may be content, but whenever I saw him eating he had meat and rice, and
often stewed fresh beans or fruit--certainly better food than most
Turkish peasants or artisans are accustomed to at home.

I sat outside watching the moon rise and listening to the distant
Crack... crack-crack! of rifle and machine-gun fire from over Ari Bumu
way. Evidently they were fighting in the trenches we had seen that
morning. The orderly who had served us, withdrawn a little way, was
standing like a statue in the dusk, hands folded in front of him, saying
his last prayer of the evening. Beyond, from a bush-covered tent, came
the jingle of a telephone and 'the singsong voice of the young Turkish
operator relaying messages in German--"Ja!... Ja!... Kaba Tepe...
Ousedom Pasha... Morgen frith... Hier Multepe!... Ja!... Ja!"

And to this and the distant rattle of battle we went to sleep.




Chapter XII

Soghan-Dere And The Flier Of Ak-Bash



Next morning, after news had been telephoned in that the submarines had
got another battleship, the Majestic, we climbed again into the covered
wagon and started for the south front. We drove down to the sea and
along the beach road through Maidos--bombarded several weeks before,
cross-country from the Aegean, and nothing now but bare, burnt walls--on