oint-blank range at the men and boats crowded under the
steep bank opposite them. Immediately a violent fire broke out on both
sides of the Canal.

A little torpedo boat with a crew of thirteen, patrolling the Canal,
dashed up and landed a party of four officers and men to the south of
Tussum, who climbed up the eastern bank and found themselves in a
Turkish trench, and escaped by a miracle with the news. Promptly the
midget dashed in between the fires and enfiladed the eastern bank amid a
hail of bullets, and destroyed several pontoon boats lying unlaunched on
the bank. It continued to harass the enemy, though two officers and two
men were wounded.

As the dark, cloudy night lightened toward dawn fresh forces went into
action. The Turks, who occupied the outer, or day, line of the Tussum
post, advanced, covered by artillery, against the Indian troops, holding
the inner or night position, while an Arab regiment advanced against the
Indian troop at the Serapeum post. The warships on the Canal and lake
joined in the fray. The enemy brought some six batteries of field guns
into action from the slopes west of Kataiba-el-kaeli. Shells admirably
fused made fine practice at all the visible targets, but failed to find
the battery above mentioned which with some help from a detachment of
infantry, beat down the fire of the riflemen on the opposite bank and
inflicted heavy losses on the hostile supports advancing toward the
Canal.

Supported by land and naval artillery the Indian troops took the
offensive, the Serapeum garrison, which had stopped the enemy
three-quarters of a mile from the position, cleared its front, and the
Tussum garrison, by a brilliant counter-attack, drove the enemy back.
Two battalions of Anatolians of the Twenty-eighth regiment were thrown
into the fight, but the artillery gave them no chance, and by 3.30 in
the afternoon a third of the enemy, with the exception of a force that
lay hid in bushy hollows on the east bank between the two posts, were in
full retreat, leaving many dead, a large proportion of whom had been
killed by shrapnel. Meanwhile the warships on the lake had been in
action, a salvo from a battleship woke up Ismailia early, and crowds of
soldiers and some civilians climbed every available sand hill to see
what was doing, till the Turkish guns sent shells sufficiently near to
convince them that it was safer to watch from cover.

At about eleven in the morning two six-inch shells hit the