Under these conditions the fighting had been going on for weeks, the
English and French holding their ground at Sedd ul Bahr and Ari Burnu,
but getting no nearer Constantinople. And as we went chunking down the
strait that night and into Ak-Bash in the dark, two new forces were
coming in. The next day a German submarine--come all the way round
through the Mediterranean--was to sink the Triumph and the Majestic,
while another American correspondent, who had intended to come with us
but took the transport Nagara instead, saw the head of an English
submarine poke through the Marmora. A blond young man in overalls and
white jersey climbed out of the conning-tower. "Will you give us time
to get off?" cried the American, the only one on board who could speak
English.

"Yes," said the young man, "and be damned quick about it." Ten minutes
later, from the boats into which they had tumbled, the passengers saw a
cloud of yellow smoke, and the Nagara simply disintegrated and sank, and
with her the heavy siege-gun she was taking to the Dardanelles.

Pleasantly unaware of what might as well have happened to the bread and
beans, we drew up to a hill-side speckled with lights, a wharf, and a
hospital boat smelling of iodoform, through a cabin window of which a
doctor was peacefully eating dinner. Boxes and sacks were piled near
the wharf, and from over behind the hills, with startling nearness, came
the nervous Crack... crack... crack-crack-crack! of rifle and
machine-gun fire.

We went to sleep to the tune of it, moved a few miles down the coast in
the night, and crawled out into a world of dusty brown--brown hillsides
and camels and soldiers and sacks of wheat piled on the flat, immersed
in an amber dawn. This was the destination of the side-wheeler, and by