Warships and transports were rapidly withdrawn, for the most part to Mudros harbour. The _Queen Elizabeth_ had been sent home at the first rumour of the peril, as being too valuable to risk upon a distant and secondary purpose. For the rest, the neighbouring island of Imbros, lying only from ten to twelve miles west and south-west from the landing-places on the Peninsula, afforded an open bay as roadstead, sandy, shallow, and fully exposed to the north wind. On the east side, the bay or inlet is protected by a long promontory of sand dunes and sandstone cliff, known as Cape Kephalos. On the west rise the mountains of Imbros, perhaps the most beautiful even of Ægean islands. On this part of the island only three small hamlets stand, squalid with poverty. But a mountain track over a pass in the central range leads to the chief village of Panaghía, and two other large villages, rich, as Greek islands go, in maize, vines, fig trees, and olives. About two miles beyond Panaghia lies the crumbling little port of Kastro, dominated by an ancient ruined castle, Byzantine, Venetian, or Turkish, into which slabs of white marble have been built, remnants of some Greek temple. The island appears to have small place in Greek history and literature, though an unknown staff officer, meeting me in one of the valleys, unexpectedly quoted perhaps from Sappho a passage about it or Lemnos. And, indeed, it is a haunt fit for rugged and pastoral gods rather than for polite literature, civilisation, and war. From the top of the pass the whole of the Peninsula is seen; the Straits and the plain of Troy beyond; and far in the distance the grey heights of Ida, and dim mountains of Mitylene. Looking west across a narrow water, one sees near at hand the vast red peaks of Samothrace, a natural home of savage mysteries. [Sidenote: G.H.Q. AT IMBROS]