Some surprise was expressed that I had returned at all. This was Thorpe's doing. To explain, I must go back a little. I knew Thorpe years before the war. We met again in Sannaiyat trenches. His messmates, who desired to know more of Thorpe's old life, asked me how we met first. 'I was chaplain of a jail at Peterborough,' I replied. The statement was received at once; the only head on which further light was sought was as to the number of years that were deducted from his sentence for service in Mesopotamia. (Convicts from India who came out in the Labour Corps to Mesopotamia were remitted ten years.) Now, during my Indian leave, an old friend found me out and took me to spend the last days of my Darjiling visit with him. He was, among other things, superintendent of the prison. I carelessly wrote to Thorpe on a sheet of paper with the printed heading 'Jail-house, Darjiling.' Thorpe spent July and August in taking this sheet round from mess to mess. He blackened my reputation, and opened up a field of speculation as to the reason of my incarceration. 'No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped from the sea'--from Mesopotamia, say--'yet Justice hath not suffered to live.' He considered that he was level with me for my Peterborough jail-jape, and was much cheered. It took the best part of September to get up-stream and back to Samarra. When the boat reached Busra, scores of men were prostrate on the deck from heat-stroke and exhaustion. In the Gulf I had a funeral. I tried to skip to the finish of the service, with the page shimmering and jumping before me, but had to hand the book to the captain as I reeled down. He threw the body over, and every one flew up-deck. Later, on the up-stream trip, we realized the fact on which all Mesopotamia agreed, that for sheer horror the deck of a P-boat[22] is unrivalled. Possibly it is due to the glare from the water, but our daily temperatures of between 115° and 125° in the shade seemed a hundredfold higher than they were. Just below Kut we were held up for several days in a camp; not even Sheikh Saad in the old, bad days was more cursed with sandflies.