Of course, the world knows the fate of the _Euripides_, and so my will and all my packages of gifts and letters never reached their destination. But after the men had made these final dispensations of their little properties, had written their private secret hopes, fears, and expressions of affection to loved ones, the sadness of that period swiftly passed from us and we began to laugh and joke at the prospect of what was ahead. We even went so far as to make a sweepstake to be won by the first man to land on the Peninsula. We came to anchor at, I should say, about two o’clock in the morning off what we have since designated as X. Y. Z. beach. This is at Kaba Tepeh. The other detachments of General Birdwood’s forces were spread at anchorage up to and beyond Suvla Bay. The particular stretch of territory that we were called upon to capture was about 500 yards long. It was a nearly straight line of coast. The beach was two hundred yards in width with a gradual rising of sand dunes tufted with dwarf holly bushes and miniature table lands, which finally resolved itself into sheer cliffs, some of them high and sharp like fangs, others rounded, in all giving the impression of the open, snarling jaw of some mammoth animal with scraggy teeth. Our battle ship pinnaces, that is to say, barges, were launched and sent out to the different transports to take aboard the landing parties. Each man as we stood at parade on the decks before being ordered to the pinnaces had for his supplies as indicated in General Birdwood’s orders, his rifle and bayonet, 150 rounds of ammunition and three days’ rations, which consisted of his water bottle holding a quart of water, furnished by the clear springs of Lemnos Island, a tin of bully-beef to the weight of half a pound, as many biscuits as he could take on, while leaving room for his emergency tin which holds tablets of concentrated beef and cakes of chocolate. Besides in your pocket you had your first-aid kit, a small roll of bandages and a vial of iodine. Weirdly began our great and deadly adventure on this coveted stretch of the Ægean Sea which if we could conquer made possible the breaking of the historic barrier of the Dardanelles. It was a stretch of coast we were soon to wash with our blood as literally as the Ægean’s waves wash the self-same shore. The long procession of transports and their grim battleship escorts had stolen up in the night, a widely-spread yet organized, concrete group of slowly-moving, black, gloomy monsters. Every light aboard each ship had been ordered out. Not even the pin-head flame of a cigarette might show on any deck. The only light we had was the faint green gleam that filtered over the smooth waters from a moon that had begun to wane and had, indeed, at this hour of three in the morning, nearly fallen behind the ragged jaw of the black cliffs.