Yet neither the islands nor the sea are the same any two successive days. The temper of the Ægean at this time changes more suddenly and frequently than ever does that of the Pacific. Every morning the islands of the west take on fresh colour, and are trailed by fresh shapes of mist.
To-day Imbros stands right over against you; you see the detail of the fleet in the harbour, and the striated heights of rocky Samothrace reveal the small ravines. To-morrow, in the early morning light, Imbros lies mysteriously afar off like an Isle of the Blest, a delicate vapour-shape reposing on the placid sea.
Nor is there monotony in either weather or temperature. This is the late autumn. Yet it is a halting and irregular advance the late autumn is making. Fierce, biting, raw days alternate with the comfortableness of the mild late summer. This morning, to bathe is as much as your life is worth (shrapnel disregarded); to-morrow, in the gentle air, you may splash and gloat an hour and desire more. And you prolong the joy by washing many garments.
Here in Anzac we have suffered the tail-end of one or two autumn storms, and have had two fierce and downright gales blow up. The wind came in the night, with a suddenness that found us most unprepared. In half an hour many of us were homeless, crouching about with our bundled bedclothes, trespassing tyrannically upon the confined space of the stouter dug-outs of our friends—a sore tax upon true friendship. They lay on their backs and held down their roofs by mere weight of body until overpowered. Spectral figures in the driving atmosphere collided and wrangled and swore and blasphemed. The sea roared over the shingle with a violence that made even revilings inaudible.
The morning showed a sorry beach. There were—there had been—three piers. One stood intact; the landward half of the second was clean gone; of the third there was no trace, except in a few splintered spars ashore. A collective dogged grin overlooked the beach that morning at the time of rising. The remedying began forthwith; so did the bursting of shrapnel over the workmen. This stroke of Allah upon the unfaithful was not to go unassisted.
With misgiving we foresee the winter robbing us of the boon of daily bathing. This is a serious matter. The morning splash has come to be indispensable. Daily at six-thirty you have been used to see the head of General Birdwood bobbing beyond the sunken barge inshore; and a host of nudes lined the beach. The host is diminishing to a few isolated fellows, who either are fanatics or are come down from the trenches and must clear up a vermin-and-dust-infested skin at all costs.
Not infrequently “Beachy Bill” catches a mid-morning bathing squad. There is ducking and splashing shorewards, and scurrying by men clad only in the garment Nature gave them. Shrapnel bursting above the water in which you are disporting raises chiefly the question: “Will it ever stop?” By this you mean: “Will the pellets ever cease to whip the water?” The interval between the murderous lightning flash aloft and the last pellet-swish seems, to the potential victim, everlasting.
The work of enemy shell behind the actual trenches is peculiarly horrible. Men are struck down suddenly and unmercifully where there is no heat of battle. A man dies more easily in the charge. Here he is wounded mortally unloading a cart, drawing water for his unit, directing a mule convoy. He may lose a limb or his life when off duty—merely returning from a bathe or washing a shirt.
One of our number is struck by shrapnel retiring to his dug-out to read his just delivered mail. He is off duty—is, in fact, far up on the ridges overlooking the sea. The wound gapes in his back. There is no staunching it. Every thump of the aorta pumps out his life. Practically he is a dead man when struck; he lives but a few minutes—with his pipe still steaming, clenched in his teeth. They lay him aside in the hospital.
That night we stand about the grave in which he lies beneath his groundsheet. Over that wind-swept headland the moon shines fitfully through driving cloud. A monitor bombards off shore. Under her friendly screaming shell and the singing bullets of the Turks the worn, big-hearted padre intones the beautiful Catholic intercession for the soul of the dead in his cracked voice.