Over the ridge of Kum Kale you plainly see, like a great blue lake, the first reach of the Dardanelles up to the narrow neck between Chanak and Kilid Bahr.  It was up and down in this stretch of water that the largest vessels of the allied fleet steamed today for over four hours, hurling, with sheets of orange flame from their heavy guns, a constant succession of shells on the forts that guard the Narrows at Chanak, while the Turkish batteries, with a frequency that lessened as the day went on, flashed back at them in reply, with the difference that, while the effects of the Allies’ shells were continually manifest in the columns of smoke and dust that were signs of the damage they had wrought, a great number of the enemy’s shots fell in the sea hundreds of yards from the bombarding ships, sending torrents of water towering harmlessly into the air.

Not that the successes of the day have been won without cost.  I saw several ships, French and British, struck by shells that raised volumes of white smoke, and one of the French squadron is toiling slowly home at this moment down by the head and with a list to port, while, so far as one could make out with a glass, several boatloads of men were being taken off her.

The ships left their stations between the Turkish and Asiatic coasts and Tenedos early this morning and by 11 they were steaming in line up the Dardanelles.

It was 11:45 when the first notable hit was made by an English ship.  I could see eight vessels, apparently all battleships, lying in line from the entrance up the strait.  The ship furthest up appeared to be the Queen Elizabeth, and I think it was she that fired the shot which exploded the powder magazine at Chanak.  A great balloon of white smoke sprang up in the midst of the magazine which leaped out from a fierce, red flame, and reached a great height.  When the flame had disappeared the dense smoke continued to grow till it must have been a column hundreds of feet high.

[Illustration:  [map of the Dardanelles]]

In the five minutes that followed this shot three more shells from the Queen Elizabeth fell practically on the same spot, and two minutes later yet another by the side of the smoking ruins.

There were now eight battleships, all pre-dreadnoughts, left at Tenedos, and at noon six of them started off in line a-head toward the strait.  The English ships already within were passing further up and went out of sight.

The bombarding ships were steaming constantly up and down, turning at each end of the stretch, which is about a couple of miles long.

A long thin veil of black smoke was drifting slowly westward from the fighting.  At about 1:30 Erenkeui Village, standing high on the Asiatic side, received a couple of shells.  At 1:45 a division of eight destroyers in line steamed into the entrance of the strait, and a little later the last two battleships from Tenedos joined, the Dublin patrolling outside.  An hour later the most striking effect was produced by a shell falling on a fort at Kilid Bahr, which evidently exploded another magazine.  A huge mass of heavy jet-black smoke gradually rose till it towered high above the cliffs on the European and Asiatic sides.  It ballooned slowly out like a gigantic genie rising from a fisherman’s bottle.