Our talk was continually punctuated by the rumble of the big guns over the plateau to the south. "That's ours"... "That's theirs," he would explain; and presently, with a young aide-de-camp as guide, we climbed out of the valley and started down the plateau toward Sedd ul Bahr. The Allies' foothold here was much wider than that at An Burnu. In the general landing operations of April 25 and 26 (one force was sent ashore in a large collier, from which, after she was beached, the men poured across anchored lighters to the shore) the English and French had established themselves in Sedd ul Bahr itself and along the cliffs on either side. This position was strengthened during the weeks of fighting which followed until they appeared to be pretty firmly fixed on the end of the peninsula, with a front running clear across it in a general northwest line, several kilometres in from the point. The valley we had just left was Soghan-Dere, about seven miles from Sedd ul Bahr, and the plateau across which we were walking led, on the right, up to a ridge from which one could look down on the whole battle-field, or, to the left, straight down into the battle itself. The sun was getting down in the west by this time, down the road from camp men were carrying kettles of soup and rice pilaf to their comrades in the trenches, and from the end of the plateau came continuous thundering and the Crack... crack... crack! of infantry fire. The road was strewn with fragments of shells from previous bombardments, and our solicitous young lieutenant, fearing we might draw fire, pulled us behind a bush for a minute or two, whenever the aeroplane, flying back and forth in the west, seemed to be squinting at us. The enemy could see so little, he said, that whenever they saw anything at all they fired twenty shots at it on principle. For two miles, perhaps, we walked, until from the innocent-looking chaparral behind us there was a roar, and a shell wailed away over our heads out into the distance. We could see the end of the peninsula, where the coast curves round from Eski Hissariik toward Sedd ul Bahr, and two of the enemy's cruisers steaming slowly back and forth under the cliffs, firing, presumably, as they steamed. Now they were hidden under the shore, now they came in view, and opposite Eski Hissarlik swung round and steamed west again. In front of us, just over the edge of the plateau which there began to slope downward, were the trenches of the Turks' left wing, now under bombardment. The ridge just hid the shells as they struck, but we could see the smoke from each, now a tall black column, like the "Jack Johnsons" of the west, now a yellowish cloud that hung long afterward like fog--and with it the continuous rattle of infantry fire. Several fliers were creeping about far up against the 'blue, looking for just such hidden batteries as that which kept barking behind us, and out in front and to the right came the low Br--r--um--m! of heavy guns.