ning wore on. There was bustling in the communication
trenches, pack-mules bringing up ammunition, and men shouldering
cases of bombs. At ten o'clock the C.O. came round the line. Now
that the imminence of the attack had made unpleasantly real his duty
of sending us over the top, he had grown quite fatherly. "Don't get
killed," he said. "I can't spare any of you--battalion dam-depleted
already.... Is there anything you wish to ask, my boy?"

"Yes, sir. I want to know what time it begins, and what exactly it's
all about."

"At two o'clock," he replied. "The mine goes up then. But what it's
all about I know no more than you do. Personally, I think it is to
cover some operations at Suvla. The Staff is obviously so
dam-anxious to let the Turk know we're going to attack, that I'm
sure this is a diversion intended to keep the Turk's Helles army
occupied, and prevent it reinforcing Suvla. Go and have a look from
the Bluff out to sea, and observe how well the show is being
advertised. There may be reason for this ostentation, but it's
dam-awkward for my lads, who'll have to run up against a
well-prepared enemy."

"But s'posing it means they're going to evacuate Suvla, and leave us
to our fate, what'll be our position on Helles then, sir?"

"Well, we shall be like the rearguard that covered the retreat at
Mons--heroes, but mostly dead ones."

"Good Lord!" thought I, as the C.O. turned away. "We shall be lonely
on Helles to-night if we hear that the Suvla Army has left for
England."

I went, as he suggested, to glance at the preparations on the sea. I
saw a string of devilish monitors, solemnly taking up their
position between Imbros and our eastern coast. Destroyers lay round
the Peninsula like a chain of black rulers. A great airship was
sailing towards us. From Imbros and Tenedos aeroplanes were rising
high in the sky.

The Turk, wide awake to these preliminaries, was firing shrapnel at
the aircraft overhead, and hurling towards the destroyers his
high-explosive shells, which tossed up water-spouts in the sea. The
whizz-bang gun spat continuously.

"You won't spit after to-night," I mused, "if Doe reaches you."

And, from all I knew of Doe and his passion for the heroic, I felt
assured that he would never stay in the crater like a diffident
batsman in his block. He would reach the opposite crease, or be run
out.

"He'll get there. He'll get there," I told myself persistently.

Sec.7

The attack having been