ing, having regard to the terrific preliminary bombardment
by the Fleet which had lasted several hours. The Turks were as ready
for the invaders as if the explosives of the _Queen Elizabeth_ had
gone wide of the mark, or else as if she had contented herself with
pelting the entrenchments with boiled potatoes or roasted apples.

The scene of the landing was, in configuration, like an amphitheatre
with the beach as a stage. The beach itself is a strip of powdery sand
about three hundred yards long and ten or twelve yards wide. Behind it
is a steep rising ground of sandstone and clay grown with prickly
scrub. Sir Ian Hamilton calls it a "death trap." He could not have
given it an uglier nor yet a truer name. Barbed wire entanglements
were cunningly concealed in the shallows of the foreshore. The Turks
were posted with artillery on the heights, and had sharpshooters and
also machine-guns ensconced in holes made in the face of the cliff
less than a dozen yards from the sea.

When the picket-boats, or steam pinnaces, got to within two hundred
yards of the shore they cast off; and the cutters, with the Dublins,
continued on their way towards a narrow strip of rock jutting out from
the beach, which made a natural landing-place. Then it was that the
Turks concentrated upon the boats a most destructive fire of rifles,
and machine-guns from the amphitheatre, and shrapnel from the fort at
Sedd-el-Bahr. The attacking party was practically wiped out. Only a
few passed through this tornado of lead unscathed. Colonel Rooth, of
the Dublins, the Adjutant, Captain Higginson, and the chaplain,
Father Finn, were killed. Sergeant J. Colgan, who was in the boat with
these officers, says:--"Only six of us got away alive out of a
boat-load of thirty-two. One fellow's brains were shot into my mouth
as I was shouting to them to jump for it. I dived into the sea. Then
came the job to swim with my pack, and one leg useless. I managed to
pull out the knife and cut the straps and swim ashore. All the time
bullets were ripping around me." Here is another individual experience
supplied by a private of the Dublins:--"I jumped into the sea with my
gun, and made towards the shore. When I got up on the rocky place I
had my first bullet in the side. I felt as if I was struck with an
iron bar in the back. It knocked me down. I put up my right hand to my
head with the pain, when I got a bullet through that also. I had thus
two narrow escapes. The first bulle