the interruption, and paid no further attention to the order.
He was as much alone as a hunter on a mountain peak stalking deer, and
whenever he fired at the men in the bushes he would swear softly, and
when he fired at the mules he would chuckle and laugh with delight and
content. The mules had to cross a ploughed field in order to reach the
bushes, and so we were able to mark where his bullets struck, and we
could see them skip across the field, kicking up the dirt as they
advanced, until they stopped the mule altogether, or frightened the man
who was leading it into a disorderly retreat.

It appeared later that instead of there being but twelve men in these
bushes there were six hundred, and that they were hiding there until the
sun set in order to make a final attack on the first trench. They had
probably argued that at sunset the strain of the day's work would have
told on the Greek _morale_, that the men's nerves would be jerking and
their stomachs aching for food, and that they would be ready for darkness
and sleep, and in no condition to repulse a fresh and vigorous attack.
So, just as the sun sank, and the officers were counting the cost in dead
and wounded, and the men were gathering up blankets and overcoats, and
the firing from the Greek lines had almost ceased, there came a fierce
rattle from the trench to the right of us, like a watch-dog barking the
alarm, and the others took it up from all over the hill, and when we
looked down into the plain below to learn what it meant, we saw it blue
with men, who seemed to have sprung from the earth. They were clambering
from the bed of the stream, breaking through the bushes, and forming into
a long line, which, as soon as formed, was at once hidden at regular
intervals by flashes of flame that seemed to leap from one gun-barrel to
the next, as you have seen a current of electricity run along a line of
gas-jets. In the dim twilight these flashes were much more blinding than
they had been in the glare of the sun, and the crash of the artillery
coming on top of the silence was the more fierce and terrible by the
contrast. The Turks were so close on us that the first trench could do
little to help itself, and the men huddled against it while their
comrades on the surrounding hills fought for them, their volleys passing
close above our heads, and meeting the rush of the Turkish bullets on the
way, so that there was now one continuous whistling shriek, like the roar