o some of the advanced party, but was soon after lifted by a
mate who ran with him to safety.

CHAPTER XXIII

MAC IS WOUNDED

That August dawn revealed a ghastly scene on this Gallipoli hill-top,
where the tired, outnumbered attackers fought desperately for the
summit of the Peninsula, possession of which would mean victory and the
command of the Straits. It seemed to Mac that decision must come soon,
for this desperate, more or less continual hand-to-hand encounter could
not last much longer. Bad as their position was, it could not be long
now before those many thousands of Imperial troops would be taking the
enemy in flank from the Suvla Bay direction, or at least would be
strongly reinforcing them from the rear.

And now, even before it was full daylight, the activity along the line,
though it had scarcely seemed possible, grew more violent, and Mac felt
that each side tensely watched the other, expecting every moment a
final, desperate coming to grips. The Turks appeared to be gathering
in great numbers, and were even now on the point of making a
whole-hearted attack. But the British artillery intervened. The
shelling had been increasing steadily, and at this moment several
men-o'-war close inshore opened their broadsides and were joined by all
the field artillery which could be brought to bear, and there broke
along the crest such a tornado of bursting shells as had never been
seen during the whole campaign.

The battleships were concealed by a thick pall of brown smoke through
which spurted the flashes of their batteries, field guns of all sizes
barked from ravines and ridges; the shells roared and shrieked up
towards the summit, and burst in a continual shattering crash on those
few hundred square yards of deadly battlefield, or passed aimlessly
beyond the ridge and exploded harmlessly far over enemy territory. The
Turks, being mostly under the farther lip of the small plateau,
suffered little from the bombardment except on the knob which protruded
into the line to Mac's left. It was torn constantly by high explosive,
and Turkish bodies were flung high in the air, in whole or in part.
Equipment, earth and sandbags mixed with the sickly, murky green smoke
which drifted in a choking cloud across Mac's line. Rapidly fresh
Turks filled the places of their dead, and they in turn were blasted by
the bombardment.

But many of the shells were falling short; or may be they were not
falling short, rat