The warships were sending shells up the Anafarta valley and on
to the Turkish positions behind the great white patch of the Salt Lake.

Having thoroughly taken in the situation, Mac turned again to business.
Some of the fellows were digging trenches on the enemy side of the
plateau, the medicals were bandaging the wounded, Turkish and New
Zealand, in a sheltered spot in the scrub, and Mac was told off to
disarm and guard several hundred prisoners who were trooping up the
steep slope from the rear. This was the garrison of the old No. 3
Outpost who had found their retreat cut off by the capture of Table
Top, and were the same Turks who had, earlier in the morning, gazed
down on Mac as he had crouched in the ravine bottom fifteen feet below
them. He decided that they must have been demoralized then, or else he
and his comrades had been no more.

The prisoners threw down their arms and bandoliers in a pile, and
seemed to feel no regret. They beamed with happiness, offered
cigarettes, biscuits, money and mementoes to their guards, and
embarrassed them by crowding round in an effort to shake their hands.
Eventually they were despatched under escort to the beach, and Mac
seized a few spare moments to watch an attack, half a mile to the
south, which was being made by Light Horsemen from the main position on
Russell's Top.

Destroyers close in below sent high explosive shell whirring upwards to
burst in a pall of black smoke and dust on the narrow neck between the
Turkish and Australian lines. There was a tornado of machine-gun fire
which reached Mac's ears only as a high-pitched continuous note. The
shelling lasted about ten minutes only, a hopelessly inadequate
preparation, he knew, on such positions. The storm of machine-guns
rose to terrific violence, ripping and roaring. A grey fog of smoke
and dust partially screened the scarred hill-tops, and shielded the
melee from his vision, but, knowing those tiers of Turkish trenches as
he did, he was awed with the thought of what must be passing. For
fifteen minutes it lasted in all its fury, then lulled slightly, to
burst forth again for a few minutes only to diminish once more to a
steady burr, which left nothing decided in his mind. What had happened
he did not know, but when he turned his attention there later in the
morning he gathered, from the fact that the machine-guns still rattled
in the same locality as before, that ground had not been gained.

His Squadron