rise before. Shells plunged incessantly down our left, and went
whistling far beyond us. But comparatively few burst among us; and the
shrapnel burst far too high to do damage.

Our batteries were in position at the 'Pimple.' We rose, marched
through a tornado of noise, right-turned, and went across the muzzle of
our own guns, also in full blast. In front I saw lines of
Leicestershires scaling the slope and melting into the mounds.

My diary notes: 'Men's delight to see river.' We came suddenly upon
Brother Tigris, basking in beautiful sunlight, becalmed in bays beneath
lofty bluffs. In this dreadful land water meant everything; we had had
experiences of thirst, not to be effaced in a lifetime. Away from the
river men grew uneasy. The river meant abundance to drink, and bathing;
everywhere else water was bad, or the supply precarious. We had been
away from the river since that night opposite Sindiyeh. So not the
crashing shells, the 'pipsqueaks' ripping the air like dried paper, nor
the bullets pinging by, prevented men from greeting so dear a sight.
Standing on the beach of imminent strife, in act to plunge, men cried,
'The Tigress, the Tigress!' Instantly a scene flashed back to memory
from the book so often near to thought in these days: how Xenophon,
weary and anxious with the restlessness and depression of his
much-tried troops, heard a clamour from those who had reached a
hill-crest, and, riding swiftly up to take measures against the
expected peril, found them shouting '_Thalatta, Thalatta_.' Seafaring
folk, the most of them, they had caught, far below, their first glimpse
of the Euxine, truly a hospitable water to them, since it could bear
them home.

Wilson dressed his first wounded in sheltered, broken ground, high
above the river. The peaceful beauty of the place is with me still.
Above the blue, unruffled pools green flycatchers darted, and rollers
spread metallic wings. The left bank lay low and very lovely with
flowers and fields. 'I will answer you,' said Sir Walter Raleigh, asked
his opinion of a glass of wine, given as he went to execution, 'as the
man did who was going to Tyburn. "This is a good drink, if a man might
but tarry by it."' Wilson left me here with Dobson; but almost
immediately he sent back asking us to rejoin him. Our few cases, all
walking ones, remained in this shelter till such time as they could
fall back, and Dobson and I crossed into the mounds.

It was nearly eleven o'clock. Ou