Birkby smiled, and nodded confirmatively. "Yes," he resumed, "most of our fights were about food, but my first one was about my trousers. You see, I was off watch and turned in asleep when the torpedo struck the _Tara_, and only just managed to get away in my pajamas. The lower part of these I kicked out of in the water, and one of the sailors of the submarine gave me a spare pair of his German naval breeches. It was glad indeed I was to have them. At first no one remarked them, but finally, at the end of a hard day's march, one of the Welsh lads passed some observation in his own language about me accepting the bounty of the Hun. I didn't understand exactly what he said, but to be on the safe side I clouted him one then and there. But all the same," he concluded after a pause, "I traded the Hun trousers to one of the guards for a long Arab shirt, and got on without any breeches for the rest of the time." "An' not a bit worse off than most of the rest of us," added Fenton. "His 'burnoose' was a good foot longer than mine." "But it was X---, the 'Snail King,'" continued Birkby, "who was oftenest in trouble. We were all jealous of his appetite for the wriggling things, jealous of the quick way he had of spying and picking them up, and, most of all, jealous of the way he was getting fat on them while all the rest of us were wasting away to skeletons. First and last, though, I think we were about quits with him. You see, the way we cooked the snails was to throw them on the coals till the blow-off of steam made a sort of whistle to announce that they were done to a proper turn. Well, little old Barton here, by dint of long practising alone in the desert, developed a bit of a whistle of his own which even the 'Snail King' himself couldn't tell from the real thing. By tooting up at the proper moments, old Barty had the 'King' setting his teeth in half-cooked snails for nearly a week before he twigged the thing. Then, of course, he jumped on our little friend here with both feet, and it took two of us half-fed ones to drag him off." "Aye, matey," Barton chipped in, "an' it took three o' ye to hold him the week after when we planted the loaded shells on him. I pinched a cartridge from one o' a dozen snail-shells wi' powder. On top o' this I rammed in the upper half--the 'orned half--of a snail, an' scattered the shells where 'His Highness' cu'd find 'em, but for not 'avin' put 'em all on the coals at onct. After the first ones began to blow up a post-mortem on the remainin' ones revealed some of my infernal machines, and then I laughed and gave the whole game away."