of men crouching in little trenches. There were four rows of hills.
If you had measured the distance from one hill-top to the next, they
would have been from one hundred to three hundred yards distant from
one another. In between the hills were gullies, or little valleys,
and the beds of streams that had dried up in the hot sun. These
valleys were filled with high grass that waved about in the breeze
and was occasionally torn up and tossed in the air by a shell. The
position of the Greek forces was very simple. On the top of each
hill was a trench two or three feet deep and some hundred yards long.
The earth that had been scooped out to make the trench was packed on
the edge facing the enemy, and on the top of that some of the men had
piled stones, through which they poked their rifles. When a shell
struck the ridge it would sometimes scatter these stones in among the
men, and they did quite as much damage as the shells. Back of these
trenches, and down that side of the hill which was farther from the
enemy, were the reserves, who sprawled at length in the long grass,
and smoked and talked and watched the shells dropping into the gully
at their feet.

The battle, which lasted two days, opened in a sudden and terrific
storm of hail. But the storm passed as quickly as it came, leaving
the trenches running with water, like the gutters of a city street
after a spring shower; and the men soon sopped them up with their
overcoats and blankets, and in half an hour the sun had dried the wet
uniforms, and the field-birds had begun to chirp again, and the grass
was warm and fragrant. The sun was terribly hot. There was no other
day during that entire brief campaign when its glare was so intense
or the heat so suffocating. The men curled up in the trenches, with
their heads pressed against the damp earth, panting and breathing
heavily, and the heat-waves danced and quivered about them, making