We waited. The hour of embarkation was postponed from six to nine. At nine most of the excitement had subsided, and the men lay quiet--except where they revived themselves with a dark issue-liquid. There was melancholy abroad--more than that of weariness in physical exertion. As the hour of embarkation drew on (it was now postponed to ten) its significance came home to their bosoms. The rifles cracked on the ridges, the howitzers spoke, the din of bombs came down the ravine. There were those fellows in the trenches being left to see the last of it, and to get off if they could. Not the most resolute optimist could look towards the bloodless evacuation which the event has shown to an astonished world. Every flash of the guns in the half-moonlight, every rifle fusillade, called up the vision of a last party attempting to leave, and perhaps failing fatally to its last number. "If I could get drunk," said a man wearing his equipment, "I would--blue-blind paralytic. I never felt so like it in my life." We lay about another hour and a half. Then the order came suddenly to go aboard--so suddenly that the half of the equipment had to be left. The first load was got down; a return was being made for another. "Can't wait," roared the N.T.O.; "leave your stuff or get left. The barge is leaving now. Cast off, for'ard. Go ahead, cox'n." This was not bluff. There was a scramble for the barge. There up in the sap lay the cooks' gear, and half the private kit, to be despoiled (so we said) by some barbarous Turk. "Put that match out. No talking." We puffed out otherwise in silence, into the Ægean darkness. Liberty to talk, to smoke, would have been a boon. There was talking in whispers--worse than nothing. Cigarettes were quenched--and the spirits of that unhappy, close-packed, silent load of silent men. The spent bullets sang overhead in a kind of derision, getting lower and more intimate as we moved on. Soon they were spitting about us and tapping the barge, coming unreasonably near to tapping skulls and chests.