day the Turks shelled the vessel, and turned machine-guns on
her. The shells, which Mac could hear bursting as he lay in his bunk,
did no damage, but the machine-gun fire caught one wounded man lying on
deck, made several chips in the deck and holes through the operating
theatre, narrowly missing a medical officer at work on a case and
rattled against the steel sides. The ship moved out to a safer
anchorage. Mac heard in later days that a destroyer had been
carelessly firing from under the lee of the hospital ship. They took
on board that day another thousand cases, again transferred the less
seriously wounded to the _Aquitania_, and returned once more to Anzac.
They left Anzac finally on Friday, called again at Mudros to discharge
the light cases, and set a course for Alexandria, much to Mac's relief.

One day he was taken on a stretcher to the operating theatre, where he
drifted strangely away from earthly things, and woke again in his bunk.
Once he had a glorious sleep, after an injection of morphia, but
usually he lay awake, tired and restless. There was no one to talk to,
except on those rare but pleasant moments when the good padre and the
ever-cheering sister found a few spare minutes. All those near him
were badly wounded and far too ill to speak. Some died, and, wrapped
in a blanket, disappeared from the ward to join the line of corpses on
an upper deck, waiting the dawning hour and the parting words of the
padre to plunge with firebars at their feet into the blue
Mediterranean. Of what had finally happened on those Gallipoli heights
no one could say definitely, and there were disappointing and
unsatisfactory rumours. About noon one day the vessel passed much
wreckage of shattered boats, oars, sun helmets, lifebelts and so on,
and cruised about for some time looking for survivors, but found none.
It was the scene of the foundering a few hours earlier of the _Royal
Edward_ with many hundred fine fellows. The padre brought what news he
could to Mac, and was seldom unaccompanied by something tempting in the
way of sweets or fruit.

On Monday about the middle of the morning the vessel tied up at
Alexandria. The heat was almost unbearable, for no breeze stirred in
the hot confines of the dock to send a cooling breath into the stuffy
depths of the ship. Mac had a wild longing to get off the ship, and he
must have become light-headed. He had been told he would be sent
ashore before evening, but it seeme