and then a long, long
sleep.

The three days' skirmish had been an interesting little engagement.
Mac thought that the establishment of an outpost so far beyond the
Anzac territory had been undertaken rather too lightly. The cutting
off of the garrison thirty hours from the time of capture, the relief
of the besieged twenty-four hours later and the subsequent retreat were
actions which had brought many anxious moments, plenty of hard work in
the blazing sun, and the lives of some fine officers and men. The
Turks, too, had suffered many casualties. The only tactical result of
the operation was that the enemy chose to make the outpost of
contention a strong, almost impregnable position, which was captured
three months later only by a ruse and hard fighting.

Altogether it had been a pleasant scrap in the open, and Mac was not
dissatisfied that he had gone through the experience. Anyhow as,
profoundly and delightfully weary, he lay down on the hard clay floor
of his bivouac, he felt a satisfied contentment with life.

* * * * *

It was late that afternoon--Monday--when the troopers awoke and set
about preparing a meal as sumptuous as the limited larder permitted.
Since Friday only odd nibbles of bully and biscuit had passed into
their internals.

That evening they cursed the Turks in free bush fashion for committing
an act of a kind to which they usually rose superior. Facing the
bivouac on the steep cliff below the disputed outpost, lay two stark
white bodies. The enemy had apparently stripped the dead, of whom
there were nine left in the outpost, and had flung the bodies over the
cliff. The Regiment was infuriated with this treatment of its dead,
and vowed vengeance. Next morning a destroyer, with a few
well-directed shots, blew up the bodies, and gradually the deed was
forgotten.

Owing to the casualties from shell-fire on this slope, the following
day was spent in moving to a new situation, not so pleasant as the
last, and shut away in a ravine, but safer from shell-fire. Here all
toiled solidly for two days, terracing a steep clay slope and making
new homes.

And here for some days with the Regiment the normal routine life of the
Gallipoli summer campaign ran smoothly. The days were spent on
road-work or on big communication saps, and at night, more often than
not, there were sapping fatigues in the front firing line, squadron
supports, heavy pieces of artillery to haul to