d fresh beans or fruit--certainly better food than most
Turkish peasants or artisans are accustomed to at home.

I sat outside watching the moon rise and listening to the distant
Crack... crack-crack! of rifle and machine-gun fire from over Ari Bumu
way. Evidently they were fighting in the trenches we had seen that
morning. The orderly who had served us, withdrawn a little way, was
standing like a statue in the dusk, hands folded in front of him, saying
his last prayer of the evening. Beyond, from a bush-covered tent, came
the jingle of a telephone and 'the singsong voice of the young Turkish
operator relaying messages in German--"Ja!... Ja!... Kaba Tepe...
Ousedom Pasha... Morgen frith... Hier Multepe!... Ja!... Ja!"

And to this and the distant rattle of battle we went to sleep.

Chapter XII

Soghan-Dere And The Flier Of Ak-Bash

Next morning, after news had been telephoned in that the submarines had
got another battleship, the Majestic, we climbed again into the covered
wagon and started for the south front. We drove down to the sea and
along the beach road through Maidos--bombarded several weeks before,
cross-country from the Aegean, and nothing now but bare, burnt walls--on
to Kilid Bahr, jammed with camels and ox-carts and soldiers, and then on
toward the end of the peninsula.

We were now beyond the Narrows and the Dardanelles. To the left, a bit
farther out, were the waters in which the Irresistible, Ocean, and
Bouvet were sunk, and even now, off the point, ten or twelve miles away,
hung the smoke of sister ships. We drove past the big guns of the
forts, past field-guns covering the shore, past masked batteries and
search-lights. Beside us, along the shore road, mule trains and ox-carts
and camel trains were toiling along in the blaze and dust with
provisions and ammunition for the front. Once we passed four soldiers
carrying a comrade, badly wounded, on a stretcher padded with leaves.
After an hour or so of bumping we turned into a transverse valley, as
level almost as if it had been made for a parade-ground.

High hills protected it north and south; a little stream ran down the
centre--it might have been made for a storage base and camp. More
brush-covered tents and arbors for horses were strung along the
hillside, one above the other sometimes, in half a dozen terraces.
We drove into the valley, got out and followed the orderly to a
brush-covered arbor, closed on every side but one, out