machine-guns and rifles mowed them down in rows, and piled them up into barriers and parapets of the dead and scarcely living. Still the peasants of Islam, summoned from quiet villages of Thrace and Asia, unconscious of the cause for which they died, except that it was the cause of Islam--still they came on, shouting their battle-cry. Emptying their rifles into trenches manned with equal constancy, rushing wildly up to the sandbag lines, they scrambled over them, only to die of rifles which scorched their skin, or of bayonets dripping blood. From 3.30 till nearly 11 the conflict raged; but before the sun was at its height the noise and shouting gradually died away. The great assault was finished, and had failed. In heaps and lines, more than 3000 Turks lay dying or already dead. The defence lost only 100 killed, and about 500 wounded. Not a yard of Anzac had been yielded up. The enemy never again attempted an attack upon that scale. [Sidenote: ARMISTICE AT ANZAC] So appalling had the thin strip of neutral ground now become owing to the ghastly heaps of swollen or shrinking bodies piled upon it, so overpowering was the stink of rotting men, that the Turks, waving white flags and red crescents, requested an armistice for burial. After some naturally suspicious hesitation (for the enemy mustered in thick lines, and fighting was frequently renewed) a Turkish officer was brought blindfold into Anzac Cove, four Australian officers carrying him through the sea round the end of the entanglement beyond Hell Spit. Major-General Braithwaite, Chief of Sir Ian’s Staff, met him at General Birdwood’s headquarters, close beside the beach opposite the chief landing-place, called “Watson’s Pier,” because built by Anzac signallers under Captain Watson. An armistice for May 24 was arranged, and duly carried out. It lasted from early morning till late afternoon, and was attended with the usual ironic circumstances. Within certain limits marked by white flags, Australians freely conversed with Turkish officers who spoke faultless English, and were lavish in politeness and cigarettes. It is said that General Liman von Sanders himself, disguised as a Red Crescent sergeant, mixed undetected with the crowd upon that wet and misty morning.[118] It may have been so, nor was there cause for disguise. It was by his authority as Commandant of the 5th Ottoman Army that Lieutenant-Colonel Fahreddin concluded the armistice, as narrated. The note in which Sir Ian was informed of this authorisation concluded with the words: “J’ai l’honneur d’être avec l’assurance de ma plus haute considération, Liman von Sanders.” So the courteous amenities of slaughter were maintained, and the Turks buried 3000 corpses, all killed since May 18.