After the first forty-eight hours we settled down to regular trench warfare. The routine was four days in the trenches, eight days in rest dug-outs, four in the trenches again, and so forth, although two or three months later our ranks were so depleted that we stayed in eight days and rested only four. We had expected four days' rest after our first trip to the firing-line, but at the end of two days came word of a determined advance of the enemy. We arrived just in time to beat it off. Our trenches, instead of being at the top, were at the foot of the hill that meant so much to us. The ground here was a series of four or five hogback ridges about a hundred yards apart. Behind these towered the hill that was our objective. From the nearest ridge, about seven hundred yards in front of us, the Turks had all that day constantly issued in mass formation. During that attack we were repaid for the havoc wrought by Beachy Bill. As soon as the Turk topped the crest they were subjected to a demoralizing rain of shell from the navy and the artillery. Against the hazy blue of the sky-line we could see the dark mass clearly silhouetted. Every few seconds, when a shell landed in the middle of the approaching columns, the sides of the column would bulge outward for an instant, then close in again. Meanwhile every man in our trenches stood on the firing-platform, head and shoulders above the parapet, with fixed bayonet and loaded rifle, waiting for the order to begin firing. Still the Turks came on, big, black, bewhiskered six-footers, reforming ranks and filling up their gaps with fresh men. Now they were only six hundred yards away, but still there was no order to open fire. It was uncanny. At five hundred yards our fire was still withheld. When the order came, "At four hundred yards, rapid fire," everybody was tingling with excitement. Still the Turks came on, magnificently determined. But it was too desperate a venture. The chances against them were too great, our artillery and machine-gun fire too destructively accurate. Some few Turks reached almost to our trenches, only to be stopped by rifle-bullets. "Allah! Allah!" yelled the Turks as they came on. A sweating, grimly happy machine-gun sergeant between orders was shouting to the Turkish army in general, "'Tis not a damn' bit of good to yell to Allah now." Our artillery opened huge gaps in their lines; our machine-guns piled them dead in the ranks where they stood. Our own casualties were very slight, but of the waves of Turks that surged over the crest all that day only a mere shattered remnant ever straggled back to their own lines. [Sidenote: The armies in a state of siege.]