escaped gassing my old friend Colonel Beavis?" "A pure accident, sir, due to the colonel’s adventurous spirit and a loose screw. Templeton was very much cut up about it." "Dry up!" growled Templeton in a fierce undertone.