Here the little priest, as pleased as a school-boy, scratched a rough sketch map in the sand—
“All the islands round here are full of historical interest, you know; `far-famed Samothrace,' for instance.” Father S—- talked much of classical history, connecting these islands with Greek and Roman heroes.
All this was desperately interesting to me. It was picturesque to stand in the sand-bed of the Salt Lake, lit by the broad flood of silver moonlight, with the little priest eagerly scratching like an ibis in the sand with his walking-stick.
I learnt more about the Near East in those few minutes than I had ever done at school.
But besides the interest in this novel history lesson, I was more than delighted to find the padre so correct in his sketch of the island and the coast, and I took down what he told me in a note-book afterwards, and copied his sand-maps also.
After this I came to know him better than I had. I visited his dug-out, and he let me look at his books and Punch and a month-old Illustrated London News, or so. I came to admire him for his simplicity and for his devotion to his men. Every Sunday he held Mass in the trenches of the firing-line, and he never had the least fear of going up.
A splendid little man, always cheerful, always looking after his “flock.” Praying with those who were about to give up the ghost; administering the last rites of the Church to those who, in awful agony, were fluttering like singed moths at the edge of the great flame, the Great Life-Mystery of Death.
He wrote beautifully sad letters of comfort to the mothers of boy-officers who were killed. Father S—- knew every man: every man knew Father S—- and admired him.
His dug-out was made in a slope overlooking the bay, and was really a deep square pit in the sand-bank, roofed with corrugated iron and sandbagged all round. Here we talked. I found he knew G. K. C. and Hilaire Belloc. Always he wanted to look at any new drawings in my sketch-books.
It is a relief to speak with some intelligent person sometimes.