de after it. This led me
up and up the ridge over very broken ground. Whoever it was (it was
probably a Turkish sniper, for there were many out night-scouting) I
lost sight and sound of him.

I went climbing steadily up till at last I found myself looking into
darkness. I got down on my hands and knees and peered over the edge of a
ridge of rock. I could see a tiny beam of light away down, and this
beam grew and grew as it slowly moved up and up till it became a great
triangular ray. It swept slowly along the top of what I now saw was
a steep precipice sloping sheer down into blackness below. One step
further and I should have gone hurtling into the sea. For, although I
did not then know it, this was the topmost ridge of the Kapanja Sirt.

The great searchlight came nearer and nearer, and I slid backwards and
lay on my stomach looking over. The nearer it came the lower I moved,
so as to get well off the skyline when the beam reached me. It may have
been a Turkish searchlight. It swept slowly, slowly, till at last it was
turned off and everything was deadly black.

I started off again in another direction, keeping my back to the ridge,
as I reckoned that to be a Turkish searchlight, and, therefore, our own
lines would be somewhere down the ridge. Here, high up, I could just see
a grey streak, which I took to be the bay.

I tried to make for this streak. I scrambled down a very steep stratum
of the mountain-side and landed at last in a little patch of dead grass
and tall dried-up thistles.

By this time, having come down from my high position on the Sirt, I
could no longer see the bay; but I judged the direction as best I could,
and without waiting I tramped on.

I began to wonder how long I had been trudging about, and I put it at
about two hours.

"Halt!--who are you?" called a voice down below.

"Friend! stretcher-bearer!" I shouted.

"Come here--this way!" answered the voice.

I went down to a clump of bushes, and a man with a rifle slung over his
shoulder stepped forward, and we both glared at each other for a second.

"Do yer know where the 45th Company is?"

"No idea," said I.

"Any water?"

"Not a drop left."

"We're trying to get back to the firing-line but we're all lost--there's
eight of us."

"I'm trying to get to the 32nd Field Ambulance--d'you know the way?"

"Yes; go right ahead there," he pointed, "and keep well down off the
hills--you'll see the beach when you've gone for a mile or s