"Well, Jack, how goes it? You were both sleeping like tops when I left you." "I feel like a jelly-fish on Carne beach, sir," said Jack. "I have a very great disinclination to move." "Cuts twingy?" "When I think of them, sir. At present I can think of nothing but this coffee. They give us ours green, you know, and nothing to roast or grind it with." "So I heard. I would like to see what would happen if they sent ours like that; but, _mon Dieu!_ I wouldn't like to be in their shoes! The good old fashion of hanging a commissary whenever anything went wrong was certainly effective. Jim, my boy, I've got your matter arranged all right. You are to get away to-morrow with a fortnight's leave. That should pull you round." "It's awfully good of you, sir. It's just what I'm needing." "Talking of hanging commissaries," said the Colonel, with a whimsical smile on his dark face, "it was all I could do to keep my hands off one of your pig-heads down at Balaclava yonder." And he switched his long mud-caked riding-boot with his whip as if it were the gentleman in question. "I called on Lord Raglan to ask his permission to my plan, and at first he was a bit stiff and stand-offish. But he came round and spoke very nicely of you, my boy. He wouldn't discuss that foolish charge of yours, and I did not press It. He granted you leave at once, and gave me a written order for your passage to and from Constantinople by first ship that was leaving." "But that's only the beginning of the story," he said, as Jim's mouth opened with thanks again. "I thought I'd make sure of the whole business, so I waded down to Balaclava. _Mon Dieu!_ what a travesty of a road! My poor beast was up to his knees in the filth at times. And the place itself when I got there! The harbour is a cesspool, an inferno of evil smells and pestilence, And I think the evil vapours have got into the heads of your people there, I never saw such disorder and confusion in all my life. I found the harbour master at last, and asked him for information as to sailings. But he was only the Inner Harbour Master, it seems, and he referred me to the Head of the Transport. The transport people referred me to the Naval Authorities, and a naval officer, whom I caught on the wing, told me I would have to apply to the Outer Harbour Master, who was somewhere outside among the fleet. I was consigning them all to warmer quarters than Balaclava, when I spied a man I knew--Captain Jolly of the _Carnbrea_, who had brought some of our troops over to Kamiesch Bay. He was bursting with complaints and nearly mad, said he'd like to tie the heads of all the departments in one big bag and sink them in the cesspool. He said he was sailing to-morrow with a load of sick and wounded, and he'd been up trying to get a few stoves from the official who had charge of them, as the sick men were dying of the cold. 'He'd got hundreds of them lying there,' said old Jolly, almost black in the face, 'and he wouldn't let me have one.