gondola on a Venetian canal. And the voyage, sunny and
refreshing in itself, was given an added glamour, by reason of the
shrine to which it was a pilgrimage. For, whether I could believe it
or not, we were steaming fast to Helles.

My sensations, as we gaily bore through the sea upon the hallowed
site, were those of one who awaits the rise of a curtain upon a
famous drama. I sprang my imagination to the alert position, that I
might not miss one thrill, when we should enter the bay whose waters
played on W Beach. Conceive it: there would meet my gaze a stretch
of lapping water, a width of beach, and a bluff hill; and I must
say: "Here were confused battle, and blood filtering through the
ground. There was agony here, and quivering flesh. Here the promises
of straight limbs, keen eyes, and clear cheeks were cancelled in a
spring morning. Our schoolfellows died here, Stanley, and Lancelot,
and Moles White. Hither a thousand destinies converged upon the
beach, and here they closed."

The boat was approaching a rounded headland. In a second the vision
would be before me. Come now, could I think all these things--could
I realise them, as we entered the bay? I found not. Before I had
gripped half the thrilling ideas that were the gift of the moment,
we were moored against the jetty at W Beach, and I was stepping
ashore to take my part in the last chapters of the Gallipoli story.

CHAPTER XI

AN ATMOSPHERE OF SHOCKS AND SUDDEN DEATH

Sec.1

One evening, three days later, I was sitting, inconceivably bored,
in my new dug-out on the notorious Fusilier Bluff. This dug-out was
a recess, hewn in damp, crumbling soil, with a frontage built of
sand-bags. Its size was that of an anchorite's cell, and any
abnormal movement or extra loud noise within it brought the stones
and earth in showers down the walls. Indeed, the walls of my new
home so far resembled the walls of Jericho that it only required a
shout to bring them down upon the floor. In the sand-bag front were
two apertures, called the door and the window, which overlooked the
AEgean Sea. For this reason the name "Seaview" had been painted above
the door in lively moments by the preceding tenant, whose grave was
visible lower down the Bluff. I watched the night gathering on the
sea, while over my home the whizz-bang gun--that evil genius of the
place, and the murderer of Jimmy Doon--spat its high-velocity
shells.

I was alone. The C.O. of the East Cheshires, wh