O.C. Rest Camp, decided that all was
well. The fresh arrivals on the troopships brought with them like a
breeze from the homeland that atmosphere of glowing optimism which
prevailed in England in the early August days. The same news came
from the opposite direction. For the streams of wounded, who in the
weeks following the Suvla invasion poured into our Mudros hospitals,
told us that the Turk was fairly on the run. "It can't last long,"
they said. "We've only to climb one of them two hills--either Sari
Bair on the Suvla front, or old Achi Baba at Helles--and the trick's
done. From the top of either of 'em we shall look down upon the
Narrows, and blow their forts to glory. Up'll go the Navy, and there
y'are!" It would be over by Christmas, they believed; for Christmas
was always the pivot of Tommy's time.

So spoke August, drinking deep from cups overflowing with
confidence. September detected a taste of doubt in the cheery
optimism of the Green Room, and like a loyal British September, spat
out the unpalatable mouthful. But the taste remained.

Nothing but stagnation seemed to be prevailing on the Peninsula. The
incessant roll of guns could no longer be heard at Mudros. The
old-time shifts of wounded ceased to pour into our hospitals. In
their stead came daily crowds of dysentery, jaundice and septic
cases. And these men told a different tale from the wounded, who, a
month before, had returned from the stage like actors aglow with
triumph. All reported "Nothing doing" on Gallipoli.

And the Big Rains were fast drawing due. The time was at hand when
the ravines and gorges that cracked and spliced the Mudros Hills
would roar to the torrents, and the hard, dust-strewn earth would
become acres of mud, from which our tent-pegs would be drawn like
pins out of butter. We remembered Elijah on Mount Carmel, and looked
at the sky for rain.

But we looked in alarm and not hope. For, if the Narrows were not
forced before the rains and sea-storms began, the campaign, we
understood, would be doomed to disaster. The rain would turn our
great Intermediate Base, Mudros, into a useless lagoon, and the
sea-storms would beat on the beaches of the Peninsula, smash the
frail jetties built at Suvla and Helles, and, by preventing the
landing of supplies, condemn the Suvla army and the Helles army to
annihilation or surrender.

"Surely, oh surely," said Monty, looking up one day at a cloudy sky,
"something largely conceived will be atte