The hill was, perhaps, six hundred feet high and steep, and I made many stages of it, resting on my way up: but the sight from the top was good. The railway was some three miles off. The station had a pair of large, two-storied houses of basalt, a circular water-tower, and other buildings. There were bell-tents, huts and trenches, but no sign of guns. We could see about three hundred men in all.

We had heard that the Turks patrolled their neighbourhood actively at night. A bad habit this: so we sent off two men to lie by each blockhouse, and fire a few shots after dark. The enemy, thinking it a prelude to attack, stood-to in their trenches all night, while we were comfortably sleeping; but the cold woke us early with a restless dawn wind blowing across the Jurf, and singing in the great trees round our camp. As we climbed to our observation point the sun conquered the clouds and an hour later it grew very hot.