often happening several times a day the pier made
little progress. We have also put the Turkish prisoners on this job,
and this morning I watched two bodies of these being marched down
under French guards with fixed bayonets--a capital idea this to put
the Turks under their own fire.

10 p.m.--Tremendous blasts came floating in from the sea about 5
o'clock, so I went over to the lighthouse ruins to find out what was
doing. One of our monitors lay beside Rabbit Island and was throwing
her 14-inch shells at a ridge on the Dardanelles beyond Kum Kale,
where we know "Asiatic Annie" and her sisters live. These had been
firing at V. Beach and the French lines just before. All very well, I
thought, the monitor can do no harm, but she will stir up these guns
to give us a lively time at W., and I was not many minutes back when
they started, the shells coming in fours, just to prove to us that
their guns were all there. We received about fifty shots in all. We
had seven destroyers all afternoon at the mouth of the Dardanelles,
which looked as if they intended something unusual. Now again after a
pause these guns are firing at their hardest at V. Beach--aye, and
here too.

_August 15th._--I wrote the last clause (aye, and here too) just
before a shell burst behind me. It was one of a group of four, and was
two seconds at most in front of the other three, which were
simultaneous absolutely. Howls and cries for help at once came from a
tent 15 yards in front of my dugout. A shell had crashed into this
tent where five men were lying, exploding at the feet of one, and
shattering his leg at the ankle. The other four were untouched. Some
of the fuses of yesterday's shells have been dug up to-day, and we
find from the brilliant orange colour on these that lydite had been
used, in some of the shells at least.

To-day a snake 38 inches long was caught in our camp. About twenty men
armed themselves with sticks, axes, etc., and surrounded it, but kept
a most respectful distance away, having great faith in its springing
powers. Sergeant Gavin Greig, who has been in Ceylon and knows
otherwise, got it by the neck and put it in a bottle which he filled
up with methylated spirit much to the poor brute's dislike as was
witnessed by its contortions.

An order came yesterday from the A.D.M.S. asking if we could move off
with our present equipment on a sudden call. This has stimulated all
those responsible to overhaul all our material, which,