passing close above our heads, and meeting the rush of the Turkish
bullets on the way, so that there was now one continuous whistling
shriek, like the roar of the wind through the rigging of a ship in a
storm. If a man had raised his arm above his head his hand would
have been torn off. It had come up so suddenly that it was like two
dogs, each springing at the throat of the other, and in a greater
degree it had something of the sound of two wild animals struggling
for life. Volley answered volley as though with personal hate--one
crashing in upon the roll of the other, or beating it out of
recognition with the bursting roar of heavy cannon. At the same
instant all of the Turkish batteries opened with great, ponderous,
booming explosions, and the little mountain guns barked and snarled
and shrieked back at them, and the rifle volleys crackled and shot
out blistering flames, while the air was filled with invisible
express trains that shook and jarred it and crashed into one another,
bursting and shrieking and groaning. It seemed as though you were
lying in a burning forest, with giant tree trunks that had withstood
the storms of centuries crashing and falling around your ears, and
sending up great showers of sparks and flame. This lasted for five
minutes or less, and then the death-grip seemed to relax, the volleys
came brokenly, like a man panting for breath, the bullets ceased to
sound with the hiss of escaping steam, and rustled aimlessly by, and
from hill-top to hill-top the officers' whistles sounded as though a
sportsman were calling off his dogs. The Turks withdrew into the
coming night, and the Greeks lay back, panting and sweating, and
stared open-eyed at one another, like men who had looked for a moment
into hell, and had come back to the world again.

The next day was like the first, except that by five o'clock in the
afternoon the Turks appeared on our left flank, crawling across the