able to mark where his bullets struck, and we could see them skip
across the field, kicking up the dirt as they advanced, until they
stopped the mule altogether, or frightened the man who was leading it
into a disorderly retreat.

It appeared later that instead of there being but twelve men in these
bushes there were six hundred, and that they were hiding there until
the sun set in order to make a final attack on the first trench.
They had probably argued that at sunset the strain of the day's work
would have told on the Greek morale, that the men's nerves would be
jerking and their stomachs aching for food, and that they would be
ready for darkness and sleep, and in no condition to repulse a fresh
and vigorous attack. So, just as the sun sank, and the officers were
counting the cost in dead and wounded, and the men were gathering up
blankets and overcoats, and the firing from the Greek lines had
almost ceased, there came a fierce rattle from the trench to the
right of us, like a watch-dog barking the alarm, and the others took
it up from all over the hill, and when we looked down into the plain
below to learn what it meant, we saw it blue with men, who seemed to
have sprung from the earth. They were clambering from the bed of the
stream, breaking through the bushes, and forming into a long line,
which, as soon as formed, was at once hidden at regular intervals by
flashes of flame that seemed to leap from one gun-barrel to the next,
as you have seen a current of electricity run along a line of gas-
jets. In the dim twilight these flashes were much more blinding than
they had been in the glare of the sun, and the crash of the artillery
coming on top of the silence was the more fierce and terrible by the
contrast. The Turks were so close on us that the first trench could
do little to help itself, and the men huddled against it while their
comrades on the surrounding hills fought for them, their volleys