And the Big Rains were fast drawing due.  The time was at hand when the ravines and gorges that cracked and spliced the Mudros Hills would roar to the torrents, and the hard, dust-strewn earth would become acres of mud, from which our tent-pegs would be drawn like pins out of butter.  We remembered Elijah on Mount Carmel, and looked at the sky for rain.

But we looked in alarm and not hope.  For, if the Narrows were not forced before the rains and sea-storms began, the campaign, we understood, would be doomed to disaster.  The rain would turn our great Intermediate Base, Mudros, into a useless lagoon, and the sea-storms would beat on the beaches of the Peninsula, smash the frail jetties built at Suvla and Helles, and, by preventing the landing of supplies, condemn the Suvla army and the Helles army to annihilation or surrender.

“Surely, oh surely,” said Monty, looking up one day at a cloudy sky, “something largely conceived will be attempted before the rains work havoc among the communications on land, and the storms slash at the communications by sea.  We must be going to win.”

“O Lord, yes,” echoed I.

But September with its dry weather began to wane, the rains started a plaguy pelting, and the winds commenced to excite the placid AEgean, while we still awaited big movements and final things.

Sec.4

Then the evil Peninsula sent straight to Monty’s feet something that seemed like a direct message of scornful warning to our little Rangoon group.  It was such a message as defiant kings have sent to banter those who contemplated an invasion of their realms.  This is how it came.

Day after day (you must know) in the early morning, the dead, sewn up in their blankets, were landed from the ships that had picked them up in a dying condition at Suvla and Helles.  They were laid in rows on the little landing-jetty, the “Egyptian Pier.”  After awhile the men would put them by in a mortuary tent, where they rested till the evening, when a G.S. waggon conveyed them to the cemetery.

Generally Monty, whose duty it was to bury them, would sit on the driver’s seat and ride to the cemetery, after persuading Doe and me to ride with him.

On a certain September evening Monty glanced at the Camp Commandant’s “chit,” and read it aloud to us:  “’Seven bodies for burial at 1700.’  Are you coming?”

Doe turned towards me.  “Coming, Rupert?”

“No.  I’m too tired.”

“Oh, rot, you scrimshanker.  You’ve been hogging it all the afternoon.”

“Yes, come on,” said Monty.  “We’ll drive on the waggon.”

The G.S. waggon with its seven blanketed forms was outside waiting for Monty.  It was drawn by two teams of mules with mounted drivers.  The driver’s seat was therefore vacant, and on to it Monty, Doe and I climbed.  The waggon started, as Monty whispered:  “It’s rather like the Dead Cart in the days of the Great Plague, isn’t it?” We never spoke loud with that load behind us.