A night and a morning passed: and the next afternoon I was sitting on the Bluff, glumly watching a destroyer flash and smoke, as she hurled shells over my head to Achi Baba. An officer came up, and with grim meaning handed me the typed copy of an official telegram.
"Here's the key to yesterday's riddle," he explained.
I took it and read: "Suvla and Anzac successfully evacuated. No casualties."
The officer waited till I had finished, and then said:
"Well, what's our position on Helles now? A bit dickey, eh?"
Scarcely interested, I looked along the coast of the Peninsula and saw two great conflagrations, the smoke ascending in pillars to the sky, at Suvla and Anzac, where the retiring army had fired the remaining stores.