We watched our guns run up to the 'Pimple,' a recently built-up mound slightly ahead of us, lately used as a Turkish O. Pip, now accruing to us for the same purpose. The infantry assumed that these wagons and limbers moving a hundred yards to our right would draw all the enemy's fire, in which case we, helpless on the flat, would be shelled out of this existence. But this did not happen; why, I cannot guess, unless I have correctly traced the reason for that bad observation so marked in the Turkish gunning all through this day. We were in the slightest possible depression, with a scarcely perceptible lift on our left and a steady rise before. Shells plunged incessantly down our left, and went whistling far beyond us. But comparatively few burst among us; and the shrapnel burst far too high to do damage. Our batteries were in position at the 'Pimple.' We rose, marched through a tornado of noise, right-turned, and went across the muzzle of our own guns, also in full blast. In front I saw lines of Leicestershires scaling the slope and melting into the mounds. My diary notes: 'Men's delight to see river.' We came suddenly upon Brother Tigris, basking in beautiful sunlight, becalmed in bays beneath lofty bluffs. In this dreadful land water meant everything; we had had experiences of thirst, not to be effaced in a lifetime. Away from the river men grew uneasy. The river meant abundance to drink, and bathing; everywhere else water was bad, or the supply precarious. We had been away from the river since that night opposite Sindiyeh. So not the crashing shells, the 'pipsqueaks' ripping the air like dried paper, nor the bullets pinging by, prevented men from greeting so dear a sight. Standing on the beach of imminent strife, in act to plunge, men cried, 'The Tigress, the Tigress!' Instantly a scene flashed back to memory from the book so often near to thought in these days: how Xenophon, weary and anxious with the restlessness and depression of his much-tried troops, heard a clamour from those who had reached a hill-crest, and, riding swiftly up to take measures against the expected peril, found them shouting '_Thalatta, Thalatta_.' Seafaring folk, the most of them, they had caught, far below, their first glimpse of the Euxine, truly a hospitable water to them, since it could bear them home.