It is the gala-day of Leap Year, but I have no extra proposals to record--not even from Sarah Isquashabuk, the Arabian lady with bread-plate feet and small gate-post legs and a card-table back on which she carries small trees and walls of houses. She is a hard worker and always cheerful, but with a most murderous-looking eye, and I confess that one doesn't always see daylight through all her actions. This morning I saw her dragging a stalwart Arab along by the unshaven hair with much laughter--possibly her truant Adonis. The Arab population have done themselves fairly well until recently, for they had hidden much foodstuff and stolen considerable supplies since. But the last few weeks they have been begging, and the children search corners and rubbish heaps. If the siege goes to extremities it will be ten thousand pities that the Arab population was not removed out at the outset. For the laws of humanity would restrain our pushing them out now--the Turks or surrounding hostile Arabs would murder the lot. But we should have had the food they are getting now for rations, and that might have saved the lives of thousands of British downstream. All we did was to invite them to stay at their peril. They accepted. _March 1st._--A most eventful day. Cockie is still down with dysentery, and I have relieved him all day at the observation post. Everything was very quiet on my way to tea. I walked through the palm grove intending to examine the mountings of the anti-air gun when I heard the muffled boom of guns to the north. Then others sounded--that ruffling sound of a blanket being shaken. I hastened back to the observation post, shells falling in the trees and alongside the trench. I got on top and ran until I got back. The fire increased into the biggest artillery bombardment the enemy has yet made, lasting for two and a half hours. About ten batteries opened out on us, searching the palm grove for our 4-inch, and then four batteries concentrated on the 4·7 guns in the horse boats and barges moored in the river 150 yards from them, and also on the 5-inch heavies immediately below them but thirty yards to a flank. Thankful I was indeed for that thirty yards respite. At least fifty shells pitched at exact range for my few sandbags that any direct hit would knock flying--exact range but always within those thirty yards to a flank, and of course on the other side into the river dozens of them. But not all, for sometimes they "swept" and the heavy Windy Lizzies tore up the green ground all around, and the building, on the roof of which were my bags, shook so much that the bags moved. Then one lucky shell struck the _mahela_ near by, another got the building I was on, smashing down the end room, and yet another pierced the side partition ten yards off, and for a few seconds I didn't know whether I had been blown into the river or not, for the shock was severe and all was yellow darkness. Large pieces