the extravagant blueness of
the Aegean where the battleships lie silent--still--smoke rising up
lazily--and behind them, through the sea haze, dim outlines of Imbros
and Samothrace.

Going back, found that the lighter loads of wounded already taken off
have by no means cleared the beach. More wounded and yet more. Here,
too, are a big drove of Turkish prisoners; fine-looking men; well
clothed; well nourished; more of them coming in every minute and mixing
up in the strangest and friendliest way with our wounded with whom they
talk in some dumb-crambo lingo. The Turks are doing yeoman service for
Germany. If only India were pulling her weight for us on the same scale,
we should by now be before the gates of Vienna.

In the afternoon d'Amade paid me a long visit. He was at first rather
chilly and I soon found out it was on account of my having gone round
his lines during his absence. He is quite right, and I was quite wrong,
and I told him so frankly which made "all's well" in a moment. My only
excuse, namely, that I had been invited--nay pressed--to do so by his
own Chief of Staff, I thought it wiser to keep to myself. Yesterday
evening he got a cable from his own War Ministry confirming K.'s cable
to me about the new French Division; Numbered the 156th, it is to be
commanded by Bailloud, a distinguished General who has held high office
in Africa--seventy years old, but sharp as a needle. D'Amade is most
grateful for the battalion of the Naval Division; most complimentary
about the Officers and men and is dying to have another which is,
_evidemment_, a real compliment. He promises if I will do so to ration
them on the best of French conserves and wine. The fact is, that the
proportion of white men in the French Division is low; there are too
many Senegalese. The battalion from the Naval Division gives, therefore,
greater value to the whole force by being placed on the French right
than by any other use I can put it to although it does seem strange to
separate a small British unit by the entire French front from its own
comrades.

When d'Amade had done, de Robeck came along. No one on the _Q.E._ slept
much last night: to them, as to us, the dark hours had passed like one
nightmare after another. Were we miles back from the trenches as in
France, and frankly dependent on our telephones, the strain would be
softened by distance. Here we see the flashes; we hear the shots; we
stand in our main battery and are yet quite c