LEMNOS HARBOUR
Within the outer anchorage
The ancient Argonauts lay to;
Little they dreamt—that dauntless crew—
That here to-day in the sheltered bay
Where the seas are still and blue,
Great battle-ships should froth and
hum, And mighty transport-vessels come
Serenely floating through.
With magic sail the Argonauts
Stood by to go about;
Little they thought—that hero band—
As they made once more for an unknown land
In a world of terror and doubt,
That here in the wake of the magical bough
Should come the all-terrible ironclad now
Serenely floating out.
Written on Mudros Beach: Oct. 7, 1915.
July the twenty-seventh.
The deadly silence...
The tenderfoot on an expedition of this sort naturally expects to find himself plunged into a whirl of noise and tumult.
The crags were colourless and shimmering in the heat. The harbour was calm and greeny-blue. One by one, with our haversacks and water-bottles, belts and rolled overcoats, we went down the companion-way into the waiting surf-boats. Again and again these boats, roped together and tugged by a little launch, went back and forth from the S.S. Canada to the “Turk's Head Pier'—a tiny wooden jetty built by the Engineers.
I asked one of the straw-hatted men of the Naval Division, who was casting off the painter, what the place was like—
“Sand an' flies, and flies an' sand—nothinkelse!” he replied.
No sooner ashore than the green and black flies came pestering and tormenting like a host of wicked jinn. The glare of sunlight on the yellow sand hurt the eyes. The deadly silence of the place was oppressive—especially when you had strung yourself up to concert pitch to face the crash and turmoil of a fearful battle.
The quiet isolation and khaki desolation of jagged peaks and sandy slopes was nerve-breaking.
You could see the thin lines of the wireless station and little groups of white bell-tents dotted here and there.