Down in the thirsty wilderness of the rest-camps the few troops in reserve lay restless under occasional olive-trees, or huddled under the exiguous shelter of ground-sheets stretched over their scratchings in the earth. They looked up and saw the whole of the great hill swathed in smoke and dust and filthy fumes, and heard the ruthless crackle of the Turks' rifles, incredibly rapid and sustained; and they thought of their friends scrambling over in the bright sun, trying to get to those rifles. They themselves were thin and wasted with disease, and this uncertainty of waiting in readiness for they knew not what plucked at their nerves. They could not rest or sleep, for the flies crawled over their mouths and eyes and tormented them ceaselessly, and great storms of dust swept upon them as they lay. They were parched with thirst, but they must not drink, for their water-bottles were filled with the day's allowance, and none knew when they would be filled again. If a man took out of his haversack a chunk of bread, it was immediately black with flies, and he could not eat. Sometimes a shell came over the Straits from Asia with a quick, shrill shriek, and burst at the top of the cliffs near the staff officers who stood there and gazed up the hill with glasses. All morning the noise increased, and the shells streamed up the hill with a sound like a hundred expresses vanishing into a hundred tunnels: and there was no news. But soon the wounded began to trickle down, and there were rumours of a great success with terrible losses. In the afternoon the news became uncertain and disturbing. Most of the morning's fruits had been lost. And by evening they knew that indeed it had been a terrible day.