ffered heavily from the fire of this mountain battery. A
number of their boats which left the shore were sunk. The Sixty-second
Punjabis left their cover under a withering fire, and pluckily charged
down the bank to repel the Turkish attempts to make a landing. Toward
Tussum, farther south, a field battery belonging to the East
Lancashire Division, supported by New Zealanders of the Canterbury
Battalion, opened a rattling fire, to which the Turks immediately
replied with machine guns and rifles. The small torpedo boat _O-43_
with its crew of thirteen now took part in the fray by dashing up the
canal and landing a few men at a point south of Tussum.

At the first gray light of dawn the action became general, and fresh
forces entered the conflict. The Turks on the eastern bank who had
occupied the day line of the Tussum post now advanced, protected by
artillery, against the bridgehead, while the Serapeum post was
assailed by another body of troops. On the canal and Lake Timsah the
allied warships opened fire, and continued it for some time. From the
slopes of Katayib el Kheil three batteries of Turkish field guns
replied, doing considerable damage to every visible target. But they
had not taken careful observations of the British positions, and the
carefully masked Territorial battery between Tussum and Serapeum was
not discovered. This battery, aided by the New Zealanders, almost
silenced the Turkish fire from the eastern bank, and enabled them to
attend to the reserves of the enemy now seen advancing on the desert
to the east. Four of the Territorial gunners were wounded by the
Turkish batteries. A pontoon which the Turks had pushed across the
canal in the dark was sunk, but until daybreak those who had
engineered this work managed to keep afloat, and continued sniping
with some damage to British artillery horses until they were rounded
up and taken prisoners by some Indian cavalry.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of the Great War, Volume III
(of VIII), by Various

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