MALTA.

I heard of a game the other day, in which you had to describe a country or place by three typical nouns. Malta would be easy - goats, bells, and scirrocco, and the whole picture is before you.

The goats are everywhere, wandering disconsolately up and down the steep, narrow streets. Bells - bells clang discordantly from the innumerable church towers, banged and hammered on by small boys' competing with their clamour against the shrill voices of the crowded streets below.

And scirrocco - well, it is indescribable. We shall all miss the scirrocco, it is so serviceable, covering as it does a multitude of sins. Do you feel disinclined to get up for divisions - it is scirrocco. Does your typewriter give you a back-ache? - scirrocco! The days when you feel the mere sight of your fellow members at mess an offence - again scirrocco. It explains one's tempers, one's fatigues, and one's moods, and besides, it gives a glorious feeling of superiority - when you can say, "Hadn't you noticed there was scirrocco today?" you have scored one, and are marked as the old-timer and not to be imposed upon.

 Malta, the kaleidoscope of countries, the meeting point of East and West, through which a constant stream of strange people ever pass, has seen one more strange group go by. One by one the blue-coated "Wrens" have passed through its streets, going about with a business-like air on their several occasions. And Malta, hospitable as ever, has turned smilingly with a royal welcome, and now feels no gathering complete without a good half-dozen of the dark blue and gold.

For undoubtedly we are gay in Malta; but the gaiety is the gaiety of those who know how to work. Our dances, for instance, begin early and end early, for nearly all, hosts and guests alike, will be in the offices at 8 the next morning. It is like the dance on board a great warship quarter-deck, gay with white and red, the huge guns brooding benignly over the brilliant scene, polished and twinkling in the grey dawn, when not so long ago those same two, swung outboard over a deck swept bare, spoke mightily.

 So, just that little while ago, while the men fought, the women fought too, hour after hour in the big hospital wards packed to overflowing, hour after hour in the kitchens, and hour after hour in the offices doing the work that had to be done, hard, monotonous and exacting. Malta, the clearing-house for the wounded, the headquarters of the Fleet, has known how to suffer and to work.

Yesterday, war; to-day, a gay interlude, while we work and play together, comrades in arms; to-morrow, back to the commonplace again. Blue and gold, blue sky, golden houses - blue coats, golden buttons, but a dream! The life is certainly very different from home. We are a regular Portuguese army to begin with, in the Hostel fourteen ratings, and sometimes nine officers.

To those of us fresh from the big stations, with over 150 women, technical as well as clerical, it seems as if we had tumbled into a different Service. Every morning we slip off one by one to various offices and see how the Navy that drives a quill works behind the Navy that fights. One drives down a long sandy road, blue sea on one side, flat yellow houses on the other, and between them always the goats. All day she counts out money and places it in greasy upturned caps.

Then one morning there is a hooting and commotion up harbour, and a gay little fleet of drifters pass out, paying-off pennants fluttering a long way behind, hooting and tooting and calling to each other - they are away home to the grey skies and the grey seas of the old Dogger Bank, paid off, cheered on their way by a "Wren".

Others work in the Cypher Office, and in slack times hear wondrous stories of what it felt like to watch the dials of the great machine swing round during the high pressure of war-time.

Undoubtedly these are changing times; all is finishing here. Friends are no sooner made than they sail off - we are finishing up - we are tidying the loose ends away - we are doing the women's job of carrying on till the returning tide of normal life and peace-time washes us back to our homes.

In the meantime the sky and the sea are blue, the streets and the crowds are full of strange colours and lights. We are seeing new things, we are learning to think new thoughts; and when Malta drops out of sight, leaving nothing but the wake of our churning screw, we shall turn back with a sigh to the everyday world, taking with us but a very happy memory of how Malta feels to a "Wren."

V.E