We wassailed deep into that night and out the other side, and we liked our Otto more than ever. We had plenty in common, the same loneliness, fevers, climate, and niggers to wrestle with; moreover he had been in England, and liked it; he smoked a pipe; he washed. Also, as he privily confided to us in the young hours of one morning, he had his doubts as to the divinity of the Kaiser, and was not quite convinced that Richard Strauss had composed the music of the spheres. He was a bad Hun (which probably accounted for his presence at the uttermost, hottermost edge of the All-Highest's dominions), but a good fellow. Anyhow, we liked him, Frobisher and I; liked his bull-mouthed laughter, his drinking songs and full-blooded anecdotes, and, on the occasions of his frequent visits, put our boredom from us, pretended to be on the most affectionate terms, and even laughed uproariously at each other's funny stories. Up at M'Vini, in the long long ago, the gleam of pyjamas amongst the loquats, and "'Ere gomes ze Sherman invasion!" booming through the bush, became a signal for general goodwill. In the fullness of time Otto went home on leave, and, shortly afterwards, the world blew up. And now I have met him again, a sodden, muddy, bloody, shrunken, saddened Otto, limping through a snow-storm in the custody of a Canadian corporal. He was the survivor of a rear-guard, the Canuck explained, and had "scrapped like a bag of wild-cats" until knocked out by a rifle butt. As for Otto himself, he hadn't much to say; he looked old, cold, sick and infinitely disgusted. He had always been a poor Hun. Only once did he show a gleam of his ancient form of those old hot, happy, pyjama days on the Equator. A rabble of prisoners--Jägers, Grenadiers, Uhlans, whatnots--came trudging down the road, an unshorn, dishevelled herd of cut-throats, propelled by a brace of diminutive kilties, who paused occasionally to treat them to snatches of flings and to hoot triumphantly. Otto regarded his fallen compatriots with disgusted lack-lustre eyes, then turning to me with a ghost of his old smile, "'Ere gomes ze Sherman invasion," said he. III A. E.'S BATH AND BROCK'S BENEFIT Never have I seen a kiltie platoon wading through the cold porridge of snow and slush of which our front used to be composed, but I have said, with my French friend, "_Mon Dieu les currents d'air!_" and thank Fate that I belong to a race which reserves its national costume for fancy-dress balls.