“But we’ll win,” suggested Monty, tentatively.

“O Lord, yes, sir.  But not here.  Things are going to be interesting here....  God knows how it’ll all end....  Oh! there it is again.”

The gun boomed, and the speaker kissed the dust.

I had just decided that it was best to remain recumbent, and Doe, too, had sat down rather sheepishly, when the Turk either ran out of ammunition or felt that he had done all that formality required of him, and returned to his hookah in peace.

Knowing that night would fall quickly, we hastened to make ourselves some supper.  Its last mouthfuls we finished in darkness; and, having nothing further to do, determined to go to bed in our little dug-outs on the hillside.  Standing in the blue darkness outside these narrow dwelling-places, like lepers among our tombs, we wished each other good-night and a good sleep.  Then we crawled into our graves.  Wrapping my knees in my British warm, I disposed myself to rest.

But I could not sleep.  My mind was too active with thinking that I was lying in the historic ground, over which the battle had rolled.  As a light in a room keeps a would-be sleeper awake, so the bright glow of my thoughts kept my brain from rest.  Here was I on that amazing Peninsula, towards which I had looked in wonder from the cliffs of Mudros.  Around me, and in the earth as I was, the dead men, more successful than I, were sleeping dreamlessly.  On higher slopes the tired army held the fire-trenches, with its faces and rifles still turned bravely landward and upward.  Above them the Turks hung to the extremities of their territory with the same tenacity that we should show in defending Kent or Cornwall.  Behind the Turk ran the silver Narrows, the splendid trophy of the present tourney.  And, as I had been reminded that afternoon, far away the German armies were battling through the corridors of Servia that they might come and destroy the invaders of Suvla and Helles.

To increase my wakefulness the rapid fire of rifle and machine-gun, which had been almost unheard during the day-time, began with the fall of darkness, and continued sporadic through the night.  Like the chirp of a great cricket, it was doubly insistent in the silent hours.  The artillery, too, was more restless than it had been in the light of day.  Seemingly all were nervous of the dark.

It is ever difficult to sleep in a strange bed.  I found myself opening my eyes and looking up at my oil-sheet roof.  So scanty was it that it left apertures, through which I could see the stars shining in a perfect sky.  I shut my eyes and gave rein to my thoughts, gradually elaborating the wild dream of a thinker who was unaware that he had at last dropped off to sleep.  It seemed to me that the whole army at Suvla was that night storming the hills that intervened between us and the silver Narrows.  I was rushing with the attackers, while the shells roared and pitched harmlessly among us, and at length