o find
himself plunged into a whirl of noise and tumult.

The crags were colourless and shimmering in the heat. The harbour was
calm and greeny-blue. One by one, with our haversacks and water-bottles,
belts and rolled overcoats, we went down the companion-way into the
waiting surf-boats. Again and again these boats, roped together and
tugged by a little launch, went back and forth from the S.S. Canada to
the "Turk's Head Pier"-a tiny wooden jetty built by the Engineers.

I asked one of the straw-hatted men of the Naval Division, who was
casting off the painter, what the place was like--

"Sand an' flies, and flies an' sand--nothinkelse!" he replied.

No sooner ashore than the green and black flies came pestering and
tormenting like a host of wicked jinn. The glare of sunlight on
the yellow sand hurt the eyes. The deadly silence of the place was
oppressive--especially when you had strung yourself up to concert pitch
to face the crash and turmoil of a fearful battle.

The quiet isolation and khaki desolation of jagged peaks and sandy
slopes was nerve-breaking.

You could see the thin lines of the wireless station and little groups
of white bell-tents dotted here and there.

Robinson Crusoe wasn't in it. Sand and flies and sun; sun and flies and
sand.

"Wot 'ave we struck 'ere, Bill?"

"Some d---d desert island, I reckon!"

"A blasted heath..."

"Gordlummy, look at the d---d flies!"

"Curse the ---- sun; sweat's trickling down me back."

"And curse all the d---d issue..."

"What the holy son of Moses did we join for?"

We growled and groaned and cursed our luck. The sweat ran down under our
pith helmets and soaked in a stream from under our armpits. We trudged
to our camping-place along the shore. One or two Greek natives followed
us about with melons to sell. Parched and choked with sand, we were only
too glad to buy these water-melons for two or three leptas.

The rind was green like a vegetable marrow, but the inside was yellow
with pink and crimson pips--the colour of a Mediterranean sunset.

One day ashore on this accursed island and the diarrhoea set in. I never
saw men suffer such awful stomach-pains before. The continual eating of
melons to allay the blistering thirst helped the disease. Many men slept
close to the latrines, too weak to crawl to and fro all night long. The
sun blazed, and the flies in thousands of millions swarmed and irritated
from early morning till sundown.

At night it wa