Let us then away from Kut at once and for ever.
London, March, 1921 (continued).—Kuttavi!—I have cut. Or rather, Kuttaverunt, the doctors have, as they think I should not return to the climate of Mesopotamia.
I am back in this dear sweet land, beautiful even in all her sorrows. Back, round the pivot of palm trees to where I was before the war, behind me the eloquent vacuum through which the world has rolled. It is almost a complete vacuum, as Punch might say, a host of flitting, fading shadows.
But at times I see a long, wide river winding over endless plains, with here and there a solitary palm. And I hear the long cry proceeding from the dark figure crouching in the bows as he takes the soundings, "Bahout pa-a-ni!"—the long, lone cry that ever and anon by day and night floats intermittently to the ears of the traveller in that ancient land.
It, too, has borrowed from the desert something that is deterministic and ineffaceable.
Back to this window. And so, "Another cycle is complete!"
THE END