Fortunately for the regiment, most of the daylight hours during the short stay in the present bivouac were spent away on working-parties or in support to some section of the front line. They usually returned in the evening to find fresh holes in their oil-sheets and shrapnel pellets on their floors. Still, they often had a good night's sleep, and always a fine bathe in the morning.

While lodged on this slope, Mac and his squadron became involved in an engagement which kept them fully occupied for three days. One Friday evening at dusk they moved northwards along the beach to the farthest outpost. Inland from here about half a mile on a high ridge the Turks had commenced the formation of an outpost. About nine o'clock this was attacked and easily captured. Then the squadron commenced digging in, and, by dawn, with small loss, had dug a fairly satisfactory semicircular position, facing over ravines, beyond which were higher hills.

The Turks were expected to counterattack, but contented themselves by sniping from all sides, which considerably impeded the work of consolidation. Mac and his section toiled and sweated all day, and, in the late afternoon, connected their section of trench with those on the right and left. Water had run dry, no communication could be had with the rear, the sun blazed down, with withering heat, and altogether Mac had known of pleasanter spots to spend a summer's day. In the afternoon, too, the Turks added shrapnel to their missiles.

About ten o'clock at night another squadron appeared for their relief, and Mac, with keen anticipations of a drink, a bathe and a sleep, speedily stumbled off through the scrub after his cobbers. Their line of march lay the length of a long ridge through enemy country, and on this ridge one of the destroyers protecting the flank chose this inopportune moment to cast her attention and her searchlight. Each time it caught him in its brilliant glare on the sky-line, Mac crashed down into the nearest shrub, prickly holly, arbutus or stunted oak, and cursed lowly to himself till the beam lifted. Progressing spasmodically when the beam was directed elsewhere, they reached the outpost, then stumbled wearily back along the beach, ate and bathed and turned in for a real long sleep.

They were to have no such luck. They had only just settled down when word came back that the enemy had closed over the ridge along which they had returned, and that the squadron in the new outpost was cut off. The only remaining squadron was sent out at once to their relief, but, the Turks being in too great strength, it could do nothing. So Mac's squadron, tired as they were, dodged away out again to another hard day's work in the blazing sun. It was now daylight, and certain spots had to be crossed by each man singly at a run, while the close attention of a Turkish machine-gun at long range lent wings to their feet. With his head down and his teeth clenched, Mac would bolt full-speed across these open spaces. Tut—tut—tut would echo from the hills, then a whinging past his ears or a spurt of dust in too close proximity, and he would redouble his pace. The shelter of the bank on the farther side gained, he would turn to laugh at the expressions, whimsical, serious as death, or thoroughly amused, of his cobbers as they rapidly paced their hundred yards.

Arrived in a ravine which cut the ridge, they found the Turks in a position too strong to be attacked in daylight by so small a force. Eventually it was decided to await nightfall and strong reinforcements before attempting to force a passage through the Turkish lines to the beleaguered garrison of the outpost. They gathered in shady corners of the dried water-course, and yarned and smoked the long hot hours away. Shrapnel came screaming across the scrub in the afternoon, but spent itself harmlessly in desert spots.

It was decided that the outpost was too isolated a position to hold, and that, after nightfall, the enemy, who had entrenched, should be forced back, the besieged with their wounded withdrawn, and a retreat made to the old position. This was all successfully carried out. Mac took his fortunes with a covering party on the right flank. He could follow little of what was taking place up at the outpost itself. There was a good deal of rifle-fire and bombing, and a certain amount of shell-fire, whose great white flashes lit up the wild ravine in fleeting visions of weird beauty.

At midnight the order for retreat found Mac almost asleep, for he was very weary from long wakefulness. They passed silently down the valley, being apparently the last to go. The Turks were following the retirement, for they were chanting their weird invocations to Allah not very far distant.

At the foot of the ravine, near the ruins of a solitary fisherman's hut, he and half a dozen others were instructed to take up a position and to stick to it till the last. He expected that, when the Turks emerged from the dried-up watercourse, there would be some fun, but, though their cries to Allah floated down the ravine, along with some indiscriminate firing, they themselves did not choose to come. During the long wait here, the padre, heedless of danger from spattering bullets, which flicked fire when they struck the dust, and despite the dysentery which racked his frame, and the long days and nights without sleep, went right along the scattered exposed firing line, taking cheese, biscuits and water to the weary, thirsty troopers. Wherever they went in action there was their quiet old padre, always working among the wounded, and, if these lacked, he would join in some other good work, bringing up water and provisions, or the like.

The Turks had attacked heavily the summit of a ridge about one hundred yards to Mac's right, and here he was sent now to bring in wounded, one of whom three of them were instructed to carry round to Anzac Cove. It was a long and weary journey, stumbling over scrubby hillocks and then away along the stony beach. This bad going in the dark was pretty rough on the wounded man, but, like most in his condition, he stuck it splendidly, and was deeply grieved he was such a burden to his cobbers.

At length they reached the dressing-station at the Cove, and placed him on a table in a room with sandbag walls. Several medical men examined the wound and spoke technically thereon. The stretcher-party asked anxiously after his condition, and sought tidings also of cobbers who had been brought back earlier. Then they set off for the firing-line once more.

The third dawn in this outpost affair was now lighting the eastern sky, beyond the hills where the night's fighting had taken place. Half-way back near the poppy-patch, one glorious riot of red summer flowers, they met their regiment returning. They had done their work, the Turks had ceased attacking and the weary regiment which had been kept busy the long, hot days in this outpost skirmish had been relieved. The tired troopers trailed homewards, carelessly tramping the dewy wild poppy heads on their way. A bathe and a drink, and then a long, long sleep.

The three days' skirmish had been an interesting little engagement. Mac thought that the establishment of an outpost so far beyond the Anzac territory had been undertaken rather too lightly. The cutting off of the garrison thirty hours from the time of capture, the relief of the besieged twenty-four hours later and the subsequent retreat were actions which had brought many anxious moments, plenty of hard work in the blazing sun, and the lives of some fine officers and men. The Turks, too, had suffered many casualties. The only tactical result of the operation was that the enemy chose to make the outpost of contention a strong, almost impregnable position, which was captured three months later only by a ruse and hard fighting.

Altogether it had been a pleasant scrap in the open, and Mac was not dissatisfied that he had gone through the experience. Anyhow as, profoundly and delightfully weary, he lay down on the hard clay floor of his bivouac, he felt a satisfied contentment with life.

* * * * *

It was late that afternoon—Monday—when the troopers awoke and set about preparing a meal as sumptuous as the limited larder permitted. Since Friday only odd nibbles of bully and biscuit had passed into their internals.

That evening they cursed the Turks in free bush fashion for committing an act of a kind to which they usually rose superior. Facing the bivouac on the steep cliff below the disputed outpost, lay two stark white bodies. The enemy had apparently stripped the dead, of whom there were nine left in the outpost, and had flung the bodies over the cliff. The Regiment was infuriated with this treatment of its dead, and vowed vengeance. Next morning a destroyer, with a few well-directed shots, blew up the bodies, and gradually the deed was forgotten.

Owing to the casualties from shell-fire on this slope, the following day was spent in moving to a new situation, not so pleasant as the last, and shut away in a ravine, but safer from shell-fire. Here all toiled solidly for two days, terracing a steep clay slope and making new homes.

And here for some days with the Regiment the normal routine life of the Gallipoli summer campaign ran smoothly. The days were spent on road-work or on big communication saps, and at night, more often than not, there were sapping fatigues in the front firing line, squadron supports, heavy pieces of artillery to haul to their emplacement, and the like.

At most times there was work, but occasionally there were spare hours, when Mac and Smoky, with their towels and tooth-brushes, would wander down to the beach for a morning of sea and sun-bathing. They would remove what few clothes they wore and take to the water. Only a limited portion of this end of the beach was available for bathing, and often, when he wasn't too sleepy, Abdul stirred things up too much for comfort. Still, the practice of the snipers was not particularly good, and Mac felt comfortably secure as long as he didn't venture out too far. It was their habit to wash what clothes they were wearing, and to bake in the sun while they dried. And so, bathing and splashing, sunning and smoking, sleeping and talking, a morning on the beach passed pleasantly enough.

Sometimes the pair wandered off to see a cobber in another part of the lines, exchange experiences and rumours with him, partake of his rations and water, and wander homeward through miles of dusty saps, not forgetting on their way to replenish their water-bottles at the landing and to acquire there any provisions which might, or might not look as if they lacked an owner, or, at any rate, the supervision of a policeman's eye.

Mails were now arriving occasionally, and never were letters more warmly welcomed. There would be a buzz of excitement while a mail-bag was being sorted, and then a strange quiet would hang over the terraces while every one in his dug-outs eagerly explored his pages.