d up a couple of
our flinty biscuits. We had them done to a turn, and felt much better
for a decent feed. We then smoked and watched big, threatening clouds
scurrying over the moon, and away in the S.W. constant flashes of
lightning. The weather is changing, and the rainy season is not far
off. Then what on earth is to come of us? We'll be washed out of the
gullies, to be shot down in the open.

_August 27th._--Agassiz and I returned to the base at 7.30 p.m. and
were relieved by Fiddes and McKenzie. Plenty of firing by both sides,
but nothing worth noting.

_August 28th._--A day at the Beach--a weary place and I wish I was
back in The Gully. Here we are encamped at the top of Suvla Bay, at
the edge of a wide stretch of soft sand, which is dotted all over with
men and their shallow dug-outs in the sand. We are protected by a
number of Red Cross flags, several Ambulances and the C.C.S. These
have never been shelled by the Turks, and one feels absolutely safe,
but I miss the healthy excitement of our little Gully. As I watched
the bearers and wagons being shelled during the last fight it struck
me at the time that all the shrapnel might be coming from a single
battery, and I now think there can be no doubt about this. It must
have been a battery of four or five guns in command of a beastly
German.

_August 29th._--Sunday. Nothing doing--except that the usual artillery
duel goes on, and a Taube crossed over us. These we occasionally fire
at but never hit.

_August 30th._--Feeling bored to death I took a pleasure walk out to
our dressing station in The Gully, where Stephen and Thomson are at
present on duty. After dark I returned alone, trudging first down The
Gully almost to the Salt Lake, then cutting off to the right towards
our base. It is very different from the great Gully at Helles (The
Gully), being but a watercourse, averaging 8 to 10 yards in width and
most of it not over 6 feet deep. It has huge clumps of rushes and
lofty, graceful reeds which give it a tropical appearance, and in a
few places are pools of dirty, green water that has not dried up since
the last rainy season, and in these water tortoises and big green
frogs live in hundreds. To-night it was rather weird as I came along,
with the bull frogs croaking, and several other nocturnal animals
making loud cries, down past the "Turk's grave," where a pile of dead
had been collected in The Gully and a little earth thrown over them,
and now the o