The donk rapidly absorbed three bottles, while the distracted "Gyppies" tugged and wailed, "No gude! No gude! Finish Noo Zealand!" to which the only reply was "Imshi Yallah, you black devils." At this stage the little beast, an animal of rather miserable dimensions, with a large, rotund centrepiece, escaped and wobbled ridiculously down the street. He was recaptured, drenched with two more bottles, and let loose to wander wherever his tottery legs would carry him. The donk swayed and stumbled, his ears cocked at all angles, and his expression happy and foolish. The gathered soldiers laughed till their sides were sore, and when tired of this fun they let the Arabs take away, as best they could, their ill-used, though happy, ass.

The hour had grown late. To the station the trooper and the gunner wended their way. A short sleep in the train, a tired walk campwards in the clear coolness of the Egyptian night, and to bed on the open sand beneath a starry vault. "Lights out" sounded clearly in their camp, and echoed more beautifully and faintly from other camps along the desert's edge.



CHAPTER VIII

MAC TOURS IN COMFORT

Mac sighed appreciatively. If Egypt was to be seen, this was undoubtedly the way to see it. On the whole it had been an exceedingly profitable little bit of diplomacy, coupled with good luck, that had attached him to a party of distinguished people, whose privilege it was to be shown Egypt as the Government chose to show it. He lay comfortably in his bed smoking. Travelling in this manner appealed to him. His first tastes of Egyptian railway travelling, in dirty, clanking boxes, which required disinfecting, had not been pleasant. Now, from the darkened cabin of a saloon car on the Cairo-Luxor express de luxe, he watched the fleeting vista of moonlit palms, sleeping villages, and silhouetted hills.

He had left New Zealand some six months before with the intention of slaying Germans, not of touring in luxury in Egypt, but he was not averse to these interim enjoyments. The war could wait, and anyhow at that particular moment it was hardly showing any inclination of stopping, and neither was Zeitoun Camp a place of unmixed blessings. Arrived at this state of mental satisfaction, he threw the remnants of his cigarette out of the window and went to sleep.

When he awoke, they were rattling over a Nile bridge, and the sun shone full in upon him. The early morning scene of industrious blue-robed fellaheen at work in the green fields, the graceful palms, desert hills, and blue sky thrilled the one artistic fibre which had strayed into his soul. He shaved at leisure, bathed luxuriously, dressed, and met the other four members of the party in the saloon for breakfast. Towards the end of the meal they steamed into Luxor, where once stood the ancient and wonderful Theban capital.

Here many days were passed, investigating tombs and temples of all shapes and sizes; great and wonderful hieroglyphics were explained, though these left the trooper cold. They rode on donkeys deep into the deserts, followed by Sudanese guards on fine Arab steeds.

From Luxor they duly departed in the direction of Assuan. The direct distance was not over-long, but the day was blazing hot, the railway was badly constructed, and the sand filtered steadily into the cars. It was a comic-opera railway, this narrow-gauge line. The contract for its construction was let at an exceedingly profitable rate per mile to a French company. More miles meant more money, so naturally they spun the thing out and consequently for no apparent reason, the line zigzags across perfectly level stretches of desert.

Assuan at last. Great nabobs bowed; Mac saluted. The honoured guests would take the State gharries to their hotel? No? Walk! Impossible! Great people did not walk. It took much gentle persuasion to convey to the Mahmoudieh—the Governor of the Province—that the guests wished to take exercise, now that the cool of the evening was come. His Excellency was a gentleman of portly proportions, who, at some other period, may have walked. Despite his dimensions, he was agile and graceful in his sweeping salaams; when he spoke he emphasized every word with an appropriate sweep of the arm, and his eyebrows arched and his eyes bulged in superlative, ecstatic moments. The tassel of his tarboosh, a little red inverted flowerpot capping the summit, gyrated violently in moments of excitement. Altogether he was a mighty person. Perceiving this, the five great ones from the far south paid court to him, addressed him "Your Excellency this" and "Your Excellency that"; and paid tribute to his lands, to his people, and his province, and expressed a desire to see his wives. The Mahmoudieh visibly swelled with pleasure.

Assuan was duly investigated. Much like Luxor, it consisted of a terrace along the river-bank, of hotels, some clean and comfortable, some Greek; foreign consulates and banks. Gardens, shaded by palms and lebbak-trees, made this portion of the town quite habitable. Behind, on the rising sand-dunes, lay the crowded, stifling mass of native dwellings, to visit which one's heart must be strong. Bazaars might be artistic and unique, but as their quaintness and picturesqueness increased so also did the odours of garlic, the uncleanliness, and the flies in their myriads.

Time passed pleasantly in Assuan, though at length Mac thought they had about exhausted most of its possibilities. There were mosques, temples and bazaars; there was a wild race of desert Bisharin, whose living was precarious in those days of war, since they had existed by dancing weird, wild dances for the enlightenment of tourists; there was a museum, rather a mouldy place like their kind, where were relics of ages untold, and, much to Mac's amusement, a mummified sheep. He thought the New Zealand method of freezing much more practicable.

At length, one morning, ere the mist wraiths had vanished, they crawled slowly southwards across the rich golden sand of the lower Sudanese desert. It was pleasantly bracing and clear in the early desert morning, and Mac felt light-hearted and happy, as he gazed across the distant featureless dunes of sand. Successfully accomplishing a non-stop run of twenty miles in an hour and a half, they arrived at Shellal, a village of a few mud huts and a station, a jetty with a steamer or two, which took travellers farther to the south, to Wadi Haifa and Khartoum. About the place itself there was little of interest; it was a one-horse show with a few Arabs, Bedouins and Sudanese, many flea-bitten mongrels and clouds of flies. But this island-studded expanse of water was the great Assuan Dam. The gates had been closed at this season for about a month, and the rising tide had just reached the floor of the beautiful Temple of Isis, which stood, half a mile away, perfectly reflected in the calm waters. They wheezed away over to it in a steam pinnace, got temporarily snagged on the top of a stray pillar, and eventually disembarked from their hissing, modern contraption at the very portals, where oft times Cleopatra and her suite were wont to enter from their state barges. Mac's rather hazy notions of that lady wrapped her in a halo of romance, and now he walked the lovely aisles which she had trod. Was it, he thought, worth while gradually to spoil this wonderful building for the sake of lucre from twentieth century Egypt?

From the old they went to the new, landing at the eastern end of the great granite wall that bars the Nile at the head of the foaming first cataract. Natives pushed them in trollies along the top of the mile wall. Water roared in great white jets through the sluices, tempering the blistering heat of the midday hours. It was a wonderful work, this dam, a great peaceful desert lake above and a turbulent flood below. They descended by a flight of locks to the quieter water, and steamed ten or fifteen miles down stream between many islands of red granite, smoothly polished by the rushing waters of countless centuries. Back again at Assuan, they embarked on a luxurious river steamer, the Sakkara, and immediately cast off, for down river.

This method of seeing the country took a lot of beating, meditated Mac, as he lounged back in a low chair on the cool deck, with his sleeves rolled up, smoking a cigar. The life of the Nile river-bank was deeply interesting, with a slightly varying background of green fields of berseem, stately palms and rocky desert hills. How cool the palms looked, but he knew from experience that the degree of shade ascribed to them in romantic novels didn't exist in real life. Lulled by the steady reverberations of the paddle-wheels, conscious internally of a satisfying lunch and good wine, he fell asleep. When he awoke, they were manoeuvring carefully up to the bank, and black sailors in Jack Tar uniform quickly extemporized a landing out of planks.

Drawn up on top of the bank, brightly polished and perspiring, stood a line of dusky soldiers, presenting arms. At the end of the gang-plank, his portliness exceeded only by his stateliness, was the great potentate His Excellency the Mahmoudieh of Assuan. With sweeping obeisances, he greeted each one in a manner only befitting those who held his provinces in such deep respect. His demeanour demanded rather a setting of pillared palace and crimson velvet than a background of castor-oil bushes and sugar-cane. But he did things properly, did the Mahmoudieh, showed them Kom Ombo Temple, with all the dignity of the proprietor, took them to his sugar-mills in his best donkey-drawn tram-car, and offered them almost everything in his dominions. Finally, when they re-embarked farther down stream, they warmly bade farewell to the old boy, told him emphatically of the unapproachability of his Province, and bowed and waved handkerchiefs until beyond a bend in the river they lost sight of his memorable shape.

That night the steamer lay moored to the bank near the native town of Edfu. The skipper was considerably concerned, as he explained with violent gesticulations, at the possibility of being stranded on the morrow, as the season of low Nile was at hand. To Mac a day or two in the middle of the river was a matter of little moment. The quarters were comfortable, and Zeitoun Camp was no place towards which to hurry. So, unmoved by the skipper's anxieties, he retired to the lower deck, and praised the engines to the Sudanese engineer until that gentleman beamed with pride and his teeth glistened white in the dusk.

In the early hours soon after dawn, they went on donkeys to the Temple of Edfu. The morning was mysterious and foreboding. Over the whole country a weird silence reigned and wrapped the towering walls of the ancient temple in eeriness; there were no clouds, but the sun was like a great red moon, and all the landscape enveloped in an orange gloom. They rode in silence, awed strangely by Nature's will. Animals were restive and gloomy too. They returned to breakfast aboard when the steamer cast off, and proceeded down river. Soon a hot breath of wind came from the south, on which great columns of sand swept over the desert. The gale increased, puffs blew as from a fiery furnace; the sun became obscured altogether, and soon also the river banks. Bored by the gloom of his fellow-voyagers and depressed, Mac betook himself to his state-room, and went to sleep. He woke for lunch, went once more to sleep, awoke again in the evening when Luxor was reached, and hastened through the squalid streets to board the saloon car for Cairo. Even in the gale and the fog of sand the skipper had not managed to find a convenient mud-bank on which to ground his steamer, and Mac told him he didn't think he was much of a sport.

He had enjoyed Upper Egypt, especially journeying in so comfortable a manner, but, after all, it wouldn't be bad fun seeing the boys again, even if they were at Zeitoun Camp.



CHAPTER IX

MAC LUNCHES WITH THE SULTAN

In the glaring heat of the Egyptian high-noon hours a car drew up outside the large hotel in the Sharia Kamel and a more or less soiled and weather-beaten trooper alighted. He made his way up the steps, across the shady terrace and into the dim cool depths of the pillared hall. He had been to an excessively sandy inspection that morning somewhere in the Sahara, and now his mien betokened appreciative anticipation of a refresher to his dusty throat. After that a wash would go rather well, perhaps a cigarette, and then lunch. But, alas, no such luck! Apparently something out of the ordinary was afoot. Even the dignity of the heavy-weight, superior, self-satisfied, alleged Swiss maitre d'hotel was for the moment disturbed. Native s'fragis, neglecting their work, were voluble, gesticulatory, but quite unintelligible.

Finally, Mac was led to understand that His Serene Highness the Sultan, learning of his presence at the hotel, had made known the Imperial wish that he desired to honour the trooper by entertaining him to lunch. However, there had been grave difficulties in putting the whole affair in order. Mac had left early for the desert inspection, and several envoys, calling in regular succession, had been unable to learn his Christian name. Moreover, it had been deemed necessary to obtain the assurance of the General Officer Commanding in Egypt that it would be quite in order to invite a trooper to the palace of His Serene Highness. But those small difficulties were duly overcome, and now, twenty minutes before the appointed hour, an extremely gorgeous and majestic person presented Mac with the Serene invitation.

Now, he had considered it an extravagance to arise sufficiently early to permit of his being shaved before the parade. Also his garments, which had wallowed in the mud of Takapau Camp many months ago, were constructed for a person of smaller dimensions, and his generous Government had not taken into consideration such occasions as Sultans' luncheon parties, when designing the uniform. These were small matters in his mind, and if the Sultan's Imperial wish was to be granted he should have the trooper, beard, uniform and all. So, with the immediate dust of the desert removed and with a borrowed but ancient shako upon his head, he was salaamed down the steps again with unusual pomp and flourish.

The Royal equipage conveyed him with much dignity down the long Sharia Abdin and across the great open square to the palace entrance. As he entered he acknowledged the salute of the gaudy guard in just that off-hand manner befitting a bush-country shepherd. He was much bowed into a great room where there was an epidemic of liveried darkies, a grand chamberlain or so and a few Cabinet Ministers. In common with the rest, he was subjected to a thorough spring-cleaning with feather dusters. Before imperturbable and mighty chamberlains, up to his ankles in crimson carpet and generally struck with the magnificence of his surroundings, Mac for a moment lost his nerve, but speedily recovering himself, informed a tarbooshed individual that it was a fine day. Unfortunately this conversation did not prove fruitful, for, besides the fact that the subject of the weather in Egypt is a quickly exhausted topic, the gentleman to whom the remark had been addressed soon made it evident that he failed to comprehend. However, the trooper soon unearthed a magnificently emblazoned official from the Sudan, who happened to be English, and struck up an acquaintance with him.

A nervous plucking of garments on the part of some of the company indicated that the prelude was near an end. Slowly the assembly was ushered from the room, along a hall, up a wonderful staircase, and at last into the august presence of His Serene Highness. Mac took note of the contortions through which his predecessors passed, made his bow and shook hands with becoming dignity, muttered once more that the day was fine, and backed across the room. All stood round the chamber, and talked about nothing to no one. Others entered and did their gymnastics, until the room contained the whole Cabinet, all portly persons in tarbooshes, the afore-mentioned Sudan gentleman, and a few British people, one in khaki. Now came the real thing. All in order, according to their great greatness or their lesser greatness, filed from the room, Mac bringing up the rear. The dining-room was an apartment of a gorgeousness, the like of which he had not seen before. He was accorded the gentleman from the Sudan on one side, and a Cabinet Minister with an unpronounceable name on the other. The table was oval and loaded with a munificence of delicacies on dishes of gold and silver and a riot of strange exotic flowers.

The epidemic of servants in post-impressionist attire had spread to the dining-hall. Savoury dishes of rare and exceeding excellence appeared and disappeared in rapid procession. Dusky men switched one dish silently away before Mac had half tasted its delights and promptly replaced it by another. Breakfast was some distance in the rear and this food of kings was more to his palate than sand stew "a la Zeitun," and the wine stood high in comparison to the watered beer of Ind, Coope. So all went well. The gentleman from the Sudan talked of many things, and Mac told him nearly all about God's own country. The Cabinet Minister chipped in occasionally, but scarcely seemed to comprehend the vastness of a sheep station with 200,000 sheep and only a score of shepherds to tend them.

Coffee came, cigars followed, and the trooper made hay while the sun shone.

Eventually a retreat was made to the ante-room. The haze of tobacco smoke filled the place, and those who had a language in common spoke cordially one to the other. At length a thrill ran instinctively, it seemed, through the company, and all became severely courtly once more. Chamberlains took up their accustomed places, people said formal things to each other; obeisances were indulged in, hands shaken, courteous remarks made, and thus the company gradually evaporated. Mac's turn came. Before His Serene Highness he successfully accomplished his sweeping earthward curves, thanked the Sultan for his kindness, but, unaccustomed to the retrograde manner of leaving a room backwards, he unfortunately found that the door was in the wrong place, and met the wall with a resounding thwack. However, it was all in the game, even though he did not think much of this method of quitting a room. So, leaving by the normal mode, he was soon back in the old spring-cleaning room, being salaamed, his hat and appurtenances being returned to him with the usual Oriental ceremony.

Mac was not quite certain of the rest of the programme and was somewhat surprised to find that the next act was the meeting at the station of the New High Commissioner for Egypt. However, why not? It was all very interesting and there was one of the Sultan's cars waiting. So, waving a return salute to the Sudanese guard, as it presented arms, he embarked upon this next little jaunt.

Away through the sun-baked Abdin Square again, back along the Sharia and past the Ezbekieh, he was soon passing down the narrow lane between throngs of garlic-scented humanity. At the great iron gates of the Boulak Station, the car with the trooper, solitary and dignified within, entered the avenue of Sphinx-like dragoons, well polished and groomed. This led to a square lined with infantry. In the centre on one side was the Royal door thrown wide, towards which stretched a broad ribbon of crimson carpet. The car came to a standstill. Nothing daunted, the trooper descended in solitary state. An unearthly silence held the throng and to Mac the carpet seemed interminable, but at last it ended, and, passing through the cavernous, gloomy opening, he was soon swallowed up in a great crowd of mighty dignitaries. Acres of the same crimson carpet covered the platform, its far limits bordered by khaki soldiers. On it moved a kaleidoscopic gallery of tarbooshes, red tabs and top hats. Never before had top hats been used officially in Egypt, and, resurrected from long neglect, were mostly relics of a past decade. Mac thought they were about as suitable for the climate as a cellular shirt in the Antarctic. Most of the company looked rather bored, and he could find no one to speak to, for all were apparently inwardly dwelling too much upon costume and coming formalities. The train was late. They grew still more bored. At last, hideously decorated with flags and shrubbery, it rattled in, hissing and steaming. From a saloon carriage stepped the new arrival, garbed in court apparel. Taken in charge by some great officials, he was being introduced to all and sundry. Mac rather wondered under what high title, he, a mere private, might be introduced. Among all the mighty men there, the only one he knew was his Army Corps Commander; so, placing himself at that gentleman's back, he awaited events. Slowly the lengthy procedure went on, and slowly the bobbing and bowing grew closer. At length, clad in clothes of finest silk, the great man came before the General and his staff, when in due course with a graceful sweep of his feathered hat he acknowledged the introduction of Mac as one of the general staff. In the course of time it was all over.

Out through the great porch again, out into the air the great people passed and dispersed. Mac neglected His Serene Highness's Imperial conveyance and sought a common taxi, went down the khaki lanes and back to his hotel. There once more he gained a secluded corner, ordered a drink and unbuttoned the collar of his tunic.

The Sultan did not forget his guest, Mac. Amidst all his busy life, he heard, nine months later, that his trooper lay wounded and sick in a hospital at Alexandria. He despatched an envoy to express his deepest sympathy, his hopes for better health, and a desire to know the extent of his wounds. Then, when Mac reached England, the Sultan sent further messages and inquiries concerning the trooper whom he had honoured at his table at the Abdin Palace.



CHAPTER X

MAC DISAPPROVES OF BEING LEFT

Mac felt fed up. The worst had come to pass. The infantry had gone away and left them, the mounted men, to sweat and swear in the desert till the war was over, and Heaven only knew when that would be. He had been on fatigue to-day for not getting up until an hour after reveille, and he was in no temper to be trifled with. A foolish non-com. had taken the fatigue party to the wrong depot, where the O.C., opposed on principle to a fine body of men wanting for work, saw that they were not wasted.

After a morning's work, just as they were about to retire for lunch, the peppery officer who had been foaming all the morning about his missing men appeared and claimed them, and refused to dismiss them before they had done his job as well. In the almost unbearable heat, the party, rebellious and wrathful, had straggled off to the railway station, where a heavy afternoon's work loomed before them. Saturday afternoon too, and no dinner! Work! They didn't think! So they retreated to a shady cafe, and, despite the expostulations of the corporal, lunched upon the one satiating thing the place contained—beer.

This did not fit them for an afternoon on a tropical day, so that, when the zealous officer came at five to view the completed work, he found only a collection of happy and sleepy warriors pleasantly reclining in the shade of a tibbin stack. Awful threats fell unheeded upon them, and the work remained undone. Further refreshed, they meandered homewards, attempted vainly to maintain a comparatively straight line while they were dismissed by an amused sergeant-major, and retired to their lines to prepare for a Cairene evening.

Mac firmly resolved things had come to a pass when something dire had to be done. He adjourned to the lines of another regiment, and consulted, nay, intrigued, with his cobber. The result was that each one's officer was approached by a trooper, who made clear the vital necessity of his visiting the site of ancient Memphis and the Tombs of Sakkara on the morrow. This was in the interests of his archaeological researches, and he pleaded special leave. One officer only came up to scratch, which was but a minor difficulty. Other means could be resorted to for ensuring comparative safety. Military police and some of the sergeants, especially if friends, were not averse to persuasion.

So it came to pass that eight o'clock the following morning found them dodging military policemen and staff officers on a platform of the Boulak station. They succeeded in ensconcing themselves in the Alexandria express without much difficulty, the only incidents being the upsetting of the equilibrium of a native railway official, a guard or so, and a few porters. Alexandria at eleven. Their first act was to satisfy their long-standing appetites. Then to the docks they went, to fulfil, if possible, their mission, which was not archaeological research, but to follow their infantry to the north. They searched along the quays to see if any possibility offered of slipping aboard an outbound transport. Alas, the only vessel there cast off while they, barred by a hopeless line of sentries, gazed sadly on. They hired a Greek sailing-boat, to investigate the vessels in harbour, but were only marooned by him on an American warship. They would know better next time than to trust a Greek and pay him first.

Relieved later in the afternoon from this predicament, the troopers betook themselves once more to the French cafe, where, enamoured of the mam'selle, time passed pleasantly. "Cafe, chocolate, and demoiselles tres bonne Oui." At any rate, if they had missed escaping from Egypt, there were worse ways than this of spending the day.

Late at night, tired, piastreless, and with forebodings of the mat, but happy and careless, they arrived back in Cairo. By devious ways they reached their camp and their tents; and spread their blankets in the open, under the stars. There was probably a large dose of fatigue in store, and a few hours would see the rise of the sun over the sand-hills to the east, the dawn of another day of heat, dust, flies, and work. But they had given play to their spirits; and so, with the philosophy of the average bush-whacker and stockman, they went contentedly to sleep.



CHAPTER XI

MAC LEAVES FOR ACTIVE SERVICE

Egypt blistered in the early summer heat; flies increased in myriads; clouds of locusts darkened the sky; and hot winds blew, scorching and parching everything. The infantry had vanished to the north, to perilous adventures in the unknown; and the mounted men were grieved to the very depths of their souls to be left thus behind to stagnate on this sun-baked Sahara. The days passed monotonously, with perpetual grooming and exercising, and the noonday hours spent beneath the palms, alleged to be shady.

Cairo was a past delight. Its romance had gone; the weird mystery of the Oriental city had lost its fascination; and no incense-laden, music-haunted, brightly-coloured corner remained unexplored. Cairo was wonderful; but Cairo was filthy. The troopers had tasted of its delights, and were satiated.

Grousing was rife in the camp and the troopers were nervy. The proprietors of the camp picture theatre had offended the fellows, who showed their displeasure by partially burning the building. One evening, to break the monotony, some of the men surreptitiously extracted a couple of casks of unwatered beer from the brigade canteen. They rolled the barrels some distance across the sand, and proceeded to enjoy themselves. The excited Greek barmen, early discovering the loss, turned out the guard. Following the tracks in the sand, they soon found the merrymakers, routed them, and recovered a little beer. The guard took their toll, and returned the balance to the outraged Greeks. A small Armenian general goods shop chose to over-charge, with the result that the vainly-expostulating merchant found his lean-to razed to the ground before his eyes.

Mac himself suffered from a severe overdose of C.B. So did his cobber Smoky. They had had the awful misfortune to be detected at an early hour one morning making their way to their lines. It had been sheer bad luck that had done it. If Smoky had not insisted on appropriating from the supply depot some "tinned cow" and a few small jars of beef extract, all would have gone well. Creaking boards had started the trouble, and a conscientious sentry had put the tin hat on it. Ten days was the sentence—not that it mattered so much, for C.B. meant little beyond having to go out without passes by back ways—rather a nuisance if one were in a hurry for the train. But it was the conscientious sentry which annoyed them. Why should the fool be so bally unreasonable as to report? They, the trooper and Smoky, were not so beastly particular when they did guard. In fact, such occasions offered unique opportunities for replenishing the private larders of their respective tents. New Zealand social theory held that one man was as good as another, so why should not they, as well as the officers, live upon the fat of the land, or such of it as could be got at Zeitoun Camp. Those were the days before army discipline was fully appreciated.

Other troubles were also theirs. C.B. was indeed a very minor ailment compared with their piastreless condition. The trip to Alexandria had absorbed all their available capital, earned and borrowed. Some coon, also, had stolen the trooper's washing from the line between the tents, and his wrathful mutterings against the miserable perpetrator of this horrible crime was awful to hear; but, privately, the trooper was keeping an eye open for some one else's washing. Both had aches in their left arms from the M.O.'s latest injection, and altogether they considered themselves much-abused, long-suffering soldiers.

Vague rumours floated round, some doubtless originating from that indispensable apparatus of every camp, the backyard wireless station. No great reliance could be placed upon such information, but occasionally statements based on much more stable foundations circulated. That a troop-train was standing in the siding at Palais de Koubbeh, and that there were several transports moored in Alexandria, was absolutely positive proof that the N.Z.M.R. were about to land in Asia Minor or to be at Constantinople in a week or two. Other proofs were not lacking—a super-abundance of staff officers in the vicinity, or confidences from the orderly room clerk. Then came the definite fact, and the wireless was temporarily idle.

It was a Wednesday night. The brigadier himself asked the brigade whether they would volunteer to go to Gallipoli as infantry.

Well, it was not too good leaving the horses; they would have preferred going into action with the "prads" but they didn't mind doing anything to get out of this God-forsaken country and into the real thing. So all was business; grouses were forgotten and a new day dawned. Each in his own way set about squaring up his kit, his saddlery and his affairs generally.

Mac overhauled his with much care and thoughtful consideration. Into his base kit went those things which would come in handy in Constantinople. He had heard it was a cold place in winter-time, so therein went six complete suits of warm underclothing, and many superfluous comforts from his thoughtful mother. He knew she had put much work into many of these small knick-knacks, and valued them accordingly, though they were of little material benefit in this flaming spot. In another neat pile he had those articles which were absolutely essential for Gallipoli; but he was soon faced with the horrible reality that there was at least three times too much for his equipment.

He culled several times, the final combing causing much mental strain and strong will. Into a barley sack went his saddlery, with a reserve of many straps, buckles and horse-brushes, all collected at odd moments. Rifle, revolver, field-glasses, everything underwent a thorough overhaul. Ammunition was clipped and forced into the leather pouches of bandoliers, which equipment appeared neither to be meant for nor accustomed to such practical use.

Forty-eight hours after the first warning, the last night came. A subdued murmur arose from the camp. Some busied themselves with final preparations; some glided silently away from the zone of flickering candle-light, towards the horse-lines to give a parting pat to their faithful horses, a sad farewell for many; some joined the cheery crowd who were making the most of their last moments at the canteen; and others, less careless and more sober-minded, sought a few moments of sleep.

At eleven o'clock they fell in on their last parade in Egypt, though few regretted that. Nevertheless, when it came to the pinch, it was a little sad to leave the old camp, where, happily enough, they had passed six months of sun and sandstorm. A rough crowd they looked, these amateur infantrymen, overloaded with awkward, extemporized gear. They stood silent, for thoughts ran deep now that they were at last on the brink of the real thing, a moment towards which they had looked so long. The roll was called. Mac mentioned that he had left something, and slipped away to give the old mare a farewell stroke. Words of command echoed through the stillness, and soon the whole brigade was marching, as best it could, down the road towards the station. There were lusty cheers as they passed the guard tent from those whose turn had not yet come. The column turned to the left, and gradually the reverberating tread of heavily-laden men grew fainter in the distance.

So went the mounted brigade; and as they went to the north, following their infantry into the unknown, Mac and Smoky forgot their C.B., forgot their stiff arms and their piastreless condition—they thought only of the future.



CHAPTER XII

GALLIPOLI AT LAST

The sun had just risen when the train, a clattering collection of third-class cars, jangled laboriously over the low elevation on which Alexandria stands. With a series of nerve-racking spasms, it came to a halt on the water-front, where lay several large transports absorbing men, horses and stores.

With some difficulty and many lurid epithets, the troopers slowly disengaged themselves from the unhealthy boxes, and gathered in sleepy groups to await developments, a thing they were in the habit of doing for long periods at a time. Mac and Smoky availed themselves of the first opportune moment, when all who mattered were engaged in calculations and scraps of paper, to disappear in the direction of a small buffet whence came a tempting rattle of crockery and an aroma of tea.

Here, even at this early hour, the good English ladies of Alexandria were dispensing refreshing tea and cakes to the soldiers.

Later they filed on board, and were taken, each unit to its own mess-deck, to deposit their gear. Mac's own troop had just completed the disintegration of themselves and their kit and the satisfactory stowage of it, when it was discovered that they were in the wrong part of the ship. Of course, that sort of thing was only to be expected, but Smoky was particularly annoyed, as he had succeeded in procuring the snuggest corner of the place. So, muttering and growling, they gathered up their goods and chattels, and shoved and groused along crowded alley-ways. Embarkations and disembarkations always were a severe trial of the temper.

They eventually got settled again, and soon divested themselves of unnecessary clothing and equipment. Then Mac and Smoky deemed it the most tactful course to seek a secluded corner of the boat deck, not infested by blustering non-coms, seeking fatigue parties. They proceeded to go to sleep in the shady security of the lee side of a life-boat; but, as ill luck would have it, their own sergeant soon spotted them, and it was useless to pull his leg.

It was a loading fatigue, of course, and they were sent away along the water-front to shove trucks about. They eventually selected one and brought it down alongside their ship. Black, greasy, heavy cooking apparatus it was, which had to be carried up the steep gangways and transported to the bowels of the ship.

During the rest of the day, they mostly slept in quiet corners of the ship.

Soon after dark they sailed. The vessel manoeuvred slowly through the breakwaters, and passed out on the calm waters of the Mediterranean. The low, blacker line of the Egyptian shore grew less distinct, and the numerous lights of the port came closer and closer together, faded into a dim halo and merged at length into the black sweep of the horizon. So passed Egypt from the sight of many; with the gurgling monotone of the propeller, they reeled off the knots of water which separated a past of careless happy-go-lucky days from a future of unfathomable depth.

There were no hammocks nor bunks on board the Grantully Castle. Either it was not considered necessary that soldiers should sleep or else, perhaps, that they were not at all particular. Anyhow there were worse places than hard decks to sleep on. Mac and Smoky scorned the fuggy atmosphere of the lower decks, and proceeded to select a breezy spot on the after boat-deck. They loosened the canvas cover of a lifeboat, levelled oars and other prominent obstacles, and disposed their scanty bedding to the best possible advantage on this uneven ground. The experiment was not altogether an unqualified success and minor disadvantages made themselves apparent during the passage of the night. The oars were rigid and uneven, and the breeze and the cold penetrated from both above and below. Still they stuck it out, and for the most part slept.

The following day fled by speedily and uneventfully. All gear was overhauled and guards were mounted; spare time was passed in gambling. Those who had money wanted to get rid of it. It was of no more value; in the future it counted for nothing, so large stakes were won and lost. Mac refrained from this indulgence, not that he was a conscientious objector, but, alas, he had no piastres wherewith to beguile the hours. His last two had been burst in one wild rapture on indigestible cake at the ship's canteen.

That night Mac was detailed for ship's guard. His duty it was to stand at the starboard quarter alongside a life-buoy, which he was to hurl at any fool of a trooper who unwittingly fell overboard. He was to report speedily of such affairs as submarines, fires and so forth.

During the long night watches, he forgot, more or less, all about his duty, and meditatively regarded the whirling wave as it seethed away into the darkness. All was silence, except for the mumble, mumble, mumble of the propellers. They were in the AEgean Archipelago and islands passed in an unbroken procession of indistinct shadows. Mac's thoughts were far away, and he was thinking of just such a night off Pelorus Sound, when a "Wake up, old sport! Time's up!" brought him suddenly to the present. He found Smoky had made a comfortable "possie" underneath two lifeboats and was sleeping soundly. He muttered only a few protesting groans on being shoved into his own share of the possie; and soon Mac had joined his cobber in the sound undisturbed slumber of an ordinary trooper.

The next day passed in much the same manner; but, alas, the night—Mac and Smoky were blusteringly ejected from their bivvie by an officious sergeant, who said that the poop boat-deck was holy ground reserved for machine-gunners and men on guard. So they retired to the upper deck, and sought a spot whereon to lay their bones; but the ship was very full, and space limited. In an ill-considered moment they settled down partly under a seat, where passengers had sat in the palmy days of peace, and partly in an open gangway. It proved an evil spot. Each changing guard trod on them, and retreated with awful blasphemy echoing in their ears. Then it chose to thunder, and rain fell in torrents. Not only from the skies, but also from the deck above it came in fountains, until the troopers were wretched in the extreme. There was no refuge whence to flee. Leaving their oil sheets and blankets meant only greater damp, so they stuck it out.

By daylight the rain had lessened, and the troopers, bedraggled and sleepy, disentangled themselves from the sodden blankets, and set about getting things in order. Smoky gathered up the wet clothes and surreptitiously made his way to the engine-room, where he selected a not too conspicuous steam main on which to hang them.

It was a damp grey morning. The vessel was steaming very slowly towards where appeared dimly through the mist a host of vessels of all descriptions, war-ships, transports, hospital ships and small craft. Ahead loomed the land, not very high, and indistinct in the rain.

At last, Gallipoli! The trooper regarded it suspiciously. It looked miserable, and he felt likewise. After the long, bright months in Egypt, the damp penetrated his bones, and he hadn't had breakfast. Anyhow, he supposed it wouldn't be so bad, and went off downstairs for a wash.

When Mac and Smoky, having breakfasted, disentangled themselves from the Bedlam of a troop-deck meal, and gained the upper air, they were in better humour to regard their surroundings from a philosophical, if not an appreciative, standpoint. The depressing drizzle had ceased, the clouds were breaking, and the shore, except for the mist-filled nullahs and the cloud-wrapped Asiatic hills, showed up more clearly in the morning light.

The Grantully had anchored about half a mile from the fort at Seddul Bahr, which with the castle and the village was shattered and forlorn. An untidy medley of tents, mules and stores of all description, covered the seaward slope and the beach to the left. Small craft passed rapidly to the shore from many French and British transports. Great men-o'-war, grey and cold, lay without sign of life; destroyers cruised slowly and meditatively, and pinnaces foamed along in energetic haste.

The two troopers watched the scene with interest. They were still very hazy as to the actual degree of the success of the landing, or really how far across the Peninsula the original force had progressed. The papers said everything had been wonderfully successful, but Mac was rather sceptical. At any rate, they were not wasting any time in pushing the mounted men in as infantry. The future was obscure and uncertain; but, with a feeling of eerie anticipation, he felt the freshness of the dawn of a new mysterious life, when men met men in mortal fight, when the false standards of civilization went to the devil, and man was man. It was good to be alive; to be one of that brigade of fine hefty fellows on the edge of the great adventure, when they would join in the greatest sport on earth.

From across the misty uplands to the north-east, like the crushing of a cart over a gravelly road, came the rattle of musketry fire. Then, as the visibility increased, war-ships manoeuvred into position, and fired slowly and deliberately at unknown inland targets. Occasionally the troop-ship shook from the shattering crash of the Queen Elizabeth's guns. Reflecting was not one of the trooper's habitual occupations; but undoubtedly these first scenes and sounds of the real thing were occasions for thought. A bugle-call for parade cut short further philosophizing, and preparations for disembarkation found him faced with questions far more worthy of mental effort than un-trooper-like sentiments concerning what might or what might not occur in the future. The leading difficulty was, of course, to get twice the permitted amount of equipment into the kit, and some must be discarded. He had two blankets, and decided to dispose of the lighter, then, changing into a clean shirt, he threw away the old one. Everything was finally reduced to the absolute minimum, and packed as neatly as possible in the temporary kit.

* * * * *

Cape Helles was not the destination of the Mounted Rifle Brigade. In mid-afternoon the Grantully, under slow steam, passed northwards along the coast thirteen miles, and dropped anchor again in the middle of another fleet of transports about two miles off Anzac. All traces of the morning gloom had gone; and, to the troopers, accustomed so long to the low, barren sand-dunes of Egypt, these high Gallipoli hills and islands, bathed in the glory of an AEgean evening, brought memories of other coast-lines, Cook Strait maybe, or the Great Barrier.

The fellows crowded along the landward rail, and, with or without glasses, endeavoured to discover battle-signs and the positions of our men. There were across the steep green hillsides several great scars, where the scrub was withered and the bare earth showed; but surely our main line was over that high ridge, for reports stated that the army corps had penetrated several miles. The artillery was awakening to its evening activity, field guns could be seen firing, and shells bursting on high crests. Heavy shells, learned later to be those from the Goeben in the Dardanelles Channel, shrieked occasionally out of the unknown, and sent up great geysers of water near a four-funnelled cruiser to the right. A steady staccato of rifle fire floated faintly from the heights.

The evening shadows deepened to darkness; the stars shone brightly, and against them the land stood in a black, shapeless mass.

Many lights from the bivouacs on the seaward slope gleamed like a miniature Wellington across the water. War seemed difficult to reconcile with so serene and perfect a night.

Two destroyers came alongside, one on the port, the other on the starboard. Struggling with their unwieldy equipment, the troopers filed down the gangways on to them. Mac sat down by the engine-room manhole and listened to great and wonderful stories from the leading stoker of dashes up the Narrows, long patrols in winter storms, and thrilling times during the landing.

They spun away shorewards. The hills loomed blacker overhead and the dim staccato of rifle fire became a ceaseless rattle.

Spent bullets buzzed past and hit the water with a "plop." This was interesting, and, with a thrill of pleasure, Mac felt at last he was under hostile fire. For days—indeed, for months—he had been worried internally by a great doubt. Would he be a funk? He was in a frightful funk lest he should be one, and to him this was a matter of great concern, though he mentioned it to no one, not even to Smoky. He wondered whether his cobber was affected in the same way, but thought not, as he was so keen to get to the front. So he had felt a little ashamed. Well, anyhow, now he was entering the danger zone, he experienced no abdominal sinking, such as one might expect under these circumstances. His mind was relieved; and, with the full joy of life, he turned with interest towards the steep hills.

Bells clanged below and the engines stopped and reversed, and, with a seething of water, the destroyer lost way. Out of the darkness loomed several unwieldy lighters, splendidly admiralled by a slip of a middy. They came alongside and the men swarmed aboard. The lighters moved lumberingly beachwards. From above, the firing grew loud, and a falling bullet wounded a man—the first casualty. Men stood silent, or spoke in subdued murmurs. The whole thing was weird, yet beautiful—the still glory of the night, the eerie, echoing rattle from above, and the flickering lights of the bivouacs.

They grounded at last alongside a stranded barge, crossed it, and, filing down a plank to the shore, gathered in ragged line along the beach to await orders. What was expected of them that night, none knew. A few of the earlier arrivals, not too fully occupied with work or sleep completely to ignore them, welcomed them warmly, and immediately launched into long-winded accounts of previous fighting. With an air of conscious superiority, they gave them hints and advice, and told vividly of trials, troubles and dangers. All this the new-comers accepted unchallenged and with deep respect.

The narrow beach, or those parts of it not occupied by great piles of stores, or limbers and water-carts, was a seething mass of humanity and mules. Few of the men spoke, beyond a welcoming "How do, cobber," or a "Glad you've come, mate." They appeared out of the darkness and passed into it again with an air of steady practical purpose. Ant-like, they passed in continual streams from barges to stacks of boxes, whose size rapidly increased.

At length the brigade filed off along the stony beach to the left, halted frequently, while stray bullets passed with a low whirr overhead and out to sea; and turned finally up a deep ravine to the right.

On the steep, scrub-covered sides they were ordered to bivouac for the night. Things were not too comfortable, but that was no cause for complaint. Mac and Smoky forced themselves under a holly bush, enveloped themselves in their oil-sheets, and braced their feet against stems of shrubs to prevent their sliding down the fifty degree slope. There was no cessation of the firing, and, in this ravine each report reverberated from one clay cliff to another in ringing, resonant notes. There were no other signs or sounds of fighting—only this musical din coming from the starry vault above.

The trooper thought a terrific battle must be raging, and pitied the poor fellows in the trenches. He learned later it was just Abdul's normal method of spending the night when he had the wind up. These sounds were not disturbing, and soon the cobbers, for the first time, were asleep under fire.



CHAPTER XIII

MAC JOINS IN THE WAR

Mac's first morning at Anzac was one of deep interest. He regarded his surroundings rather more after the fashion of a Cook's tourist than of a soldier; or, maybe, he more closely resembled a schoolboy at his first circus. No time was wasted over a scratch breakfast—bully beef and biscuits were consumed more as a duty than a pleasure. Then, together with many others of equally inquiring frame of mind, he betook himself to the crest of the ridge which shut in the ravine on the north. The scene from there was indeed pleasing—a sapphire sea meeting a widely sweeping beach, a green, tree-dotted flat, and some scrub-covered hills, all sparkling with dew and bathed in the clear, tempered sunshine of an early summer morning. Mac's first impressions of Turkey left nothing to be desired, and there seemed promise of excellent bathing.

He gathered up shrapnel pellets and bits of shell casing, and with the true instinct of a globe-trotter, thought already of mementoes to take home. His tourist tendencies, however, soon evaporated, for he was sent round on a fatigue to the landing, whence he returned a sweating, blowing trooper, with a handleless, uncovered, paraffin tin of water. As he stumbled back along the stony beach an enemy battery opened fire without, it appeared, the Turks having precise knowledge of their target, or else their observation was inferior. To them, ignorance was bliss, just as the consistency with which they dropped salvos of four shells about two hundred yards out to sea, was bliss to Mac. Moreover, the paint-brush-like splash of the flying fragments demonstrated exactly what military instructions had been endeavouring to impress upon him for months concerning the field covered by a bursting shrapnel shell.

It had not been a great strain on the intellect of the enemy to deduce that the appearance of so many interested sightseers on the skyline indicated the presence of fresh troops in the donga below, and he consequently set about shelling it. Mac's regiment departed for the trenches at this juncture, and so missed the excitement. They kept along the shore for a short distance, then turned to the right, and started straight up the steep, narrow badly-graded paths towards the more or less flat summit, where they were to relieve an infantry battalion. The sun was hot, and the way was steep, not to mention the weighty burden of equipment. The cool sea drew farther away as they soared gradually skywards, panting and perspiring. They reached their trenches at last, pushed themselves along ditches too narrow to take simultaneously both them and their gear, cast loving epithets at telephone wires which caught their rifles, and waited interminable times for the man ahead to move on. Towards midday, after dodging backwards and forwards, time and again, like a freight train in a railway yard, they collapsed at last in their appointed positions.

By evening Mac was thoroughly settled in his new home, and no longer did he regard his situation as being in the least unique. He reviewed the field of fire, studied the landscape, rather an extensive and interesting one; and had a few long-range shots at Turkish trenches. There was really no call for this, but it was rather amusing to be potting away, at last, at an enemy position.

His trench was not an exciting spot, separated, as it was, by a ravine from the enemy, and being only the protective flank of their own position.

The mounted men were soon accustomed to the new life, and in three days they might have been at it for ever. The days passed in a not unpleasant routine. The fresh, bright, beautiful dawns were slightly chilly, the early mornings were far from unpleasant, though the noonday hours were warm, and afflicted with flies and smells; but, beneath the shade of outstretched blankets and oil-sheets, the troopers whiled away the time, sleeping mostly, some writing and some playing cards. There was no reading material in those days.

The afternoon hours dragged drowsily past, until, with the lowering sun, they woke to prepare the evening meal, the largest of the day. Culinary operations were strictly limited by the short supply of water, so that meals were usually confined to bully-beef, biscuits, marmalade, bacon, or Maconochie. Both Colonials and Turks having completed their evening repast, the cool, clear evenings were spent by the former in sniping and artillery practice, and by the latter in expending wastefully large quantities of small arms ammunition against the opposite parapets. Then, too, the troopers reassumed their clothing, most of which had been discarded during the day. As the gloaming deepened, the sniping ceased, but the Turks, ever mindful of the possibility of an attack, seldom throughout the night slackened their fire, which rose spasmodically to violent outbursts, probably in consequence of optical delusions on the part of a nervy follower of Mohammed, or, maybe, in response to horse-play on the part of the invaders. A Maori haka was sometimes responsible for the discharge of many cases of enemy ammunition.

During the hours of darkness many huddled forms lay in the bottom of Mac's trench, overlapping and cramped, but, nevertheless, peacefully sleeping. Here and there stood a sentry, his figure warmly cloaked and his face periodically lit by the glow from his pipe. Occasionally bullets hummed threateningly the length of the trench and these Mac regarded with deep respect, and addressed in words of wrath. The countless thousands which whistled crosswise over the trench, or else with a spurt of flame struck the sandy parapet, left him unmoved. The first half of his sentry-goes passed quickly enough, but the second dragged a bit, his thoughts being exhausted, and those beastly whirling enfilading bullets seeming to come more frequently.

At dawn all stood to, absorbed rum, of the liberally watered variety, exchanged experiences of the night, and smoked. Then the routine of the day began again, some dissolved once more into sleep, some remained on guard, and others went on the long weary journey for water.

The first week on Walker's Ridge passed fairly uneventfully, and by the end of it the garrison looked war-worn veterans. Water was very scarce, and a shave, much less a wash, altogether out of the question. In a moment of wild extravagance Mac had burst a couple of tablespoonfuls on cleaning his teeth. Towards the end of this week, being in support for twenty-four hours, they were able to go down to the beach for a bathe. Never was bathing so much enjoyed, nor the sun-bath after it—it was just like old Maoriland again. There was always the pop-pop-popping on the hills above, the occasional thud of a spent bullet in the scrub, and the more or less methodical bursting of shrapnel shells somewhere along the shore; but all these circumstances had become so much part of the scene that the troopers were seldom perturbed. Sometimes a Turkish machine-gunner or sniper became a little too accurate or shrapnel fell a trifle too thickly on the beach to be comfortable, and were roundly cursed for their attentions.

On the night of their seventh day ashore, Smoky and Mac communed, and agreed that campaigning so far had not been particularly trying; that bully, biscuits, dirty water, and the same trenches were becoming over-monotonous, and that the time had already come when something ought to be done.

Their lust for more excitement was partly appeased that night. Old Abdul supplied the initiative, and later must have regretted it sorely.

Shortly after midnight, the usual nocturnal battle-sounds rose in a swift crescendo of bursting shells and rattling staccato of machine-gun fire, which echoed in weird music from cliff to cliff and across the ravines.

Mac—he was in a support trench—woke with a thrill to this grand din of battle, speedily assumed his bandolier, water-bottle and revolver, grasped his rifle, and trundled away up the sap after his disappearing cobbers.

They bundled up into the support of the main position, which was being attacked frontally by wave after wave of the enemy, who came on bravely, but were being mowed down in hundreds by machine and rifle fire. The defenders, in their eagerness, went out into the open to get a better field of fire, and to meet Abdul with the bayonet. Mac had rotten luck. His troop reinforced a flank position, where, no matter how strongly they used their wills, no Turk would venture. He waited and watched. In the gathering light of the dawn he could look more deeply into the scrub that shrouded vision beyond twenty-five yards, but nothing of interest revealed itself. He passed up ammunition and absorbed eagerly all tidings brought from the front line by the returning wounded. As the sun rose, and the firing, instead of coming in the wild bursts, the lulls, and the wilder squalls of the earlier morning, decreased to a steady interchange of shots, Mac realized that the force of the attack was spent. With a deep sadness in his heart he emptied the breach of his rifle—the rifle which he had tended with great care and solicitude in anticipation of such an occasion as this. He cursed gently and sadly as his troop filed sorrowfully back to their support trench, where, spitefully shelled with shrapnel, he set about the preparation of a belated breakfast for his section, two of whom had retired to possies to sleep, and the other to the beach for water.



CHAPTER XIV

A WEARY DAY

Mac sat in the dust, his back against a bank, with his rifle leaning slantwise across him, and his equipment hanging awkwardly. Beside him sat Smoky, and both were melancholy. The sun beat strong in upon them, and the dust clung thickly to their perspiring bodies. The shady side of the wide communication trench was exposed to shrapnel, which the Turks had kept up more or less continually since the failure of their night attack. Against the opposite bank lay a body, half-covered by a blanket, and the padre was quietly removing the dead man's identification disc and the contents of his pockets. His two cobbers had gone on to the top to dig him a grave, and had both been wounded by shrapnel.

Mac and Smoky were sad. It was not the sorrow of grief, nor yet the thoughts that a speedy end might any time be theirs; but rather they were touched partly by the sight of the good old padre silently removing the soiled, time-worn articles from his pockets, small things which would be so greatly valued and revered by his people away in a sunny Wairarapa homestead, and partly the vision of a fine strapping, cheery fellow passing so rapidly from laughter to cold silence.

Thoughts such as these, deep and sincere as they were, cast but a passing shadow over their careless, happy natures. Friends of bush-whacking and shepherding days, camp mates of the past, and casual cobbers in Cairene escapades day after day went West; and always there came the momentary sadness, and, maybe, the remark, "Poor old Bill. They hooked him this morning. He was a good old sport." That was his requiem and, save for a few stray thoughts in the silent watches of the night, old Bill went unremembered.

The Turkish dead lay thick between the lines; but there was no knowing whether they had finally abandoned the attack. Their shelling continued, and the rifle fire indicated a nervous temperament. Consequently the squadron still remained in reserve as near as possible to the firing line. Mac could see through a sap which ran to the edge of the precipice the beach and the cool, wonderfully cool-looking water. The few lucky beggars were splashing there, for practically every man was up in the firing-line. There were no troops to spare in those days—the line was but thinly held, and, if the Turks broke through anywhere, the whole position must be involved in disaster.

The day dragged slowly on to early afternoon. Then their troop was stirred into animation and excitement by the information that they and two other troops were to make a counter-attack "Light as possible, fifty rounds of ammunition only... First and second trenches ... some machine guns and a few Turks... Clear them out and come back," were the orders.

They filed silently and with set faces to their assembly positions. They were in for something serious. They had all seen the waves of advancing Turks in the early morning dissolve away. Mac thought he didn't mind how soon peace was declared, and felt a bit tired of the war, but, still, here was their first real, live chance. A heavy covering fire had been opened all round the Anzac lines, and the enemy replied with equal force. His troop slipped over the parapet, and lay, awaiting the word, among the many dead, Turkish and Australasian, of last night, and of three weeks earlier. Minutes passed slowly, five, ten, twenty, thirty—what on earth did this mean? The sun blazed fiercely on the flattened figures, the smell was awful, and the fire slackened not a bit. Mac had examined his breech a dozen times, adjusted and readjusted his ammunition to facilitate its easy handling, and had made certain several times of the firmness of his bayonet. He had thrown away his bayonet scabbard. It was long and might trip him up. If he came back he could recover it; if he didn't—it wouldn't matter. He had heard it said that waiting was the worst time of all, and he longed to be off, even into that hail of bullets which whizzed low over his head.

More minutes marched funereally by, and then he heard in the trench behind the sound of voices, and an order passed along the line to clamber back into the trench. Surely there was some mistake, thought Mac, but no, it was repeated, and they wormed themselves back over the parapet, gathered hazily that the attack had been deemed inadvisable, and sauntered tiredly back to their old place in the communication sap. Talking it over later. Smoky and the Trooper came to the conclusion that the cancelling of the attack was the best thing that had ever happened for them. Theirs would have been the fate of the enemy in their shattered attacks of the previous night, though, having made up their minds to it, and stood the forty-five minutes' strain of waiting, it had seemed a bit tough not to be repaid with a whack at the Turks.

The long hot day drew at length to a close. The setting of the sun amidst the islands was full of wild beauty. The airy pinnacles of Samothrace and the wild hills of Imbros, scarred and parched, stood silhouetted against a glorious background of wonderful colouring, high tones and low tones, an idealized Turner canvas. Out to the sinking sun stretched a golden path, while to the right and to the left lay untroubled leagues of blue. The gloaming slowly enveloped the horizon to the north and south, the shining path of light broadened and burnished, as the sun rested a moment, then disappeared, while the island grew darker against the riot of deep colouring.

Resting on a clay ledge on the edge of the cliff which rose precipitously to a height of 600 feet a few hundred yards from the shore, Mac and Smoky drank in the glory of these rare moments. Both sides were tired, the Turks weary of the carnage and their failure, and the invaders of the hot, waterless hours of waiting, but conscious of their successful defence and increased security. They discussed the events of the day, the prospect of a swim on the morrow, and, as always, of the long shandies, the ham and eggs, and the apple pie which they would have on that great occasion when they returned once more to New Zealand. Yes, a bush whare was all that Smoky would want for the rest of his life, a possie where he could eat and drink and sleep just as much as he wished. He aspired also to brands of tobacco other than those the Army thought suitable to his taste. These pleasant anticipations of the future were abruptly cut short by the order, "Stand to." From Mac's point of view this was quite an unnecessary proceeding, involving much inconvenience and discomfort, and, in the early morning hours, loss of valuable sleep. Still, these things had to be put up with, and "stand to" could be profitably spent cleaning rifles and other gear. The issue of rum, when not stopped by the higher command or absorbed by the A.S.C. and quartermasters, was occasionally a relieving and pleasant interlude about this time.

"Stand to" ended, they composed themselves to sleep where they were, which was still in the same communication trench in reserve. The trench was five feet in width—in favourable spots it may have been six—and the bottom was deep in dust, which, to a certain extent, moderated the sharpness of ammunition pouches in the middle of one's back. From the heaps of piled-up spoil above came irregular avalanches of dust and dirt, and due care had to be taken to prevent it getting in one's ears, eyes, nose and mouth. Still, notwithstanding these minor discomforts, Mac had managed to get about an hour's sleep before matters became trying. The artillery were immediately responsible for it all—the artillery, for which, in spare moments from the firing line, they had dug this communication trench and gun-pits beyond, and had even dragged the pieces up. Now, at this infernal hour, they chose to bring their ammunition up. Trains of mules arrived, halted close alongside where Mac lay huddled against the bank, moved at right angles across the sap, were relieved of their burdens and departed again, led by their shadowy Indian muleteers.

Mac was hardened to being walked on by men, but mules laden with eighteen-pounder shell...... Badly pinched and deeply angered, he stuck it for a while. There was nothing to be gained by swearing, for the mules and the Indians were equally indifferent. More mules were followed by still more mules, which, as they turned, trampled on him severely. Heavy hoofs were placed squarely on his shrinking person, and he had at length to give them best. There was nowhere else to go, so, leaning against the wall, he awaited brighter moments. Often he cursed wrathfully, occasionally he smoked. This ruthless violation of his valuable hours of sleep was a crime he would not readily forgive the artillery, and he wished their bally guns had been shoved somewhere else. The mules came and went for hours, occasional suspensions of their comings and goings only creating in his breast false hopes.

Towards dawn he slept once more, only to be aroused again for the purpose of swinging up towards the front line for support. No attack came, and now, the sun rising above the eastern hills, he and his troop trailed wearily back to their own bivouacs. His section four discussed breakfast, the contents and limited possibilities of the larder, the disappearance of firewood, which had been carried off by some person during their absence, and the absolute non-existence of water.

"Breakfast be blowed!" said Mac. He crawled into his niche in the side of the trench, covered himself in his grey blankets, head included, for protection from flies, left breakfast worries to the others, and passed into the deep slumber of the utterly weary.



CHAPTER XV

MAC IS SLEEPY

Mac's luck was out. He had had practically no sleep the night previous, or, for that matter, for the two nights before that again, and he was not going to get any chance to make it up now. A distant echo of his name from somewhere up the sap brought a swift awakening. It was an evil omen, portending the worst fatigue. He decided to follow the lazy course of action, namely, to avoid it if possible.

"Mac! Where in the devil are you? Mac! Mac!"

The exhorting voice of the corporal came nearer; but the trooper decided he was a heavy sleeper and knew, moreover, that his whole form was well shielded by his grey blanket. As usual though, all this was futile, and no effort of will could persuade the corporal to pass unmolested his shrouded form. The blanket was pulled from over his face, and, with a slap on the thigh and "Come on, Mac!" shouted down to him, he could hardly, with decency, pretend to be asleep any longer. He carried the thing to rather too flourishing a finish, awakened violently with a suspicious suddenness, and blinked rapidly at the corporal, "Oh! Rations you're after. All right. I'll dodge away down after them. You might give a feller a chance to sleep though." He knew well it was about his turn to wander away down the hill for rations, but a fellow was sorely tempted to put off the evil moment to the last, when, utterly weary, he was enjoying some rare hours of settled sleep.

Mac trudged wearily away down the ridge, at times almost letting his legs run away with him on the steep paths. At the depot, he persuaded the water-guard to let him fill his water-bottle, and then, while the Quarters calculated together, he drowsed in the shade of a bank. For some time the Quarters chewed the ends of their pencils, studied note-books and tapped boxes. Then they retired in the direction of a comfortable service corps dug-out, whence issued spirals of blue smoke and odours of rum. By and by they emerged, and all struggled into activity again. Some of the fatigue party had disappeared though, for they were not often so close to the beach. Still, the Quarter was not worried, for he knew all would return anon, each to lump his load up the track. Mac had been too sleepy to wander off for a bathe, though, as a matter of fact, he had been endeavouring for the last twenty minutes before the Quarter's return to summon up sufficient energy to follow his cobbers' example. Still, boxes of biscuits would be their portion, while, getting in early, he would be able to secure easy freight, flitches of bacon or the like.

He shouldered his load and set off homewards. He rested often for the first half of the journey, but then, pulling himself together, plugged steadily upwards. Towards the summit, where the track ran up a razor-back, his progress was hastened by the Turkish artillery on the "W" Hills. He deposited his bacon at the Quarter's bivvie, and wandered down the sap to his ledge under the wall. Delving into a battered biscuit tin, he produced some characterless dried flour tiles, a tin of bully and a tin of apricot, the choicest of Deakin. His three cobbers, who were the only other inhabitants of this section of the sap, had breakfasted, and now lay, like three mummies, on their respective ledges. This trench was merely the wing of a sector, and was not directly opposed to an enemy trench. Here it was the privilege of his section to make its headquarters every third day, when it was their additional privilege to do the ration and water fatigues, to furnish sapping and burying parties, sentries and guards, and such other toilers as might be necessary; while occasionally, with great luck and better management, an hour or two on the beach might be worked.

Here, with his back against a traverse, Mac set about his repast. He devoured half a tin of bully. That was his limit, no matter how hungry he was, for he was aware by experience of the effects of overmuch bully. He shied the remainder over the parapet, and promptly set about his second and last course. The flies were fonder than he of Deakin's apricot, and he had to be circumspect to dodge them successfully. He knew too well their other sources of food supply—and was not over keen on swallowing any, nor of having them beating him for his jam, Deakin's though it was. With some difficulty he broke the bullet-proof biscuits into mouthful sizes, grasped the tin of jam between his knees with his hand over it, and dipping each bit first into the jam, popped it into his mouth. Mac had good teeth, but, all the same, it took many long minutes of hard jaw work to get on the outside of a biscuit and a half. This, he had calculated, was as much dry tack as his daily ration of dirty water could comfortably counterbalance.

He then set about putting his domestic affairs in order—tidying up his kit and his bivvie, overhauling the larder, shaking his dusty blankets and the like. He surveyed his weather-beaten countenance in a broken triangle of glass. "What-o, mother, that you should see me now!" and he winked whimsically at himself. A fortnight's black beard formed a dark halo round his features, plenty of dust from the heaps of earth above stuck in his hair, and he was already a bit thinner than in Egyptian days. At the present moment a pair of ragged shorts, hanging insecurely about his middle, was his only garment. The rest of his body was, like his face, tanned and dusty.

He now performed to the full such toilet as was possible in his present quarters. He rubbed himself vigorously with a towel, cleaned his teeth with about two dessert-spoonfuls of water, and brushed his hair. He gave his rifle a few runs through and a dust, and restored round the bolt a careful wrapping of cloth. This completed the setting of his house in order.

A corporal sang out from up the sap that the troop was to be ready for the front line at one o'clock, so Mac roughly, but good-naturedly, tumbled his cobbers off their ledges and admonished them to turn to and prepare.

The next half-hour was spent in getting ready, dressing, having some lunch, which varied not from the earlier repast, and attaching gear. They looked a shabby mob, with their equipment slung round them and their clothing adapted to individual taste. As mounted men put in suddenly to reinforce the foot, their equipment was not all it might have been for trench warfare; but they had come to work and not to a beauty show.

They filed away up the dusty, sun-scorched sap, through narrow communication trenches, bringing forth disgusted curses from the dwellers therein, whose cooking and living arrangements were suspended during their passage; and settled finally in an advanced sap leading out towards the enemy lines. It was deep and narrow and had no conveniences either for comfort or fighting. The afternoon drowsed slowly past, a spell of sapping at the sap-head occasionally breaking the monotony.

With sundown, both sides revived for the evening activity, a meal, and preparations for the night. The Turks, since their heavy but futile attacks of two nights previous, had not returned into that placidity which betokened cessation of evil intentions. There was an erratic nervousness of fire; instructions were that an attack would eventuate during the night, and that no one was to sleep.

Just about sunset, word floated up from behind that a white flag was approaching, but it was some time before it and several attendant Turks appeared through the scrub about a chain to the right. Too many accompanied the flag, but nearer approach being severely discouraged they retired speedily again into the scrub. A few minutes later, the flag returned, this time direct towards the sap-head, and now the Colonel, armed with German and Turkish vocabularies, was there to welcome it. They halted about twenty yards away, and a rather fruitless conversation followed. The Turks jabbered excitedly a meaningless chorus, to which the Colonel, full of importance and dignity, replied with deliberate and forceful phrases of alleged Turkish and German, fluttering the while through the vocabularies and prompted and admired on all sides by an audience of officers and men. The Turks were unimpressed, and gabbled on. Now arrived the right man, the interpreter—all would be well. But, alas, he was so nervous and alarmed at being thrust on the parapet that the conversation profited little by his presence! All that could be impressed upon the flag-bearers was that they were to return home as speedily as possible, which course they wisely adopted, and immediately a burst of firing broke out along both lines. This calmed as rapidly as it had begun, and the troopers, chuckling over the comical scene of the Colonel airing his German and Turkish, drank their rum and settled down to the long vigil.

A glorious night it was, still and starry, and sound travelled far. But it was very weary, standing hour after hour waiting for the attack. From the sap-head came the steady tapping of the picks and occasionally the sound of muffled voices. Water was very scarce, but the drowsiness which crept over the trooper was the worst of his troubles. Attack or no attack, he could not keep awake. Every few seconds he fell asleep, his knees kinked under him, and he was once more awake. This grew monotonous, but there was no stopping it. His interest was caught at times by the jabbering of assembling Turks in the hollow just over the scrub-covered rise. Searchlight beams had been scouring the hills to the north, and one was suddenly thrown on no man's land. Batteries ashore and destroyers opened fire. Shells whirred up from below, screamed overhead and burst beyond the rise. The jabbering rose into an impassioned chanting to Allah. The searchlight switched off, the shells fell less frequently, the Oriental obligato fell away in a diminuendo of pathetic cries and a staccato of terrified jabbering. Mac's knees again kinked frequently.

In his state of alternate consciousness, the minutes dragged wearily, he lost all count of time, and the whole business merged into a vivid distorted dream. The drama was repeated, the mutterings of the assembling Turks, the long-searching beam coming up from the sea, the sudden tearing and crashing of the artillery, and the agonized howlings of the enemy. Then came another period of quiet and deep drowsiness.

There may have been a third enactment, though on this point Mac has always been hazy. At any rate, in due course came the dawn. The sky brightened behind the Turkish lines, the searchlights faded away, and gradually the spasmodic rifle fire of the night fell to occasional single shots along the line. "Stand to" laboured by on leaden wings. A single sentry was posted at the sap-head; then, in awkward attitudes and angles, like the corpses on the ground above, they fell asleep in the bottom of their sap.



CHAPTER XVI

VARIOUS MISFORTUNES

Mac, minus most of his clothing, squatted on a heap of rubble, keenly following through his glasses naval tactics on the sea below. One favourable point about Anzac was that, if one was bored with everything else, there was always plenty to look at, especially with a good pair of glasses. This morning, coming out on to the little flat top behind his position, he discovered all the shipping in a turmoil. The whole fleet of twenty or more transports was going helter-skelter for Imbros harbour, the winches of a few laggards still rattled as they laboured with their anchors, cruisers patrolled uneasily up and down, fleet-sweepers moved about nowhere in particular, while destroyers dashed round in wide circles, leaving behind them trails of heavy black smoke and foaming white water. Only a couple of white hospital-ships remained undisturbed.

"Submarines—damn them!" thought Mac. This was a new and unpleasant development and not to his liking at all. He descried through the haze the anchorage at Cape Helles, and noted that the vessels there—among them a huge four-funnelled Atlantic liner—were also making off.

Towards evening all transports had disappeared, and cruisers and destroyers resumed a leisurely patrol.

That was Saturday. In the early light of next morning, while the mist-wraiths still clung to the hills and filled the dongas, Mac was disturbed in his breakfast preparations by the sound of a heavier cannonade than usual to the south. Going to an observation post he saw a battleship aground off Gaba Tepe Point. The morning mists had just revealed her, and now she was emptying her broadsides in rapid succession up the great valley below Kilid Bahr. Another battleship was right alongside attempting, apparently, to push her off. White smoke from many bursting Turkish shells mingled with the heavy black pall from the discharging broadsides. The bombardment continued for some time, and Mac at length returned to his neglected breakfast preparations, his going hastened by the fact that, carelessly exposing his head, he had attracted the attentions of a sniper. When he looked later, both men-o'-war were some distance away steaming west.

He learned afterwards that the Albion, in taking up her position on the southern flank, had grounded in the mist, and that the Canopus had come to her assistance, attempting, without success, to get her off. The Albion lightened herself by emptying her magazines through her broadsides, and was finally towed off.

* * * * *

Then came the armistice, a day of interest and amusement, and of grim, unpleasant work.

For almost a month, in no man's land, attack after attack had dwindled away to nothing and there, five days before, Turkish losses had been especially heavy. The enemy took the initiative in the matter, and white flag negotiations proceeded on several occasions. Later, a gorgeously apparelled Turkish staff officer came across and was taken blindfolded to Headquarters, where an armistice for internment purposes was agreed upon. Very considerate it was of Abdul to put the proposition, Mac thought, for the condition of the atmosphere in the neighbourhood was not conducive to his peace of mind, nor did it improve his inclination to eat to know that those flies which nothing could keep out of his food, had come from ——. And his internals would squirm at the thought.

A peculiar quietness had marked the passage of the night, and with the vanishing of the mists a strange silence filled the air. Since the landing nearly a month back, the continuous music of rifle fire, with its echoes and re-echoes among the nullahs and cliffs, had scarcely ever ceased. And now, from opposing parapets, cautious heads began to appear, Red Cross and Red Crescent flags were brought into the open. Large burying parties followed, and soon thousands of Cornstalks and Mussulmans were burying each others' dead. Thousands lined the parapets, scanning those acres of which they had had before but wily glances, or had scurried over in the wave of an attack. No one was going to miss the show. The Cove was deserted, and the Infantryman and the Service Corps man stood boldly side by side on the parapet.

Of the work itself little can be said. Mac was on duty in the first line, and was not allowed to leave it to investigate the secrets of no man's land, but he knew well enough of the huddled figures lying in clusters in that green scrub, which hid much. But in parts the scrub had been worn from the earth by the constant ripping of the bullets. There, partly shielded by withering branches lay withering bodies, mostly in strange postures, sometimes one above the other with rusting rifles, discarded equipment, and odd bits of wire. Often scraps of torn cloth clung to the jagged stems of shattered shrubs, and all was a scene of desolation unutterable.