pull us through.

Be that as it may, there was--to anticipate a little--something badly wrong
with the information respecting the forces opposed to us. According to this
we had to beat only the meagre remains of the division that had been so
severely mauled in the recent fighting on the desert, together with a few
thousand infantry and cavalry from the places mentioned above. The
impression most of us received was that the whole affair would be a
"cake-walk." We were to take Gaza _en passant_, as it were, and reach
Jerusalem by Whitsuntide.

"The best laid schemes...."

We started at 3 a.m. the next day, March 26th, while it was yet dark, and
steering east for some four or five miles came to a narrow, steep-sided
riverbed. This was the soon-to-be famous Wadi Ghuzzee. By some
extraordinary oversight, the Turks had neglected either to fortify the wadi
or even to leave outposts there; at any rate the crossing was accomplished
with difficulty but without interference. Arrived on the other side we
halted to wait for the sunrise to dissipate the fog through which we had so
far travelled. So far from lifting, as the dawn approached it grew denser,
until it was impossible to discern any object more than a few yards away.

It was eerie waiting in the clammy atmosphere with the feeling that we were
shut off from the rest of the world by the thick wall of fog. Memories of
Katia and Oghratina sprang unbidden to the mind, and a repetition of those
disastrous affairs seemed not unlikely. We felt with relief the sudden cold
that precedes the dawn, and in a little while it grew lighter. Presently
the sun appeared dimly over the Eastern horizon and we waited hopefully for
the fog to lift. We waited....

At seven o'clock we unhooked the horses from the guns and
ammunition-waggons and let them graze on the herbage.

No sound of battle came to our ears; indeed, so profound was the silence
that enveloped us, we might have been in a tomb. Then, perhaps half an hour
later, the fog suddenly lifted like the drop-scene in a theatre, and we
found ourselves in the middle of a wide undulating plain stretching to the
remote horizon. Then we saw that the stage was set and the actors were
ready. On our left, their approach unnoticed by us in the fog, our infantry
were marching in fours; from away to the south-west, as far as the eye
could see, came three mighty columns of marching men, sunburnt, silent,
inexorable.

They looked immensely effic