The Men Seemed To Feel This, For They Sprang Up And Began Cheering And Shouting, And Fired In An Upright Position, And By So Doing Exposed Themselves At Full Length To The Fire From The Men Below.

The Turks in front of the village ran back into it again, and those in the fields beyond turned and began to move away, but in that same plodding, aggravating fashion.

They moved so leisurely that there was a pause in the noise along the line, while the men watched them to make sure that they were really retreating. And then there was a long cheer, after which they all sat down, breathing deeply, and wiping the sweat and dust across their faces, and took long pulls at their canteens.

The different trenches were not all engaged at the same time. They acted according to the individual judgment of their commanding officer, but always for the general good. Sometimes the fire of the enemy would be directed on one particular trench, and it would be impossible for the men in that trench to rise and reply without haying their heads carried away; so they would lie hidden, and the men in the trenches flanking them would act in their behalf, and rake the enemy from the front and from every side, until the fire on that trench was silenced, or turned upon some other point. The trenches stretched for over half a mile in a semicircle, and the little hills over which they ran lay at so many different angles, and rose to such different heights, that sometimes the men in one trench fired directly over the heads of their own men. From many trenches in the first line it was impossible to see any of the Greek soldiers except those immediately beside you. If you looked back or beyond on either hand there was nothing to be seen but high hills topped with fresh earth, and the waving yellow grass, and the glaring blue sky.

General Smolenski directed the Greeks from the plain to the far right of the town; and his presence there, although none of the men saw nor heard of him directly throughout the entire day, was more potent for good than would have been the presence of five thousand other men held in reserve. He was a mile or two miles away from the trenches, but the fact that he was there, and that it was Smolenski who was giving the orders, was enough. Few had ever seen Smolenski, but his name was sufficient; it was as effective as is Mr. Bowen's name on a Bank of England note. It gave one a pleasant feeling to know that he was somewhere within call; you felt there would be no "routs" nor stampedes while he was there. And so for two days those seven thousand men lay in the trenches, repulsing attack after attack of the Turkish troops, suffocated with the heat and chilled with sudden showers, and swept unceasingly by shells and bullets - partly because they happened to be good men and brave men, but largely because they knew that somewhere behind them a stout, bull-necked soldier was sitting on a camp-stool, watching them through a pair of field- glasses.

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