! In this
hold, now so silent and empty, what emotions throbbed that day!

"Poor old White!" murmured Doe. "He got ashore well enough, and
wasn't killed till the fighting on the high ground. By Jove, Rupert!
we'll search the Peninsula from here to Fusilier Bluff for his
grave. Come on."

We left the comparative darkness of the hold, and stepped through
the square door, that had been so deadly an exit for hundreds, into
the bright daylight. At once there was given us a full view of V
Beach, with the sea sparkling as it broke upon the shingle. The air
all about was strangely opalescent. Seddel Bahr shone in the sun, as
only a white Eastern village can. The hills rising from the beach
looked steep and difficult, but sunlit and shimmering. Everything
shimmered as a result of the sudden contrast from the darkness of
the hold. Even so must the scene have flashed upon the eyes of the
invaders as they issued from the sides of the _Clyde_. For many of
them, how quickly the bright light went out!

We had hardly entered the ruined streets of Seddel Bahr before a
shell screamed into the village and burst with a deafening explosion
in a house, whose walls went up in a volcano of dust and stones.

"Asiatic Annie!" we both said, at once and in unison.

For all of us knew the evil reputation of Asiatic Annie--that large
gun, safely tucked away in the blue hills of Asia, who lobbed her
shells--a seven-mile throw--over the Straits on to the shores of
Cape Helles--a mischievous old lady, who delighted in being the
plague of the Beaches.

"If Asiatic Annie is going to begin," said Doe, "we'll have
important business elsewhere. Hurry on. We're going to find White's
grave."

To get from Seddel Bahr to Fusilier Bluff it was necessary to cross
diagonally the whole of the Helles sector. There lay before us a
long walk over a dusty, scrub-covered plateau, every yard of which
was a yard of battlefield and overspread with the litter of battles.
This red earth, which, when the Army first arrived, was garnished
with grass and flowers, groves, and vineyards, was now beaten by
thousands of feet into a hard, dry drill-ground, where, here and
there, blasted trees stood like calvaries against the sky. The grass
resembled patches of fur on a mangy skin. The birds, which seemed to
revel in the excitements of war, soared and swept over the
devastated tableland. Northward from our feet stretched this
plateau of scarecrow trees, till it began to inc