med Ken, rubbing the last of the
sleep from his eyes. 'This is something like. Some of those sniping
gentlemen are going to be sorry for themselves.'

No fewer than seven warships were lying off the coast, every one of them
smashing their broadsides into the Turkish positions. The noise was
incredible, but every sound was dwarfed when the great super-Dreadnought
fired her 15-inch guns. The shells, the length of a tall man and weighing
very nearly a ton, were charged with shrapnel, carrying no fewer than
twenty thousand bullets apiece. Exploding over the enemy's position, each
deluged a couple of acres of ground with a torrent of lead.

[Illustration: '"'Tis only Lizzie opening the ball."']

It was a most amazing sight. The whole sky was full of the smoke of
bursting shells--smoke so heavy that the light breeze could not break it,
as it swam in masses that seemed quite solid until they struck against the
higher ground far inland.

Hour after hour the tremendous bombardment continued. At first the Turkish
field pieces endeavoured to reply, but one by one they were silenced, and
when at last, late in the afternoon, the thunder of the guns ceased, the
silence was only broken by a faint crackle of musketry.

'Now's our chance!' exclaimed O'Brien, who seemed to have an uncanny
faculty for understanding beforehand exactly what was in the colonel's
mind.

'A charge, you mean?' said Ken eagerly.

'That's it, sonny. Before they've got over the effects of that swate
little pasting.'

Sure enough, a minute later came the order for advance, and, refreshed by
their long rest, the Australians and New Zealanders came pouring over
their parapet, and with bayonets flashing in the evening sun, rushed
forward through the scrub.

For the first two hundred yards there was hardly a check, then all of a
sudden the scattered fire thickened.

'They're in the ravine, bhoys,' shouted O'Brien. 'Don't be waiting to
shoot. Give thim the steel.'

The firing grew heavier. Many of the gallant Colonials dropped, but the
only effect upon the rest was to make them race forward at greater speed.

Ken saw before him a dark line seamed with spits and flashes of flame. A
bullet clipped past his ear so close that he felt the wind of it. He never
paused. Next moment he was over the lip of the shallow ravine in which the
Turks had entrenched themselves.

On the two previous occasions when he and his comrades had attacked
Turkish trenches, the enem