I finished a novel to-day. It has at least made me long for England again. We are all full of longings; and the chief blessing of civilization is that it supplies the wherewithal to quieten them. Lord! for a glass of fresh milk and a jelly. Temperature 103° and shivering. I am going to have an attempt at sleeping. Everything is very quiet. The sentry's steps beside my roof make the earth shake.
It is the seventieth day of the siege.
February 14th.—Well, here am I again in my sleeping-bag at six minutes past eight p.m. Everything is dead quiet. Stillness itself is throbbing with the pulsation of a very real thing. Two sections are away digging at the alternative position by the kilns which faces both ways. There is a great deal of work required to complete such emplacements for a whole battery. Besides the gun-pits and parapets and communication trenches, there are ammunition dug-outs, a telephone and battery dug-out where the battery headquarters are, officers' mess, officers' dug-outs, men's dug-outs, cook-houses, and water dug-outs, and latrines. Then a trench and bund must be made around the position to keep out rain floods.
Dorking came to see me this morning for a time. The fever has decreased but my boasted fitness seems to have deserted me for good. I believe those wretched floods did the damage. Sleeping more or less under water tells on one in weakened condition. I have no cold though, luckily. Number 3 gun's detachment has appalling coughs, and every dug-out is the same. They have two blankets, but when the dug-out gets wet they have nothing even wherewith to dry themselves.
Cockie, who rather prides himself on some rudimentary knowledge of Egyptology, sent me a perfectly undecipherable note in hieroglyphics to come and dine. At least I guessed this out. What other interest could men have in common so much at such a time? I sent a figurative reply with a linear representation of myself in bed, a procession of ancient Thebans filing out of the dug-out with fowls, snipe on toast, puddings and fruits—all untouched. I hope to be able to toddle out for a walk to-morrow.
We have laid in a stock of Arab tobacco—half branches and twigs, and make our own cigarettes. Our reserve bottle of whisky to be drunk the night of relief we have divided, as firstly the relief may never come, and secondly we may be bowled over beforehand, in which case the one concerned would lose his share. Finally, I suggested that when the relief does come we shall be sufficiently intoxicated with joy, even supposing no refreshment is with the relieving force on that fortunate day.
The Turkish aeroplane bombed us again to-day. Yesterday thirty-five people including Arabs were wounded.
The sniper fellow over the river hit a gunner in the back yesterday at the next gun. The poor fellow is mortally wounded I hear. I was at my own gun at the time and heard him sing out. He didn't fall but walked about a little, "just," he said, "not to let the swine know he had been lucky." We sent him to hospital and will visit him to-morrow.
How very horrible to be quite poor! Here am I longing for hot milk and buttered toast, and instead I have a coarse slice of black boosa bread with the chaff sticking out of it—and a tiny portion of tinned cheese! But I will forget these abominations of the flesh and hope my twenty—one aches and pains won't pursue me into dreamland.
Venus, in her whitest robes, is shining resplendent over the Eastern horizon above my mud staircase.