“The miracle was performed by a little pink-cheeked, bare-footed angel of a Jewess, evidently the ‘shepherd of the bees.’ Unconcernedly tripping out among the writhing ‘casualties,’ oblivious alike to the threat of Turkish bullets and the roaring masses of bees, she set up the punctured hives in a safe place under the wall, and then began to beat sharply with a stick upon an old bronze gong which was suspended from her neck by a thong. Instantly the bees stopped stinging, and inside of five minutes the last of them was settling back with a contented buzz into its hive. I could have kissed the stubby brown toes of the pink-cheeked little angel of mercy. And here again let me record to the credit of the Turks that, although her head and shoulders must have been visible to them above the low wall, they made no attempt to stop with a bullet the work which, had they only known it, was all that prevented the whole lot of us from falling into their hands. “Every man of us was, of course, in beastly shape from the stings. My own agony from this source was infinitely worse than that from a bullet which ploughed up my scalp when we cut the bridge of boats after darkness had fallen; in fact, if the truth were known, I think the desperate pain all of the boys were in had a good deal to do with the absolute recklessness they displayed when the time came for us to try to fulfil our mission. I heard one chap tell another he was afraid that he _wasn’t_ going to get shot, and the whole bunch acted as if they felt the same way. Luckily, the Turks had no searchlight, and it is probable their own fire helped not a little in breaking up the bridge. At any rate, it went off down the yellow Tigris in a score of sections, and we--or what was left of us--with it. A half-dozen impetuous Turks who, in their eagerness to get at close quarters, had come out to welcome us half-way, were also carried along when the bridge broke up. After that it was a case of _sauve qui peut_ for all of us, and I’m sorry to say that only about a third of the force I started out with has, so far, straggled back to Kurna.” V I was still chuckling over F----’s account of his experience with the bees when, opening the latest issue of the _Sphere_ the following afternoon, I saw his familiar face smiling back at me from the corner of one of the first pages. “Been getting mentioned in dispatches,” I said to myself; and then the title of the page, on which appeared a score of other portraits, met my eye: “Dead on the Field of Honour; Officers Killed in Action.” There were no particulars, not even a date; nor was anything further to be learned behind the tape-bound portals of Whitehall. To the officers of F----’s regiment, now fighting in Flanders, some few details were ultimately vouchsafed; and from one of these, whom I encountered a few days ago, during his leave in London, I learned all that I have so far been able to gather concerning the death of my friend.