a message from Birdie
to say the Queenslanders had thrust out towards Gaba Tepe and had
"drawn" the Turkish reserves who had been badly hammered by our guns.
With this crowning mercy in my pocket, walked down and boarded the
destroyer _Scourge_ (Lieutenant Tupper) and got back to camp before
seven. What a day! May our glorious Infantry gain everlasting
_Kudos_--and the Gunners, too, may the good use they made of their shell
ration create a legend.

The French official photographer has fixed a moment by snapping Gouraud
and myself overlooking the Hellespont from the old battlements.

[Illustration: GENERAL GOURAUD "Central News" photo.]

_Midnight._--When I lay down in my little tent two hours ago the canvas
seemed to make a sort of sounding board. No sooner did I try to sleep
than I heard the musketry rolling up and dying away; then rolling up
again in volume until I could stick it no longer and simply had to get
up and pick a path, through the brush and over sandhills, across to the
sea on the East coast of our island. There I could hear nothing. Was the
firing then an hallucination--a sort of sequel to the battle in my
brain? Not so; far away I could see faint corruscations of sparks; star
shells; coloured fire balls from pistols; searchlights playing up and
down the coast. Our fellows were being hard beset to hold on to what
they had won; there, where the horizon stood out with spectral
luminosity. What a contrast; the direct fear, joy, and excitement of the
fighting men out there in the searchlights and the dull anguish of
waiting here in the darkness; imagining horrors; praying the Almighty
our men may be vouchsafed valour to stick it through the night;
wondering, waiting until the wire brings its colourless message!

One thought I have which is in the end a sure sleep-getter--the
advancing death. Whether by hours or by years, by inches or by leagues,
by bullets or bacilli, we struggle-for-lifers will very soon struggle no
more. My last salaams are well-nigh due to my audience and to the stage.
That rare and curious being called I is more fragile than any porcelain
jar. How on earth it has preserved itself so long, heaven only knows.
One pellet of lead, it falls in a heap of dust; the Peninsula
disappears; the fighting men fall asleep; the world and its glories
become a blank--not even a dream--nothing!

_29th June, 1915. Imbros._ Sunlight has scattered the spectres of the
night,--they have fled, leaving behi