From that bed cut in the hillside, I watched the morning growing out of night. Again—and still again—new sights, new sounds were born. The curves among the hills took shape; the waters moved into life; and from a grey distance rose the faint peaks of Imbros. The bay filled with vessels—small and great. Cruisers and churlish battleships manœuvred from point to point; and scouts and destroyers sped along a thoroughfare where mine-sweepers, trawlers, tugboats, colliers, barges, pontoons, lifeboats, and rowing-boats jostled one another all the way. The transports rode beyond this highway, with thin smoke lines creeping to the sky; and with them waited the hospital ships for the burden the day would bring. While yet I watched, morning fully broke. I threw aside the blanket, and sat up; and put out a hand for my boots.
The beach quickly resembled the market-place of a town. Men in groups or singly hurried this way and that—Red Cross men bore wounded on stretchers, Indians led mules, sailors in parties hauled ashore guns and their waggons, artillerymen loaded themselves with ammunition, infantrymen formed up for a return to the trenches, Greeks stabled donkeys, Army Service men stacked high piles of bully beef and tins of biscuit. Guns and limbers blocked the way, lines of wounded lay beneath the shelter of the cliffs, farther on were ingathering vast stores of provisions, and farther yet tanks for fresh water stood where the waves lapped the pebbles.
Sacks of flour were thrown into growing heaps, and beside them sacks of sugar. Cases of tea were dumped upon the sand. Cheeses were arriving, and sides of bacon. Sheets of tin roofing lay on one another, waiting for the shins of the unwary.
Men loaded lengths of wood for bomb-proof roofings and men staggered under bales of hay. Gangs of sappers drove roads along the hillsides, and telephonists ran wires from bush to bush. Infantry parties bore sandbags on their heads towards the firing line, and other parties trudged uphill, loaded with water-bottles. Men mooched round with rifles on their backs, and men were there with picks and shovels. The murmurs of life rose up like a mighty ocean tide.
The hillside, too, awoke: it became peopled with men drawing on shirts and pulling at boots. Blue blankets appeared on half the bushes, waiting for the tardy sun; later wisps of smoke curled up from fifty places. Already our gunners were lingering round their guns, placing last sandbags along the parapets, and stacking the ammunition brought by men toiling up the hill. I was surprised at all that had gone forward while I slept. The guns were lowered nearly to the ground level, and protected by heavy ramparts of earth and sandbags, masked with leafy boughs. Trenches for approach ran out, and telephone wires linked up the observing station. The funk-holes for the gunners ran beside the guns.
Now at last, if reluctantly, the sun got up. I could not see him, but his beams came creeping round the corner. They made the bushland warm and cheerful, and the damp fled away from the patches of brown earth which appeared in places on the hills. The insects came out from cracks and crevices, and set briskly on new travels; and the little birds which were lovemaking in the greener puffed their breasts out, and chirruped with morning confidence. It was going to be a tropic day.
The cook, however he was, had boiled some tea and fried rashers of bacon. He sent me a “Cooee,” and I went over with a mess tin. There were half a dozen about the fire holding out pannikins for filling; and Hawkins was crouched among the ashes, stirring an evil-looking mess meant for Welsh rabbit. He was too interested to look up; but the others greeted me with “Well, and how are things?” I did not feel talkative myself, and answered by an all-round nod.
There were two rashers of bacon each, and as many biscuits as a man wanted. I went back to my funk-hole, balancing the biscuits and bacon in one hand and a pot of tea in the other.
Just then the old balloon went up.
I had grown so used to the perpetual musketry fire that I no longer heard it; and though the enemy still shelled us in a casual manner, they were overshooting the mark, and most of their endeavours ended in the sea. Sometimes, with a whizz and a bang, a hail of bullets descended on the beach, and some poor fellow would fall down, and maybe two or three others hobble away; but this was very seldom. From where we sat eating on the hillside we received no more notice than the tunes of shells in their passage, the hum of strayed bullets, and the sounds of an angry beehive when a machine gun sent part of a charge through space.