THE JOURNEY We were given twelve hours to collect bag and baggage and clear out from Abbassieh. It was a night of alarms and excursions. In the midst of it all came a home-mail. That was one of many occasions on which one in His Majesty's service is forced to postpone the luxury of perusal. Sometimes a mail will come in and be distributed just before the "Fall-in" is blown. This means carrying about the budget unopened and burning a hole in the pocket for a half-day—and more. In this case the mail was read in the train next morning. We were out of camp at sunrise, with the waggons ahead. By eight o'clock we had taken leave of this fair-foul, repulsive yet fascinating city, and were sweeping across the waving rice-fields of the delta towards the city of Alexandria. We arrived about mid-day. The urgency of the summons had justified the inference that we should embark directly. Not so. We entered what was technically known as a rest camp at Gabbari. Rest camps had been established at various points about the city to accommodate temporarily the British and French expeditions then arriving daily en route to the Dardanelles. The time was not yet ripe for a landing. Here was the opportunity to stretch the At no stage even of the classical occupation of Egypt—or thereafter—could the inner harbour of Alexandria have given more vividly the impression of the imminence of war. It was crammed with transports, ranged in long lines, with here and there a battle-cruiser between. As many as could come alongside the Quay at one time were busily disembarking troops (mostly French), which streamed down the gangways in their picturesque uniforms and moved off in column through the city to the camps on the outskirts. The moral effect of such processions upon the Egyptians could hardly be over-estimated. Long queues of Arab scows ranged along the railway wharf, taking ammunition and moving off to the troopships. Day and night the harbour was dotted with launches tearing from transport to transport bearing officers of the General Staff. As for the city—the streets, the restaurants, the theatres and music-halls, fairly teemed with soldiers; and civilian traffic constantly gave way before the gharries of officers—and of men. Many French were in our camp. There was something admirable in them, hard to define. There was a sober, almost pathetic, restraint amongst them—beside the Australians, which was as much as to suggest that what they had seen and known through their proximity to the War in Europe had had its effect. It could hardly be temperamental in the vivacious French. They were not maudlin; and on rare occasions, infected by the effervescing spirits of the Australians, would come into the mess-hut at night and dance or chant the Marseillaise in unison with the The evenings off duty were precious and well earned and well spent. Little can be seen of the city at night, except its people. The best way of seeing them as they are is to take two boon companions from the camp, ride to town, and instal yourselves in an Egyptian cafÉ for the night, containing none but Egyptians, except yourselves; invite three neighbours to join you in coffee and a hubble-bubble. They'll talk English and are glad of your company. At the cost of a few piastres (a pipe costs one, and lasts two hours, and a cup of coffee a half) you have their conversation and the finest of smokes and cup after cup of the best Mocha. This is no mean entertainment. This kind of thing developed into a nocturnal habit, until the Italian opera-season opened at the Alhambra. We sat with the gods for five piastres ("a bob"). The gods were worth that in themselves to sit amongst. The gallery is always interesting, even in Australia; but where the gods are French, Russian, Italian, English, Jewish, Greek, and Egyptian, the intervals become almost as interesting as the acts, and there is little temptation to saunter out between them.... But all theatres and all cafÉs were for us cut short abruptly by the order to embark. The refugee camp at Alexandria made its contribution. One had been galled daily by the sight of strong men trapesing to and from the city or lounging in the quarters provided by a benevolent Government. This resentment was in a sense illogical: they had their wives and their babies, and were no more due to fight than many strong Britishers bound to remain at home. But the notion of refugee-men constantly got dissociated from that of their dependents. It was chiefly the thought of virile idleness under Government almsgiving that troubled you. Eventually it troubled them too; for they enlisted almost in a body and went to Cairo for training. The Government undertook to look after the women. We found them fellow-passengers on our trooper. They were mostly young, all from Jaffa, in Palestine. Seemingly they marry young and are fathers at twenty. They brought three hundred mules with them, and were called the Zion Mule Transport Company. It is a curious name. They were there to carry water and food to the firing-line. Their wives and mothers incontinently came to the wharf to see them leave. Poor fellows! Poor women! They wailed as the women of Israel wail in Scripture, as only Israelitish women can wail. The Egyptian police kept them back with a simulated harshness, and supported them from falling. Many were physically helpless. Their men broke into a melancholy chant as we moved off, and sustained it, as the ship passed out over the laughing water, until we reached the outer-harbour. They got frolicsome soon, and But before reaching the zone in which an attempt was being made to decide that we were to thread a course through the magical Archipelago. All the next day we looked out on the beauty of the water, unbroken to the horizon. The men of Zion did their work and we took charge of their fatigues. They cleaned the ship, fed and watered their mules, and resumed their military training on the boat-deck. The initiative of the Australian soldier is amazing. Abstractly it is so; but put him beside a mob from Jaffa (or, better, put him over them) and he is a masterful fellow. The Jews leap to his command. Our fellows found a zest in providing that not one unit in the mass should by strategy succeed in loafing. Diamond cut diamond in every corner of the holds The Jerusalem brigade, though young men, were adults, but adults strangely childish in their play and conversation. It was with the eagerness of a child rather than with the earnestness of a man that they attacked their drill. They knew nothing of military discipline, even less of military drill. Their sergeant-major made one son of Israel a prisoner for insubordination. He blubbered like a child. Great tears coursed down as he was led oft to the "clink." The door closed after him protesting and entreating. This is at one with the abandoned wailing of their women. Drill must be difficult for them. The instruction was administered in English; The men, who speak nothing but an admixture of Russian, Hebrew, German, and Arabic, understood not a word of command or explanation. They learned by association purely. They made feverish and exaggerated efforts, and really did well. But of the stability and deliberative coolness of a learning-man they had not a trace. This childish method of attack never will make fighters. But they are not to fight. They are to draw food and water. At evening of the second day out we got abreast of Rhodes, with Karpathos on the port-bow. Rhodes stood afar off: would we had come nearer! The long darkening streak of Karpathos was our real introduction to the Archipelago. All night we ploughed through the maze of islands. "Not bad for the old man," said the second-mate next day; "he's never been here before, and kept going through a muddy night." The night had been starless. And when morning broke we lay off Chios, with a horrible tempest brewing in the north. A storm was gathering up in the black bosom of Chios. Here were no smiling wine-clad slopes, no fair Horatian landscape. All that seemed somehow past. A battle-cruiser lay half a mile ahead. She had been expecting us, together with two other transports and a hospital-ship in our wake. A black and snaky destroyer bore down from far ahead, belched past us, turned in her own length abreast of the transports, flashed a Morse message to the cruiser across the darkening water, and we gathered round her. She called up each in turn by semaphore: "Destroyer will escort you westward"; and left us. The journey began again. There was not a breath of wind; no beam of sunlight. The water was sullen. The islands were black masses, ill-defined and forbidding. This introduction to the theatre of war was apt. We were bearing up into the heart of the Sporades in an atmosphere surcharged and menacing. No storm came. It was the worse for that. Gone were the golden "isles that crown the Ægean deep" beloved After lunch the sun shone out. In the middle afternoon we came west of Skyros, and left our transports there. They were French: Skyros is the French base. At the end of the lovely island we turned east and set our course for Lemnos. It was ten before the lights of Lemnos twinkled through the blackness. At 10.30 we dropped anchor in the outer harbour of Mudros Bay. The light on the northern horn turned and flashed—turned and flashed upon us. Inside the boom a cruiser played her searchlight, sweeping the zone of entrance. A French submarine stole under our bows and cried "All's well," and we turned in to sleep. We were up before the dawn to verify the conjectures as to land and water hazarded in the darkness and the cruiser's pencil of light. At sunrise we moved in through the boom. Here were the signs of war indeed: a hundred and fifty transports lying at their moorings; a dozen cruisers before; the tents of the Allies clothing the green slopes. Lemnos is beautiful. The harbour is long and winds amongst the uplands. We were anchored beside an islet, flecked with the colour of wild-flowers blooming as prodigally as the Greeks said they did when they sailed these seas. The slopes about the shore were clothed with crops and vines. Behind were grey hills of granite. In Mudros we lay a week, waiting, waiting. Let the spot be lovely as you will, waiting is not good with the sound of the guns coming down on the wind day and night. Our fifth morning on Lemnos was the Next morning we left the mules of Zion and transferred to a store-ship. She lay two days. We solaced ourselves with bathing in the clear bay from the ship's side, and basking nude, with our pipes, afterwards in the pleasant heat of the spring sun; with visits to the shore, where we wandered into the Greek Church, in size and magnificence of decoration out of all consonance with its neighbouring villages, and where the wine of Lemnos might be drunk for a penny a glass; with bargaining at the boats that drew alongside from the shore, as at Aden, filled with nuts, figs, dates, Egyptian delight—all the old stock, except Greeks, who manned them here. The dwellers on Lemnos are all Greeks.... Would we never move? On the seventh day at noon the naval cutter ran alongside. In half an hour we were moving through the boom. As soon as we had cleared the south-east corner of the island, Imbros stood out to port, and Tenedos, our destination, lay dead ahead, under the mountains of Turkey in Asia. A fresh breeze blew out of the Dardanelles, thunder-laden with the roar of the guns, and every heave of our bow brought it down more clear. Before sundown we were abreast of The bombardment went on, ten miles off. No one wanted tea. At 7.30 the Major half-ordered a concert aft. Everyone went. It was really a good concert, almost free of martial songs. But here and there you'd find a man sneak off to the bows to watch the line of spurting flame in the north; and many an auditor, looking absently at the singer, knew as little of the theme as of the havoc those shells were working in the night. We lay three days at Tenedos: so near and yet so far from the forts of the Dardanelles. We could see two in ruins on the toe of Gallipoli, and one tottering We lay alongside Headquarters ship, loaded with the Directing Staff. H.Q. moved up and down, at safe distances, between us and the firing-line. We were one of an enormously large waiting fleet of transports and storeships. The impression of war was vivid: here was this waiting fleet, and tearing up and down the coast were destroyers and cruisers without number, and aloft, the whirring seaplanes. Our moving-in orders came at three on an afternoon. This was the heart-shaking move; for we were to sail up, beyond the mouth, to an anchorage off the Anzac position. We were to see in detail everything that we had, for the last three days, seen as an indistinct whole. We were to pass immediately behind the firing-line, to test the speculations we had been making day and night upon what was in progress, upon the geography of the fighting zone, upon the operations within the mouth. Every yard was a step farther in our voyage of discovery. The demolitions became plain. The ports on the water's edge had toppled over "in a confused welter of ruin." Such wall as still stood gaped with ghastly vents. These had been the first to come under fire, and the cruisers had done their work with a thoroughness that agreed well with the traditional deliberation of the British Navy. And thorough work was in progress. Far up the straits' entrance lay the black lines of gunboats. We moved up the coast past an ill-starred |