“It’s a blinkin’ firework show,” said a Tommy’s voice; and Doe announced in my ear:  “Rupert, I’m inspired!  I’ve an idea for a poem.  Our lives are a pantomime, and the Genius of the Peninsula is the Demon King; and here we have the flashes and thunder that always illumine the horrors of his cave....  Jumping Jupiter!  What’s that?”

A tremendous report had gone off near us; a brilliant light had shown up the lines of a cruiser; a shell had shrieked past us and whistled away to explode among the Turks; and a loud, and swelling murmur of amazement and admiration, rising from the Redbreast, had burst into a thousand laughs.

“Fate laughs at my poem,” grumbled Doe.

The rain raced down:  and, at about ten o’clock, we learned that, for the first time in the history of the Redbreast, it would be too rough for anyone to land.  We must therefore spend the night aboard, and take the risk of disembarking under the enemy’s guns in the morning.  So, wooing sleep, we huddled into the chairs of the saloon, and wished for the day.  We slept through troubled dreams, and woke to a gathering calm on the sea.  As our eager eyes swept the view by daylight, we found that we were in a semicircular and unsheltered bay, whose choppy water harboured two warships that were desultorily firing.  Near us a derelict trawler lay half submerged.

The truth broke upon us:  we were floating at anchor in Suvla Bay.

CHAPTER X

SUVLA AND HELLES AT LAST

Sec.1

The morning sun was up as we lay in Suvla Bay.  It lit the famous battlefield, so that we saw in a shining picture the hills, up which the invading Britons had rushed to win the steps of Sari Bair.  From over Asia it had risen and, doubtless, beyond the unwon ridges that blocked our view, the Straits of the Narrows were glistening like a silver ribbon in its light.  We would have been dull fools if we had gazed otherwise than spellbound at this sunlit landscape, where the blood of lost battles was scarcely dry upon the ground.

What surprised us most was the invisibility of the warring armies.  On the beaches, certainly, there were tents and stores and men moving.  But the rolling countryside beyond seemed bleak and deserted.  Only occasionally a high-explosive shell threw up a spout of brown earth, or a burst of shrapnel sent a puff of white smoke to float like a Cupid’s cloud along the sky.  And yet two armies were hidden here, with their rifles, machine-guns, and artillery pointed at each other.

Yes, and yonder invisible Turk had behind him a sun whose rays were pouring down upon our guilty troopship.  Any moment we might expect to hear a shell, addressed to us, come whistling down the sun-shaft.  We had reached at last the shell-swept zone.  From now onwards there could be no certainty that we would not be alive one moment and dead the next.  We shivered pleasantly.