Far up the straits' entrance lay the black lines of gunboats. We moved up the coast past an ill-starred village: the guns were at her from the open sea. By sundown we had passed from this scene of action to another, at ---- Beach, where the Australians had landed. The heights above ---- Beach were the scene of an engagement far more fierce than any we had seen below. The Turks were strongly posted in the shrubs of the Crest. Our batteries were hardly advanced beyond the beach, and were getting it hot. Night was coming on. A biting wind was blowing off the land, bringing down a bitter rain from the hills of the interior. It was almost too cold to stand in our bows and watch: what for those poor devils juggling shell at the batteries and falling under the rain of fire? After dark there was an hour's lull. At nine o'clock began a two hours' engagement hot enough to make any fighter on shore oblivious of the temperature. Towards midnight the firing ceased and the rain and the wind abated. CHAPTER II GLIMPSES OF ANZAC I It's the monotony that kills; not hard work, nor hard fare. We have now been disembarked on the Peninsula rather longer than three months. But there has been little change in our way of living. Every day there is the same work on the same beach, shelled by the same guns, manned by the same Turks--presumably the same; for we never seem to knock-out those furtive and deadly batteries that enfilade the Cove Beach and maim or kill--or both--almost daily. Every morning we look out on the same stretch of the lovely Ægean, with the same two islands standing over in the west. Yet neither the islands nor the sea are the same any two successive days. The temper of the Ægean, at this time, changes more suddenly and frequently than ever does the Pacific. That delicious Mediterranean colour, of which we used to read sceptically, and which we half disbelieved in J.M. Turner's pictures, changes in the quality of its hue almost hourly. And every morning the islands of the west take on fresh colour and are trailed by fresh shapes of mist. The atmosphere deludes, in the matter of distance, as though pranking for the love of deception. To-day Imbros stands right over-against you; you see the detail of the fleet in the harbour, and the striated heights of rocky Samothrace reveal the small ravines; to-morrow in the early-morning light--but more often towards evening--Imbros lies mysteriously afar off like an isle of the blest, a delicate vapour-shape reposing on the placid sea.