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[Page 45]
Achailleon, [also spelt Achilleion] its picturesque surroundings and sumptuous interior all worthy of a mighty potentate but long since fulfilling a far more worthy mission, that of a hospital for the French wounded. A most enthusiastic and art loving French corporal showed the writer and some brother officers round the adjoining grounds, expounding with the earnestness of a connoisseur the beauties of the various groups of statuary hidden among the forest clad hills surrounding the hospital. Some of these were so intensely lovely that one found oneself wishing like Pygmalion of old, that they would come to life and that the roseate hues of quick pulsating blood might encarnadine this cold statuesque marble. Unfortunately or fortunately according to the point of view we had not the same luck as Pygmalion and statues they still remain.
The flotilla exercised every day and all day for a fortnight when at the end of that time we felt ourselves the equal of anything in the shape of a flotilla afloat and had visions of proving it before the Southern Cross shone over our heads once more.
The entire flotilla was ordered to Brindisi as Wardens of the Adriatic Barrage but before proceeding there we were first of all to call at Taranto the southernmost Italian Naval Base at which port our own drifters who formed the Adriatic Barrage and the only barrage at that time were based.