At nightfall Brigade starts to embark, ready to sail at daylight. Officers have cabins, and so I am enabled to have a sleep. Am suffering from one of my beastly colds, however. Nice to get away, after the disappointments of that worst of all months, August, when we had expected so much. [Illustration: A CAPTURED TURKISH TRENCH, SUVLA BAY.] [Illustration: A VIEW OF SUVLA BAY. Sari Bair (well behind the Turkish lines) can be seen in the background to the left of the picture.] _August 31st._ Arrive at Imbros at 8 a.m., and Brigade proceeds to camp on the low land by the sea. I mess with the General and Staff, and again parcels arrive opportunely with masterpieces of cakes and sweets, which are seized by the mess waiter and daintily served up at table. Oh! the relief to get away from shell fire and the chill atmosphere of death in its crudest form. SEPTEMBER _September 1st._ Start off with my man Lewington on donkeys and a pack pony across the hills, over a stony, narrow path, with three little boys in charge of the animals. The way is sometimes over and sometimes round a line of irregular, conical-shaped hills, some almost mountains, covered with thick green gorse, large boulders, rocks, and small stones. The few valleys are beautifully wooded and dotted with vineyards growing luscious dark grapes, and also groves of fig-trees. One gets glimpses of the blue Ægean now and again, and the distant Isthmus of Gallipoli and the Island of Samothrace, with the coast of Bulgaria still further off. After two hours’ trek, during which I felt as if I was a character in the Scriptures, we sighted the village of Panaghia, and we had a sporting trot down a narrow, sandy, steep path. One little boy on a donkey, who joined us, raced me and beat me by a short neck. Poor old Lewington was hanging on to his moke with a pained but polite expression on his face, and heaved a sigh of relief when we arrived at the village. We pulled up at the Grand Britannia Hotel, recently so named by a Greek. It is a little broken-down house, having on the ground floor a boot shop, and on the first and top floor two small bare rooms. After a meal of partridge, omelettes, and honey, with German beer to drink, I am taken out to an empty house, and shown to a room furnished only with a bench. My man slept on the landing and I in the room, and I soon fell fast asleep. At midnight I am awakened by certain creepy insects. I light candles and awake my man, and we conduct a massacre. Our landlord arrives on the scene much disturbed, and places my bed in the centre of the room, whereupon I turn in again and sleep peacefully for the rest of the night. _September 2nd._