first drew my attention to him.

I remember one night hearing a woman's voice wailing a queer Hindoo chant. It came from the barrack-room door. Afterwards I discovered it was Hawk sitting on his trestle bed cross-legged, with a bit of sacking and ashes on his head imitating the death-wail of an Indian woman for her dead husband.

Hawk knew all the rites and ceremonies of the various Hindoo castes, and could act the part of a fakir or a bazaar-wullah with wonderful realism.

By turns Hawk was a heavy drinker and a clear-brained man of action, calm in danger.

In those early days of my "military career" I looked upon him only as an author looks upon an interesting character.

Months afterwards, on the death-swept peninsula, Hawk and I became fast friends. The "bad man" of the ambulance became the most useful, most faithful, in my section. We went everywhere together—like "Horace and Holly" of Rider Haggard fame: he the great, strong man, and I the young artist scout.

If Hawk was out of camp, you could bet I was also—and vice-versa.

Of Hawk more anon.

CHAPTER VI. ON THE MOVE

We moved to Dublin after seven months of drill and medical lectures in barracks at Limerick.

After about a fortnight in the Portobello Barracks we crossed to England and pitched our camp at Basingstoke. Here we had two or three months' divisional training. The whole of the Xth Division—about 25,000 men—used to turn out for long route-marches.

We were out in all weathers. We took no tents, and "slept out." This was nothing to me, as I had done it on my own when scouting hundreds of times. It amused me to hear the men grumbling about the hard ground, and to see them rubbing their hips when they got up. It was a hard training. Still we didn't seem to be going out, and once again, the novelty of a new place having worn off, we became unspeakably "fed up."

Here at Basingstoke we were inspected by the King, and later by Lord Kitchener.

Then came the issue of pith helmets and khaki drill uniforms, and the Red Cross brassards on the left arm.

Rumour ran riot. We were going to India; we were going to East Africa... some one even mentioned Japan! There was a new rumour each day.

Then one day, at brief notice, we were quietly entrained at Basingstoke and taken down to the docks at Devonport before anyone had wind of the matter.

All our ambulance wagons, and field medical equipment in wickerwork panniers, went with us, and it would astonish a civilian to see the amount of stores and Red Cross materials with which a field ambulance moves. And so, after much waiting about, aboard the Canada.