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Down we went into a shell-hole. Another, and another came over. Murderous little brutes they were too. Seven of them. Then they ceased. We immediately jumped up again and reached our objective. Then getting under cover of some twisted ironwork, which once formed the roofing of the emplacement, I took breath. "Anyway," I thought, "here I am." In a few minutes I had a look round.

Therefore the circumference on which they could be used was also a small one; their opportunities for hiding were consequently reduced; the chances of their emplacement being immediately spotted from the fortress were correspondingly high, and the big gun in the fortress was pretty certain to overwhelm the majority of them at least.

We passed one small island, which the natives said was called also Meroe, as well as the site where we found the pyramids and temple below. No indications of a considerable city are however to be found on this island, which is beside too small to have served for the emplacement of a city of consequence.

Fortunately it was a misty morning, and we could wander about on top, though we did have one or two shrapnel bursts over us. We then discovered that our valises and stores were still floating in the water-cart emplacement the Sikhs having turned tail when the storm broke. It was six weeks later when we opened our valises.

The ascent to this was on the outside of the towers, which were entirely solid; and it generally wound round the different faces of the towers, ascending them either by means of steps or by an inclined plane. Special care was taken with regard to the emplacement of the tower, either its sides or its angles being made exactly to confront the cardinal points.

"They're located somewhere along this front, but they're so well camouflaged that no one has yet been able to discover them. "I want you boys to see if you can turn the trick. The guns have killed a lot of our men, as well as the French and English. We've tried to rush the emplacement, but we can't get a line on where it is for it's well hidden.

I tumbled after the colonel into the square hole that constituted the "O.P." it had been a Boche trench-mortar emplacement. The sweat dripped down my face as I removed my tin hat; my hair was wet and tangled. Johns, a subaltern of D Battery, was in the pit with a couple of telephonists. He was giving firing instructions to the battery.

That Gibraltar was 300 miles long, before they lost it to the Germans. But they had few guns in their fortress. They showed us emplacement after emplacement without a stick of artillery in it. They had told the French and the English of their plight, and a few artillery companies had been sent in; but only a fraction of the need. There was no central council of the allies then.

While travelling at anything from 70 to 140 miles an hour it is decidedly more difficult to hit another object tearing along at a like speed and swerving in all directions, than from a machine-gun emplacement to rake a line of men advancing "over the top."

Nobody cared about left-hand Gun Hill; he was only a 47 howitzer; every glass was clamped on the big yellow emplacement. "Right-hand Gun Hill is up, sir." Bang coughs the forward gun below us; bang-g-g coughs the after-gun overhead. Every glass clamped on the emplacement. "What a time they take!" sighs a lieutenant then a leaping cloud a little in front and to the right.