"You s'scoundrel! you impudent s'scoundrel!" With a loud spluttering noise the greens got up and assumed a belligerent attitude. "You m'miserable villain! that is _my_ bath. How d'dare you--how d'dare you--throw w'water over me. D'do you know what I am, sir? I am a Major-General, sir, and I shall report your infamous c'conduct to the captain." "And I, sir," howled his opponent, "will have you put in irons; I will have you chained to the crow's-nest, if they have one on board. Keel-hauled, sir, amongst the barnacles and things. I, sir, I am a Lieutenant-General." Draycott was still slightly dazed when he landed in Malta. IX Thus did he reach the Half Way House on his journey to the Land; and at that Half Way House he was destined to remain for a short space. It may be that there is a harder school than forced inaction; if so, I have no desire to become a pupil. "Those are your orders; there is nothing more to be said." Only too true; there _is_ nothing more to be said--but thinking is a different matter. . . . And what brush can paint the indescribable longing of those who were fitted for it, who were trained in its ways, to get to their goal--to get to the Land of Promise. For it was a Land of Promise; it was the land of the regular soldier's dreams. And in those days there was no thought of the dream becoming a nightmare. . . . So Clive Draycott and those with him, in that little rocky outpost of Empire, carried on as cheerfully as a wet sirocco wind and an ever-present heart-burning to be in France would allow, and waited for deliverance. Perhaps they suffered more acutely than even those who were in the Great Retreat. Out of it, as they thought, out of it. Would they ever be able to hold up their heads again? And then the worst thing of all: that awful day when the news came through--the news which England got one Sunday. Fellows kept it from the men as far as they could; they covered up places on the map with their hand, unostentatiously; and when they had found Compiegne they folded the map up, and told the men everything was well. It was that evening that Draycott and a pal watched the sun go down over Gozo from St. Paul's Bay, where the statue stands in the sea, and the shallow blue water ripples against the white sandstone. "My God! it can't be true!" His companion turned to him, and his eyes were tired. "It can't be true. We're b----" And his lips would not frame the word.