Burnu, where we had been that morning, a transport put out, rather recklessly it seemed, and went straight across the open water.  From the south and west there was the continual Br-r-umr-m... br-r-um-m! of big guns, and over Kaba Tepe way we could see shells bursting.  We sat there for an hour or so, waiting for one of the little specks out on the blue sea floor to fire or sink, and then, as nothing happened, returned to camp.

An orderly brought us supper that night—­mutton, bread and cheese, haricots, stewed fruit, and coffee—­and we dined on a little table outside the tent, with the twilight turning to moonlight and the sheep-bells tinkling against the opposite hill.  Soldiers were carrying their suppers from the cook tent—­not at all the bread-and-cigarette diet with which one is always being told the hardy Turk is content.  He may be content, but whenever I saw him eating he had meat and rice, and often stewed fresh beans or fruit—­certainly better food than most Turkish peasants or artisans are accustomed to at home.

I sat outside watching the moon rise and listening to the distant Crack... crack-crack! of rifle and machine-gun fire from over Ari Bumu way.  Evidently they were fighting in the trenches we had seen that morning.  The orderly who had served us, withdrawn a little way, was standing like a statue in the dusk, hands folded in front of him, saying his last prayer of the evening.  Beyond, from a bush-covered tent, came the jingle of a telephone and ’the singsong voice of the young Turkish operator relaying messages in German—­“Ja!...  Ja!...  Kaba Tepe...  Ousedom Pasha...  Morgen frith...  Hier Multepe!...  Ja!...  Ja!”

And to this and the distant rattle of battle we went to sleep.

Chapter XII

Soghan-Dere And The Flier Of Ak-Bash

Next morning, after news had been telephoned in that the submarines had got another battleship, the Majestic, we climbed again into the covered wagon and started for the south front.  We drove down to the sea and along the beach road through Maidos—­bombarded several weeks before, cross-country from the Aegean, and nothing now but bare, burnt walls—­on to Kilid Bahr, jammed with camels and ox-carts and soldiers, and then on toward the end of the peninsula.

We were now beyond the Narrows and the Dardanelles.  To the left, a bit farther out, were the waters in which the Irresistible, Ocean, and Bouvet were sunk, and even now, off the point, ten or twelve miles away, hung the smoke of sister ships.  We drove past the big guns of the forts, past field-guns covering the shore, past masked batteries and search-lights.  Beside us, along the shore road, mule trains and ox-carts and camel trains were toiling along in the blaze and dust with provisions and ammunition for the front.  Once we passed four soldiers carrying a comrade, badly wounded, on a stretcher padded with leaves.  After an hour or so of bumping we turned into a transverse valley, as level almost as if it had been made for a parade-ground.