he
bombs as soon as the spark struck, which gave the Turks time to return
them. Both sides played this game of catch, but I think we were the
better at it. The way of lighting the fuse was to hold the head of a
match on the powder stream, drawing the friction-paper across it. This
generally caught immediately, but after a while some one introduced the
idea of having burning sticks in the trench, and a "torchman" would
pass down the trench lighting each fuse. One man was not sure that the
spark had caught and began blowing on it and was surprised when it blew
his hand off. We would drop on top of the Turks' bombs a coat or
sand-bag, and it was surprising how little damage was done. If you put
a sheet of iron on top of one, or a sand-bag full of earth, it would
make the explosion very much worse, but loose cloth would spread out
and make a spring-cushion by compression of the air above.

There was another use made of empty jam-tins: they were tied to our
barbed wire so that if any Turk tried to get through he would make a
noise like the cowbells at milking-time. Talking about barbed wire,
Johnny Turk played a huge joke on us on one occasion. As the staking
down of wire was too risky, we prepared some "knife-rests" (hedges of
wire shaped like a knife rest) and rolled them over our parapet, but
opened our eyes in amazement to find in the morning that they had only
stopped a few feet from the Turkish trenches. The Turks had sneaked
out and tied ropes to them and hauled them over to protect themselves.
Thereafter we took care to let Abdul do his own wiring.

CHAPTER XVI

"SHIPS THAT PASS . . ."

Although we did not capture the Narrows (that narrow stream of water
through which a current runs so swiftly that floating mines are carried
down into it faster than the mine-sweepers could gather them up), this
did not prevent at least one representative of the navy from passing
that barrier. This was the Australian submarine, A2. It may not be
generally known that Australia had two submarines at the outbreak of
war. These would appear antediluvian alongside the latest underwater
monster, but, nevertheless, one of these accomplished a feat such as no
German submarine has ever approached. The first of our submarines met
an unknown fate as it disappeared somewhere near New Guinea. There has
been much speculation as to what happened to it, but its size can be
guessed at when I mention that a naval officer told me