First, there is Whistling Willie, a bustling soul, who does his journey, between the boom of leaving his front door and the moment when he sneezes up a cloud of dust in front of our parapet, in about four and a half seconds. You can almost hear him saying to the Turkish gunners: "Now then, you chaps, come on, buck up, look alive! That's it, off we go, _booooom!_ _zizzzzz!_ Here we are--tishoo!" Yes, he's a brisk, pushing lad, is Willie, but rather superficial really. There's more swagger and dust about him than the result justifies--although it's only fair to say that he once threw up a stone large enough to upset the Adjutant's tea. Probably the war will end (if ever) with that deed of questionable military significance to his credit, and no more. Willie's cousin, Whispering Walter, also of Ottoman origin, is a fellow of infinitely more worth and solidity. Though he takes longer over his trip from the muzzle to the mark he makes up for lost time when he gets there. It is rather as though he gave his gunners instructions to push him off slowly so as to give him time to pick a good place to drop. "Very good," they say to him, "off yer goes!" _Booooom!_ A pause. Then Walter comes into our area--"_Whizzlizzlizzle_," he whispers to himself confidentially, as much as to say, "Now _where_, down below, is a good fat Brigadier, or a mountain battery, or a pile of stores (dash it, I must hurry up and spot _something_; I'm nearly exhausted)--oh, a girls' school, a cabbage-patch--anything!" And down he comes--_whang!_--as often as not half a mile from anything he could damage. There is a lesson on the futility of procrastination in Walter's methods. Walter has two brothers, Clanking Claud and Stumer Steve. Claud always sets out, like his elder brother, in a meditative mood. Having traveled a sufficient distance and found nothing worthy of his mettle, he decides, apparently, to show his independence by never coming down from his airy height to earth at all. So "_Kerlank!_" he says, and disappears ostentatiously in a cloud of white smoke some fifty yards above us. True, he showers a lot of little leaden marbles, but that merely shows his spiteful nature.