I was standing on the summit of Sari Bair, which showed the Narrows under the moon and stars.  The Narrows seen at last!  There, look, was the waterway to Constantinople.  I waited patiently to see the Navy pour up it in triumphant procession.  Beside me was the stranger who had spoken to us in the afternoon, and I said to him:  “The coast seems clear.  Let’s go down and swim the Hellespont, where Leander and Byron swam.”  But at that moment there was a loud explosion near us, and a sound as of particles of earth falling upon an oil-sheet roof.

Conscious that this tremendous report was not the creation of a troubled dreamer, but something real, which had worked itself into the texture of my dreams, I lifted heavy eyelids, and learned that a stray night-shell from the Turkish lines had burst very close to my dug-out, and the debris was tumbling on the roof....  And we were still low down on the slope to victory.

After that, sleep passed from me, and I watched the dawn break.

Sec.2

At six o’clock the next morning we were all on the little trawler, due to leave for Cape Helles.  Helles!  The stirring, pregnant name was a thing to toy with.  Suvla was a great word, but Helles was a greater.  So farewell to Suvla now.  We must also see Helles.

“To Helles,” said the hardened skipper, with the same dull unconcern that a cabman might show in saying “To Hyde Park.”

The workmanlike boat got under way.  As I gazed from its side towards the Suvla that we were leaving, the whole line of the Peninsula came into panorama before me.  The sun, just awake, bathed a long, waving skyline that rose at two points to dominant levels.  One was Sari Bair, the stately hill which stood inviolate, although an army had dashed itself against its fastnesses.  The other, lower down the skyline, was Achi Baba, as impregnable as her sister, Sari Bair.  The story of the campaign was the story of these two hills.

For perfect charm, I recall no trip to equal this cruise betimes in the sparking AEgean.  Our trawler was travelling with the smoothness of a gondola on a Venetian canal.  And the voyage, sunny and refreshing in itself, was given an added glamour, by reason of the shrine to which it was a pilgrimage.  For, whether I could believe it or not, we were steaming fast to Helles.

My sensations, as we gaily bore through the sea upon the hallowed site, were those of one who awaits the rise of a curtain upon a famous drama.  I sprang my imagination to the alert position, that I might not miss one thrill, when we should enter the bay whose waters played on W Beach.  Conceive it:  there would meet my gaze a stretch of lapping water, a width of beach, and a bluff hill; and I must say:  “Here were confused battle, and blood filtering through the ground.  There was agony here, and quivering flesh.  Here the promises of straight limbs, keen eyes, and clear cheeks were cancelled in a spring morning.  Our schoolfellows died here, Stanley, and Lancelot, and Moles White.  Hither a thousand destinies converged upon the beach, and here they closed.”