_March 12th._--Rain fell last night and again early this morning. Then we heard the sound of distant artillery, which increased to the subdued throb of gun-fire far away. But this was drowned in the grander music of a thunderstorm. How splendid is the artillery of the gods! How majestic their salvos billowing across the heavens! Last night we felt what we believed to be an earthquake, but which proved to be the sappers trying to dynamite fish in the river, which experiment was completely unproductive. _5 p.m._--It is still raining, which is bad for the river. I did my rounds and straightened up pay books, etc., in the office, and then played chess. I am a little better, and Amir Bux is an excellent masseur, a distinct improvement on Graoul, who used to treat my shoulders like a punch ball. The soldiers have re-named this place Scuttle-Amara! _March 13th._--More rain has fallen! The Tigris is almost bank high, and still rising. I have been around the horses. Every tail is bare, and the _jhuls_ and head ropes disappear as fast as they are put on. They all remain perpetually on the _qui vive_ to prevent their stall-mates from biting them. Some are scarcely horses, but rather half-inflated horse skins. Father Tim, the worthy Irish padre, who divides his attention between wistful ultramontane meditations and an excellent appetite, played chess with me to-day. He rooked me beautifully once. _March 14th._--Heavy gun-fire has been heard downstream. The irrepressible humours of Tommy inform us that it is our own guns covering Aylmer's retirement to Basra. _5 p.m._--The rain has stopped. I have been writing to King's College, Auckland, of many memories, and also to my acquaintance, "the delicious Conservative," at Corpus--Cambridge. I find in the latter's epistle this sentence: "To-night I shall think of you in that delightful room with chairs so easy and cheroots so persuasive, soliloquizing on the eternal destiny of the American Conservative candidate." He does not regard all Americans favourably, and I remember well how once when a Southern son of that enterprising nation averred that in the Northern States there were no aristocrats or conservatives, still the South was full of both, that he replied he had always understood it to be merely this way, that the Northern States had neither, and the Southern believed they had both. Which was very severe. But then he had a delightful, disarming smile. Oh, for a disarming smile! ! ! _March 15th._--The Ides of March! Moreover they are come and gone, for I am making this entry, I find, on the 16th. The river rose eighteen inches, and for some hours lapped over the banks. Then it subsided a little. I had a walk through the palm grove and back via the Gurkha communication trench.