The Arab steed pranced, and arched its great neck. With the blue of
the bay as a background it made a magnificent picture, worthy of the
Thousand-and-One Nights.

Day by day we improved our dug-out, going deeper into the solid rock,
and putting up an awning in front made of two army blankets, with a
wooden cross-beam roped to an old rusty bayonet driven into the sand.

We lived a truly Robinson Crusoe life, with the addition of Turkish
high-explosives, and bully-beef-and-biscuit stew.

Our dug-out was back to the firing-line, and at night we looked out
upon the bay. We lay in our blankets watching the white moonlight on
the waves, and the black shadows of our ambulance wagons on the silver
sand.

It was in this dug-out that Hawk used to cook the most wonderful
dishes on a Primus stove.

The language was thick and terrible when that stove refused to work,
and Hawk would squat there cursing and cleaning it, and sticking bits
of wire down the gas-tube.

He cooked chocolate-pudding, and rice-and-milk, and arrowroot-
blancmange, stewed prunes, fried bread in bacon fat, and many other
tasty morsels.

"The proof of a good cook," said Hawk, "is whether he can make a meal
worth eating out of PRACtically nothink"--and he could.