But I could not sleep. My mind was too active with thinking that I was lying in the historic ground, over which the battle had rolled. As a light in a room keeps a would-be sleeper awake, so the bright glow of my thoughts kept my brain from rest. Here was I on that amazing Peninsula, towards which I had looked in wonder from the cliffs of Mudros. Around me, and in the earth as I was, the dead men, more successful than I, were sleeping dreamlessly. On higher slopes the tired army held the fire-trenches, with its faces and rifles still turned bravely landward and upward. Above them the Turks hung to the extremities of their territory with the same tenacity that we should show in defending Kent or Cornwall. Behind the Turk ran the silver Narrows, the splendid trophy of the present tourney. And, as I had been reminded that afternoon, far away the German armies were battling through the corridors of Servia that they might come and destroy the invaders of Suvla and Helles.
To increase my wakefulness the rapid fire of rifle and machine-gun, which had been almost unheard during the day-time, began with the fall of darkness, and continued sporadic through the night. Like the chirp of a great cricket, it was doubly insistent in the silent hours. The artillery, too, was more restless than it had been in the light of day. Seemingly all were nervous of the dark.
It is ever difficult to sleep in a strange bed. I found myself opening my eyes and looking up at my oil-sheet roof. So scanty was it that it left apertures, through which I could see the stars shining in a perfect sky. I shut my eyes and gave rein to my thoughts, gradually elaborating the wild dream of a thinker who was unaware that he had at last dropped off to sleep. It seemed to me that the whole army at Suvla was that night storming the hills that intervened between us and the silver Narrows. I was rushing with the attackers, while the shells roared and pitched harmlessly among us, and at length I was standing on the summit of Sari Bair, which showed the Narrows under the moon and stars. The Narrows seen at last! There, look, was the waterway to Constantinople. I waited patiently to see the Navy pour up it in triumphant procession. Beside me was the stranger who had spoken to us in the afternoon, and I said to him: "The coast seems clear. Let's go down and swim the Hellespont, where Leander and Byron swam." But at that moment there was a loud explosion near us, and a sound as of particles of earth falling upon an oil-sheet roof.
Conscious that this tremendous report was not the creation of a troubled dreamer, but something real, which had worked itself into the texture of my dreams, I lifted heavy eyelids, and learned that a stray night-shell from the Turkish lines had burst very close to my dug-out, and the debris was tumbling on the roof.... And we were still low down on the slope to victory.
After that, sleep passed from me, and I watched the dawn break.
§2
At six o'clock the next morning we were all on the little trawler, due to leave for Cape Helles. Helles! The stirring, pregnant name was a thing to toy with. Suvla was a great word, but Helles was a greater. So farewell to Suvla now. We must also see Helles.
"To Helles," said the hardened skipper, with the same dull unconcern that a cabman might show in saying "To Hyde Park."
The workmanlike boat got under way. As I gazed from its side towards the Suvla that we were leaving, the whole line of the Peninsula came into panorama before me. The sun, just awake, bathed a long, waving skyline that rose at two points to dominant levels. One was Sari Bair, the stately hill which stood inviolate, although an army had dashed itself against its fastnesses. The other, lower down the skyline, was Achi Baba, as impregnable as her sister, Sari Bair. The story of the campaign was the story of these two hills.
For perfect charm, I recall no trip to equal this cruise betimes in the sparking Ægean. Our trawler was travelling with the smoothness of a gondola on a Venetian canal. And the voyage, sunny and refreshing in itself, was given an added glamour, by reason of the shrine to which it was a pilgrimage. For, whether I could believe it or not, we were steaming fast to Helles.