Two minutes later, the second line sprang over the parapet in like manner, and followed to the same destruction. But by some means unknown a few of them--probably not more than five or six--actually reached an enemy’s trench opposite our extreme right; for a small red and yellow flag was seen for about two minutes waving over the enemy’s parapet, and this was the agreed signal for another stage in the attack. It disappeared, but none the less a party of the 8th Royal Welsh Fusiliers (40th Brigade, 13th Division) answered the signal by attempting to force their way up the end of Monash Gully on to the Nek, and their first two groups shared the fate of the Australians on the open top. Almost at the same moment (ten minutes after the second line had gone) the third line (Western Australians) followed them. But while about forty were still under cover of a depression on our left, General Hughes, no doubt appalled at the useless slaughter, ordered the attack to cease, and a few crawled back into safety. The next night a private who had shammed death all day at the foot of the Turkish parapet also came in. The assault lasted just a quarter of an hour, and so far as holding a large force of the enemy went, it was successful. But in that quarter of an hour the loss was 435, including 20 officers and 232 men killed or missing--the words were identical. If we seek a parallel to the 600 at Balaclava, it was there. But a Turkish schoolmaster, who fought in the first trench of the Chessboard that morning and was afterwards taken prisoner, said that the Turks did not lose a single man.[160] Our two scaling-ladders remained abandoned in the open. CHAPTER XI SARI BAIR From the Nek, the Chessboard, and Baby 700, the main ridge or mountain of Sari Bair rises steadily, like a great rounded shoulder, to Battleship Hill (so called from an early naval bombardment), and thence, after a long but slight depression, which from the sea looks like a continuous ridge, rises again to the broad and massive front of Chunuk Bair, about 850 feet in height. Towards the sea, the mountain Chunuk shows an apparently precipitous face, split in the centre by a cleft too steep to be called a watercourse. It is rather what mountaineers mean by a “chimney.” But except on this actual face, the mountain range is not so steep as it appears, nor so inaccessible, being of softish sandstone mixed with marl, like the whole of the district. Hard limestones, or the only formations which are called “rock” by every one but geologists, are not found till one reaches the genuinely rocky hill on the south side of Suvla Bay, and the still more rocky edge on the north.