"Gentlemen," said our commander coolly, "we have been under way twenty-four hours, and I beg to report we are lost at sea." Lost, lost, lost, the words echoed. A ringing cheer was our only answer. * * * * * (12) FROM MY BEDROOM WINDOW Spring has come. The tree I told you of is thick with leaves. And so when as now the evening wind blows, a changed music falls on my ear. Instead of the soft swish of branches is the lisp of the young leaves, stirring in delight as they listen to the story about the winter dreams of the old tree. Birds are back once more, Old Jim Crow, the jackdaws that awoke me early last summer, and a little fellow like a wagtail who in his own fashion is accompanying the lyrics of a thrush in the mosque garden close by. One and all they have the look of adventurers thick upon them. "Happy to meet, Sorry to part, Happy to meet again," is the leit-motif of their song. Perhaps like birds we shall ourselves soon return to English woods. A great window is this of mine with its view from the garden across the town to the distant hills. Now, to appreciate a view fully, it is imperative that you shall have spent just previously some considerable time in trenches and dug-outs and gun-pits. No, it is not a view either, but rather a stage. In the background is the drop-scene of mountainous hills, dotted with villages and scored with paths and gullies. It is a scene shadowed with forests and sprayed by the advancing sunlight, or sometimes by this light misty rain. Other drop-scenes are the mists that advance or retreat with the rain, and sometimes a thunder blanket shuts off the stage just outside the town. For the curtain there is the mantle of night--when there is no moon. An extraordinary stage. Let us look at it more closely. I can promise you no set drama, but great entertainment if you are the sort of fellow to enjoy sitting on a bit of a hill above a winding river in the country--with a pipe and some field-glasses wherewith to watch the affairs of the world around you. No man-made drama, no plot, no prompter, and not a cue. The players stray on to and off the stage, and suggestion can do lots. In the fowlyard below two cocks have renewed their battle for the right to crow last. "Seems so," says Sir Pompous beneath my window, as he watches them intently. The youngest pullet, coy and not uncoquettish, withdraws from the scene of combat to arrange her feathers in the far corner. She, in any case, will have to abide by the decision of the contest.