ir. But not here. Things are going to be interesting
here.... God knows how it'll all end.... Oh! there it is again."

The gun boomed, and the speaker kissed the dust.

I had just decided that it was best to remain recumbent, and Doe,
too, had sat down rather sheepishly, when the Turk either ran out of
ammunition or felt that he had done all that formality required of
him, and returned to his hookah in peace.

Knowing that night would fall quickly, we hastened to make ourselves
some supper. Its last mouthfuls we finished in darkness; and, having
nothing further to do, determined to go to bed in our little
dug-outs on the hillside. Standing in the blue darkness outside
these narrow dwelling-places, like lepers among our tombs, we wished
each other good-night and a good sleep. Then we crawled into our
graves. Wrapping my knees in my British warm, I disposed myself to
rest.

But I could not sleep. My mind was too active with thinking that I
was lying in the historic ground, over which the battle had rolled.
As a light in a room keeps a would-be sleeper awake, so the bright
glow of my thoughts kept my brain from rest. Here was I on that
amazing Peninsula, towards which I had looked in wonder from the
cliffs of Mudros. Around me, and in the earth as I was, the dead
men, more successful than I, were sleeping dreamlessly. On higher
slopes the tired army held the fire-trenches, with its faces and
rifles still turned bravely landward and upward. Above them the
Turks hung to the extremities of their territory with the same
tenacity that we should show in defending Kent or Cornwall. Behind
the Turk ran the silver Narrows, the splendid trophy of the present
tourney. And, as I had been reminded that afternoon, far away the
German armies were battling through the corridors of Servia that
they might come and destroy the invaders of Suvla and Helles.

To increase my wakefulness the rapid fire of rifle and machine-gun,
which had been almost unheard during the day-time, began with the
fall of darkness, and continued sporadic through the night. Like the
chirp of a great cricket, it was doubly insistent in the silent
hours. The artillery, too, was more restless than it had been in the
light of day. Seemingly all were nervous of the dark.

It is ever difficult to sleep in a strange bed. I found myself
opening my eyes and looking up at my oil-sheet roof. So scanty was
it that it left apertures, through which I could see the stars
shi