my
lad. Lucky that it went pretty deep before it burst.'

'And lucky for me that you pulled my head down in time,' answered Roy
soberly. 'Thanks, old man. I shan't forget that.'

The next shell burst behind the line, and the third still farther back.
Fortunately for the Australians, the German gunners had not got the exact
range, or the losses would have been fearful. High explosive of the kind
the Germans use will pulverise the parapet of a trench and kill every one
within reach.

The ground was hard, the sun hot, but the men dug like beavers, and within
an hour had made themselves pretty safe. But there was no letting up.
Colonel Conway insisted upon a regular trench of the latest pattern with
proper traverses, and deep enough to give plenty of head room. The men
grumbled, but some, like Ken, realised that the game was well worth the
candle.

'He's looking for an attack in force later on,' Ken told Dave and Roy
Horan. 'You may be jolly sure that the Turks are bringing up
reinforcements.'

'There are quite enough of the beggars already,' said Dave. 'Just listen
to the bullets coming over. That scrub in front of us fairly hums with
snipers.'

By the time that the trench was finished it was nearly midday. The men
were given a rest, and dinner was served out. In spite of the enemy's fire
the Army Service men had managed to bring their stores right up to the
trench, and there was fresh bread, butter, cheese, and jam for the hungry
fighters.

Down below, engineers were at work, making a path up the cliff, while
boats travelled up and down with a dogged and admirable persistence.

The enemy fire in front of the new position grew steadily heavier. If a
cap was put up on a cleaning rod over the parapet, it was sometimes struck
by two or three bullets at once. It seemed clear that the Germans who led
the Turks were concentrating their forces in front of the trench, but
whether they were new men or not it was impossible to say. The broken
nature of the ground and the heavy scrub hid all that was going on a very
little way inland.

'This is getting a bit thick,' said Roy Horan, as a fresh crackle of rifle
fire burst from a wooded height about a quarter of a mile inland. A maxim
carefully emplaced behind sandbags in the trench replied with a storm of
bullets, but it was a poor job, firing at an enemy who were quite
invisible, and a feeling of slight depression had begun to settle on the
occupants of the trench.

'Th