ng, and, in this ravine each report
reverberated from one clay cliff to another in ringing, resonant notes.
There were no other signs or sounds of fighting--only this musical din
coming from the starry vault above.

The trooper thought a terrific battle must be raging, and pitied the
poor fellows in the trenches. He learned later it was just Abdul's
normal method of spending the night when he had the wind up. These
sounds were not disturbing, and soon the cobbers, for the first time,
were asleep under fire.

CHAPTER XIII

MAC JOINS IN THE WAR

Mac's first morning at Anzac was one of deep interest. He regarded his
surroundings rather more after the fashion of a Cook's tourist than of
a soldier; or, maybe, he more closely resembled a schoolboy at his
first circus. No time was wasted over a scratch breakfast--bully beef
and biscuits were consumed more as a duty than a pleasure. Then,
together with many others of equally inquiring frame of mind, he betook
himself to the crest of the ridge which shut in the ravine on the
north. The scene from there was indeed pleasing--a sapphire sea
meeting a widely sweeping beach, a green, tree-dotted flat, and some
scrub-covered hills, all sparkling with dew and bathed in the clear,
tempered sunshine of an early summer morning. Mac's first impressions
of Turkey left nothing to be desired, and there seemed promise of
excellent bathing.

He gathered up shrapnel pellets and bits of shell casing, and with the
true instinct of a globe-trotter, thought already of mementoes to take
home. His tourist tendencies, however, soon evaporated, for he was
sent round on a fatigue to the landing, whence he returned a sweating,
blowing trooper, with a handleless, uncovered, paraffin tin of water.
As he stumbled back along the stony beach an enemy battery opened fire
without, it appeared, the Turks having precise knowledge of their
target, or else their observation was inferior. To them, ignorance was
bliss, just as the consistency with which they dropped salvos of four
shells about two hundred yards out to sea, was bliss to Mac. Moreover,
the paint-brush-like splash of the flying fragments demonstrated
exactly what military instructions had been endeavouring to impress
upon him for months concerning the field covered by a bursting shrapnel
shell.

It had not been a great strain on the intellect of the enemy to deduce
that the appearance of so many interested sightseers on the skylin