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 sunup we were loaded into a machine with a horse, several goats, three or four passengers, and four barefooted boatmen, who pushed us over the strait to Chanak Kale. We were now at the narrowest part of the Dardanelles, behind us, on the European side, the old round tower of Kilid Bahr and Medjidie Fort, in front Fort Hamidie, and on the horizon to the south, where the strait opened into the sea, the tiny silhouettes of several of the Allies' ships. Chanak was smashed like the towns in west Belgium, and, but for the garrison and the Turkish and German commandants tucked away in the trees, all but deserted, except by flies and half-starved cats. These unhappy creatures, left behind in the flight, were everywhere, and in front of the bake shop they crowded in literal scores--gaunt, mangy, clawed and battered from constant fights. It was hot, there was little to eat, and after hours of wrangling it appeared that our precious scratches of Turkish took us to the Gallipoli instead of the Asiatic side.