From the 8th December onward the troops, night after night, watched the shrinkage of their numbers. There was a generous rivalry as to who should stay till the last—a proof of spirit, when we remember that every man believed that the rearguard was doomed to death or capture. Soon only those in the prime of health and strength were left; all the weak and sickly had gone aboard the transports, which nightly stole in and out of the moonlit bays. Soon the heavy batteries had gone. Then the field guns began to disappear, leaving only enough to keep up the daily pretence of bombardment. It was an eerie business for the last battalions as they heard their protecting guns rumbling shoreward in the darkness. Then the horses and motor-cars were also shipped, and by Friday, the 17th December, very few guns were left. To the Turkish observers the piles of boxes on the beaches looked as if fresh supplies had been landed and we were preparing to hold the place indefinitely. The weather was warm and clement, with light moist winds and a low-hanging screen of cloud. Coming in the midst of an Ægean winter it seemed to our men a direct interposition of Providence. It was like the land beyond the North Wind, which Elizabethan mariners believed in, where he who pierced the outer crust of the Polar snows found a country of roses and eternal summer. No fisherman ever studied the weather signs more anxiously than did the British commanders during these days. Hearts sank when the wind looked like moving to the west. But the weather held, and when the days fixed for the final embarkation arrived, the wind was still favourable, skies were clear, and the moon was approaching its full. Nature had joined the daring conspiracy. On Saturday, the 18th December, only a few picked battalions held the Suvla front. The final embarkation had been fixed for the two succeeding nights. The evening fell in a perfect calm. The sea was still as a mill-pond, and scarcely a breath of wind blew in the sky. Moreover, a light blue mist clothed all the plain of Suvla, and a haze shrouded the moon. At 6 p.m. the crews of the warships went to action stations, and in the darkness the transports stole into the bay. Not a shot was fired. In dead quiet, showing no lights, the transports moved in and out. Every unit found its proper place. By 1 a.m. on the morning of Sunday, the 19th, the bay lay empty in the moonlight.