CHAPTER II: MAC EMBARKS FOR OVERSEAS

SIX WEEKS DRAGGED SLOWLY BY. A few days after they came into camp, there were ten great transports ready to take overseas the Expeditionary Force of 8,500 men, horses, guns, limbers and stores, and always there had been orders to be ready for instant embarkation and that the probable date of departure was a week ahead. Constantly that day was put off, and again put off, delay followed delay, while the men speculated on the cause, condemned the authorities and blasphemed generally. The War would be over before they could get anywhere near the front, and they chafed vainly. The troopships lay in the harbours, the men were ready in camp, why not embark?

With the exception of this uneasiness of mind, nothing spoilt the full enjoyment of the spring days. All day the sun shone bright and strong from a blue sky, the warmth tempered by pleasant breezes from the sea or the mountains, and at night the stars stood out brilliantly in the great dome above. Used to many camps in the past, accustomed also to cooking and to battling generally for themselves, they were as much at home as ever they were in the lines of white tents, and for most of them these were lazy holidays after the hard life of the bush and the sheep-runs. The army was generous in its supply of food, and much good butter, jam, meat and bread, which would have been luxuries indeed in the months to come, went to waste in Awapuni incinerators. And day after day came cars from towns and farms and stations within two hundred miles, bringing tuck-box after tuck-box containing the choicest products of the home larders.

The red sun, lifting above the eastern hills, found long irregular lines of horses straggling across dewy fields to water at the rushing streams of the Manawatu River. On one bare-backed horse of every four sat a trooper, clad sketchily in shirt and breeches tugged on hastily, as a sergeant had called the roll. They played the fool as they passed, laughing and chattering, losing their horses in their madness, all making thorough nuisances of themselves and all atune with the fresh glory of the dawn. Usually, during the day, in independent troops of thirty or forty men, they wandered about the district, among the pleasant suburban homes of Palmerston, along shady country roads or up into the hills. They walked or cantered for an hour or so, and then, selecting a likely-looking homestead, they would unsaddle and unbridle t