Officer at the Base Depôt had endorsed the "Marching Out States," after
scrutinising, more or less intimately, each man's naked body, with the
aid of a tallow candle stuck in an empty bottle. A medical inspection of
three hundred men with their shirts up in a dark shed is a weird and
bashful spectacle. An N.C.O. was supervising the entraining at each
truck; the escort was marching up and down the permanent way on the
off-side. The R.T.O. handed the movement orders to the senior officer in
command of drafts, and I saw that they were going to get a move on very
soon.

We were now opposite a first-class compartment, and a slim figure loomed
up out of the darkness.

"Halloa! is that you, C----? I thought you were gone on ahead of us, my
boy."

"So I was, sir, but some of my men are missing, and I'm sending a
corporal to hunt them up. We're off in a few minutes. I met young T----
just now. I've been trying to cheer him up," he added. It was evident
that the subaltern was now understudying the Major in his star part of
cheering other fellows up. "He's feeling rather blue," he continued.
"Depressed at saying good-bye to his friends, you know."

"Oh, that's no good. Tell him I've got a plum-pudding and a bottle of
whisky among my kit. Yes, and a topping liqueur."

I looked at B----'s compartment. His servant, a sapper, was stowing the
kit in the racks and under the seat, with the help of a portable
acetylene lamp which burnt with a hard white light in the darkness, a
darkness which you could almost feel with your hand.