were few. Just a minute of hacking, slashing, and stabbing—one minute of sickening yet exhilarating butchery in which no quarter was given; when to _kill!_ and _kill!_ was joy unspeakable—and those long, lean, brown-faced men with the square jaws and fierce eyes were up again, their bayonets smoking, and charging the second line of trenches with the same dare-devil recklessness. What power on earth could stop such men? Not the Turks, anyway. With imploring cries of "_Allah!—Allah!_" they abandoned their trenches and scurried up through the scrub, the panting Colonials straining every nerve to overtake them. It is difficult to understand the Australasian character. He will joke even in the midst of danger, nay, death. He is, as a rule, a "hard doer"; and even his best friends must admit that he is often a hard, and fairly original, swearer. Nothing is safe from him when looking for a butt; very little is sacred, I fear, and his humour takes a queer bent sometimes: which accounted for the behaviour of the landing force on this occasion, dear reader—that and the desire to inflict all the Arabic he knew (picked up in Egypt) on the fleeing Turk. "_Imshi! Yalla!_" yelled the now laughing Colonials, as they followed hard on the heels of the enemy. "_Allah! Allah!_" continued the Turks, and they put on an extra spurt. "_Allah_ be d——d! Clean 'em boots! Eggs is cook! Three for a l'arf! _Imshi_, you all-fired illegitimates!" Such, with the addition of ear-splitting coo-ees, wild bush oaths, and a running fire of blasphemy and unearthly cat-calls were the battle cries of the men from Down Under as they drove the enemy out of his trenches and up the hill, through the scrub, over _dongas_ and gullies, right to the base of the sheer cliff itself, up which finally, all mixed together and sliding, crawling, and clinging like monkeys, scrambled pursuer and pursued in one loosely strung mob of panting, war-drunken men. It was the personification of grandeur: it was the apotheosis of the ludicrous. In a word it was the old reckless, dare-devil spirit of their ancestors—the men who carved out the British Empire—re-born in those virile youths and young men from that bigger and fresher and brighter Britain overseas. Meantime the guns of the fleet were pouring in a terrific fire, their shells screaming overhead and bursting well beyond the ridge. It was difficult at first to see what execution they were doing, and at this stage of the fight I don't think many of the enemy were bagged. As our chaps advanced farther inland the shells from the ships began to pitch amongst them, so their elevation was raised and their fire concentrated on the Turkish communications and on the dominating hills that lay on our flanks. They also tried hard to locate and silence the enemy's big guns, but they were so well concealed that it was almost impossible to silence them.