Indeed, from the soup to the raki liqueur, it was a notable feast, and it heartened us. When we had finished we stood at our window, listening to the songs and laughter and cheering from across the way, and peppered the Posh Castle windows with our pea-shooters by way of accompaniment. One of the guests, who had drowned his sorrows with some thoroughness, staggered out into Posh Castle yard for a little fresh air, and sat him against the wall, his head in his hands, close beside a large tin bath. We collected snow and snow-balled him from our retreat. When we missed him, we hit the bath, till it boomed like a 4·7. The poor fellow was too far gone to realize what was happening. He apostrophized the bath as a “noisy blighter,” and every time he was hit called the empty world to witness that it was a “dirty trick, a dirty trick to shtop a f’low shleeping.” A particularly nasty smack finally brought him to his feet and he rushed back into Posh Castle roaring out something about the “neshessity for instant action by counter attacksh.” An hour later the company broke up and as the sentries marshalled them under our windows, preparatory to marching them to their respective homes, we thrust out our heads and sang them a lullaby:

“We’ll all go thought-reading to-day,

In prison it’s not very gay;

But a raki or two makes a difference to you,

So we’ll all go thought-reading to-day.”

There was a second’s silence down below, a silence with something of consternation in it: then Winnie Smith bellowed out:

“It’s Bones and Hill! Good lads! Keep your tails up! Three cheers for the criminals!”

A yell of greeting went up from the crowd. The sentries, alarmed at this disobedience of the Commandant’s orders, began to hustle them, but Winnie shouted again.

“Hush, Winnie,” said a voice we recognized. “Do you want the whole camp hanged? Come away and leave ’em.” And Winnie was dragged off by his mentor. But at the corner he drowned all expostulation in a cheery “Good-night” to us. Thank you, Winnie! Everybody knows you are a happy-go-lucky, impulsive, generous, and most injudicious young rascal, but you have a heart of gold to a friend in trouble. Hill and I weren’t in trouble, of course, but you thought we were.

On the 21st March, in accordance with the Spook’s orders, our diet was reduced to toast and tea. To begin with our allowance was one pound of dry bread a day. Later we reduced it to eight ounces. Our diet had to be lowered more suddenly than was intended by the Spook originally, “in order to counteract Moïse’s mistake at the last séance.”[[33]] On this day we were taken for our first (and only) walk. We felt very empty.