"Thirty-somethingth reinforcements, eh? Dash it all, you men! You've arrived before they have. I don't know what to do with them, Major."
He spoke wearily. Dealing with absentees and men who had "got adrift" had occupied a good part of his time during the last two years. It was getting decidedly monotonous.
"Let them entrain with our boys, sir," suggested the kindly Anzac major. "I'll be responsible for them as far as Salisbury. They're for Codford, I suppose?"
"Very well," acceded the embarkation officer, glad to find an easy solution to the difficulty. "You are the senior non-com., I suppose," he asked, addressing Fortescue. "Here, take this, and when you arrive in camp report yourselves."
He handed Fortescue a yellow paper, and hurried off to find shelter from the downpour. The entrainment was a slow process. The men were hungry. They wished in vain for the breakfast that the majority had forgone when the Pomfret Castle sighted land. There were rumours that tea and coffee were to be served out at a way-side station, but promises, Fortescue observed, do not fill an empty stomach.
In vain Malcolm looked for Te Paheka. Already the Maori contingent had been spirited away--to what immediate destination he knew not.
Handcuffed and under a strong escort, the spy arrested under the name of Pieter Waas was hurried along the slippery quay--the bent, dejected figure of a man who, although uncondemned, knows that his life is forfeit. Who and what he was yet remained to be proved, unless, like many a nameless spy, he went to his death preferring that the mystery that surrounded his life should accompany him to the Great Beyond.
Packed like sardines in a tin, the Anzacs filled the long train to overflowing. Again under cover, their mercurial spirits rose, and when at length the rain ceased, and the train rumbled betwixt the red-earthed, verdant coombes of Devon, bathed in brilliant sunshine, the Anzacs unanimously voted that there were worse places on earth than the Old Country.
It was late in the afternoon when Malcolm and his two chums alighted at Codford station, and, making their way by a roundabout route along the main street of the village, where old-time cottages and hideous wooden shanties stood cheek by jowl, arrived at the vast array of tin huts that comprised the camp.
Things turned out better than either of the three chums had expected. They were reprimanded, but for the time being they were not deprived of their stripes. Until the arrival of the Thirty-somethingth reinforcements they were given light duties and a generous amount of leisure time.