are few things more exasperating than a night march into the line conducted too fast. If the country be broken and strewn with obstacles, at which each man must wait while another climbs or drops or wrestles or wades in front of him, and must then laboriously scamper after him in the shadows lest he, and thereby all those behind him, be lost; if the country be unknown to him, so that, apart from purely military considerations, the fear of being lost is no small thing, for a man knows that he may wander all night alone in the dark, surrounded by unknown dangers, cut off from sleep, and rations, and the friendly voices of companions, a jest among them when he discovers them: then such a march becomes a nightmare.

On this night it dawned gradually on those in front that they were unaccompanied save by the 1st platoon, and a long halt, and much shouting and searching, gathered most of the regiment together, hot, cursing, and already exhausted. And now we passed the five white Water Towers, standing mysteriously in a swamp, and came out of the open country into the beginning of a gully. These 'gullies' were deep, steep-sided ravines, driven through all the lower slopes of Achi Baba, and carrying in the spring a thin stream of water, peopled by many frogs, down to the Straits or the sea. It was easier going here, for there was a rough track beside the stream to follow; yet, though those in front were marching, as they thought, with inconceivable deliberation, the rear men of each platoon were doubling round the corners among the trees, and cursing as they ran. There was then a wild hail of bullets in all those gullies, since for many hours of each night the Turk kept up a sustained and terrible rapid fire from his trenches far up the hill, and, whether by design or bad shooting, the majority of these bullets passed high over our trenches, and fell hissing in the gully-bed.

So now all the air seemed full of the humming, whistling things, and all round in the gully-banks and the bushes by the stream there were vicious spurts as they fell. It was always a marvel how few casualties were caused by this stray fire, and to-night we were chiefly impressed with this wonder. In the stream the frogs croaked incessantly with a note of weary indifference to the medley of competing noises. At one point there was a kind of pot-hole in the stream where the water squeezing through made a kind of high-toned wail, delivered with stabbing emphasis at regular intervals. So weird was this sound, which could be heard many hundred yards away, and gradually asserted itself above all other contributions to that terrible din, that many of the men, already mystified and excited, said to 

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