Part 10

After it, nothing exciting happened for a long time. Occasionally a few solitary rifle-shots rang out, and sometimes there were rapid bursts of heavy musketry and volleys. Those two field-guns kept on, at intervals, all through the night, but by now they were accustomed to them. Dr. O'Neill, who was trying to sleep, would curse whenever he heard three or four sniping shots, and then perhaps a volley in reply. "Curse those snipers!" he would growl; "they'll start the whole lot of them off again, and I can't sleep."

Eventually the Orphan must have fallen asleep, for the next time he remembered anything it was growing dimly light. He looked out of that big opening in the side, away over the grey water--absolutely still now--and made out the obscure shape of a battleship, the _Albion_, he knew. To the left he saw, gradually becoming distinct, the lower walls and fantastically crumbled ruins of the Sedd-el-Bahr castle stretching out into the Straits. Putting his head out and looking for'ard, along the side of the _River Clyde_--rather nervously, because he did not know that the snipers behind those projecting ruins had been withdrawn--he saw two great round bastions and a huge curtain-wall with its battlemented parapet--the main "keep" of the old castle. Down at his feet the "nightmare" man lay in the launch's stern-sheets fast asleep.

Inside the _River Clyde_ there was now sufficient light to see that they had spent the night in a big cargo space, littered with boxes of stores and ammunition, and quite a hundred men lay there soundly sleeping. By the Red Cross badges and by the Red Cross marks on the panniers and store boxes among them, he knew that they were R.A.M.C. orderlies. Two men with blood-stained bandages lay on stretchers--also asleep--and near them his launch's crew. On the opposite side of the ship he saw the planks which filled in the opposite gangway, and close to it a heap of "something" covered with a tarpaulin.

Piggy Carter had gone, and so had Dr. O'Neill and the chief sick-berth steward.

Everything seemed quiet and peaceful, except for some solitary rifle-shots which came, every now and again, from the direction of the cliffs.

A man walked down the ladder smoking a pipe, and winding a woollen scarf round his head in turban fashion. The Orphan recognized him as his R.N.D. friend of the maxims.

"Hullo, youngster! want a smoke? Try one of my 'gaspers'."

The Orphan, who was dying for a cigarette, took one and lighted it. "Did the Turks try again?" he asked.

The Sub-lieutenant shook his head. "Come over here," he said, and showed him the holes made by three 8-inch shells in the deck above, and in the side of the ship where they had gone out.

"That was when we were coming along here. Lucky they didn't burst, for our chaps were packed as thick as thieves. One had his head taken clean off--nothing left of it; two others were killed--we stuck 'em down there in the hold."

The Orphan, looking down through the hatch, was glad he couldn't see them.

"There are a lot more 'deaders' under that tarpaulin. Come on deck--your Doctor is 'nosing round' there."

When they went up the ladder, the Orphan concealed his cigarette in his hand. But Dr. O'Neill was not worrying about a midshipman, under eighteen years of age, smoking; he was examining the wounded on the stretchers lying under the bulwarks, and looked very old and haggard in the dim light of the dawn.

The two donkeys seemed horribly miserable, nosing wearily at some dirty straw and cabbage-leaves on the deck. "Poor little blighters!" said the Sub-lieutenant. "They've not been really happy since one of those shells went through the deck between them--look at the hole it made. We've brought them along with us, from Port Said, to carry ammunition--poor little chaps!" and he fondled them as they put up their noses to be petted.

He was a very restless individual, and seemed not in the least affected by the strain of the last twenty-four hours. He pointed out the grey cliffs of Cape Helles. They seemed uncomfortably close, and looked right down upon the deck.

"That's where those snipers are--they're there still--I thought so--d'you hear that?" (a bullet pinged past); "you needn't worry--they can't shoot for toffee. If we move about and show ourselves, some more of them will start potting at us. Let's try!"

The Orphan found himself crouching behind one of the donkeys, but stood up again as his extremely cool friend laughed at him.

Dr. O'Neill now sent him to collect a dozen of those sleeping orderlies and start handing the wounded men, in their stretchers, down the ladder from the upper deck, and then down into the launch. They were very sleepy, and not too inclined to stir themselves; but he found a weather-beaten R.A.M.C. sergeant--a regular "terror"--who soon began "rousting them up". For the next hour this job kept him busy, his maxim-gun friend sitting all the time on top of the hatchway, smoking his pipe contentedly and warning him whenever the snipers from the cliff became too busy. "Better keep under cover for a bit, sonny," he would sing out; "your chaps are getting on their nerves." He never shifted his own position, although he was entirely in view; and after a few minutes, would call down: "All right; you can carry on!", and the Orphan and the orderlies would rush up, and start moving more men down. It was quite safe moving them along, under the bulwarks; but what the Orphan did not like was taking them across the deck, and lifting them over the coaming, with the delay there, whilst men standing on the steps of the ladder took charge of the stretcher. Those cliffs seemed so horribly near.

At last they had all been struck down below, and the Orphan was listening to a very humorous dissertation from his loquacious friend, on the merits of different kinds of rifles (they were both standing at the foot of the ladder, and it was broad daylight), when suddenly there was a roaring noise, followed immediately afterwards by a most terrific explosion, which made them both quail, and made the _River Clyde_ tremble as though a mine had exploded under her bows. The youthful orderlies handing the stretchers down into the launch dashed for cover, their nerves much "rattled"; but the Orphan and his friend, recovering themselves, jumped across to the gangway port to see what had happened. As they did so, the _Albion_--perhaps a thousand yards away--fired one of the 12-inch guns in her fore turret, and another terrific thunder-clap crashed out as a lyddite shell burst against one of the big bastions of the castle. When the smoke cleared away, they saw that the top half of it had been almost destroyed.

The R.N.D. Sub-lieutenant grinned. "'Finished' that battery of maxims they had up there all day yesterday; we couldn't turn them out." The _Albion_ continued to fire her big shells, and the bursting of the high explosive against the solid masonry of the castle, not more than 250 yards from the _River Clyde_, made the most overwhelming and overpowering noise inside the poor old ship. Some of those youthful orderlies were very nerve-shaken indeed.

A steamboat came alongside soon afterwards, and Dr. O'Neill, singing out that he would borrow her to tow away the wounded, went up on deck.

The Orphan, very anxious to have another look round, followed him to the superstructure deck, and there he left him talking to a white-haired naval Captain in khaki--the Beach-master of "V" beach--and a big, burly, red-faced man, in very much stained khaki, with Commander's shoulder-straps. This was Commander Unwin, who had won the Victoria Cross the day before.

The midshipman went for'ard to where some army officers and signalmen were standing watching the shore. From there he saw the foc's'le, the maxims, and the sand-bags behind which he had crouched. He could not see the lighters and pontoons because they were hidden by the fo'c'sle, but right in front of him was the great mediaeval castle of Sedd-el-Bahr, with its bastion towers--one of which he had just seen demolished--its curtain-walls, and arched gateway at which he had fired that maxim. Farther to the right, the height of the walls decreased as they jutted out into the Straits; they were much battered about, and, in several places, huge breaches had been blown in them by the ships' guns. Fallen masonry sloped down from these breaches into the sea itself. Scrambling along the rocks below the walls, and wading through the shallow water round the masses of fallen masonry, he saw many of our soldiers. Officers were evidently forming them up below the breaches; men were crawling up these slopes and kneeling down in front of barbed-wire entanglements, which he could plainly see across the top of one breach; somewhere close by a maxim spluttered, and a few single shots--whether English or Turkish he did not know--rang out. The _Albion's_ shells were now bursting some way in rear of these breaches.

Close to the water's edge, sheltered by some rocks, a dark-blue army signal-flag began waving to and fro. The Orphan could "take in" Morse, and spelt out "R-E-A-D-Y T-O A-D-V-A-N-C-E". He heard one of the signallers standing behind him repeat this, and a tired, weary voice called out: "Signal to the _Albion_ to cease fire." He heard the rustle of the Morse flag signalling to the ship; a minute later the signaller called out: "They've taken it in, sir."

The weary voice sang out again, in the most matter-of-fact way: "Tell Colonel Doughty-Wylie to carry on the advance--as arranged;" and, fearfully excited, he heard the blue flag behind him whipping backwards and forwards, and saw the blue flag on shore answering.

Then men seemed to appear in hundreds; they swarmed at the feet of those breaches, and began dodging and climbing up them. Rifle-fire burst out, maxims rattled, and the Orphan held his breath to watch what was happening; but then he was pulled away, and Dr. O'Neill, savage with rage, ordered him back to the boat. "I've been looking for you everywhere; now's our chance to get away to the hospital ship." So, very reluctantly, he went back to the launch.

As he and Dr. O'Neill were going down the ladder, at the foot of which they had spent most of such an exciting night, a big man, his face wrapped in bandages, rushed down after them, and wanted to know if it was necessary for him to go off to a hospital ship. His tunic was soaked in blood.

"I feel all right; I don't want to go," he said.

"Take off those bandages," Dr. O'Neill snapped, and he rapidly unwound them.

Dr. O'Neill sniffed.

"It's my nose, I think, sir."

"Hang it, man! you've not got a wound anywhere. Who was the fool who wrapped you up like that and sent you back?"

"One of the ambulance men. Can I go back?"

"Of course you can. Get out of it!" and, intensely relieved, the man, a magnificently built sapper of the West Riding Field Company, darted up the ladder on his way ashore.

"That comes of having half-trained idiots," Dr. O'Neill snapped, as he went down into the launch. "A stone thrown up by a bullet must have hit his nose and made it bleed. He looked confoundedly pleased to get another chance of being killed--the fool. Shove off? Of course you can! D'you think I want to stay here all day? Tell the steamboat to take us to the hospital ship."

So off they went with their wounded, and as the boats cleared the stern of the _River Clyde_, and the high cliffs came into view, a sniper up there sent a last bullet pinging over them. He did not fire again, and in a couple of minutes or so they were out of range, and being towed towards the crowds of ships of all sorts which were lying off the end of the Peninsula; the noise of the rifle-firing gradually fading away as they left it behind.

It was a perfectly glorious morning--about six o'clock--and the Orphan was fearfully hungry--too excited still to feel sleepy. As they were towed across the bows of the _Cornwallis_, she saw the wounded lying in the launch, and waited for them to pass before firing her fore turret again--she was shelling Achi Baba. In twenty minutes the steamboat towed the launch alongside the hospital ship _Sicilia_, and left her there.

Dr. O'Neill scrambled up the ladder, and told the Orphan he could come too. "We may get a cup of coffee," he said, less harshly than usual.

After the scenes they had just left, the _Sicilia_ was so quiet and peaceful that when they were taken into her saloon, trod on the thick carpet, and sank on soft, plush-covered settees, the Orphan fell asleep, even before his cup of coffee was brought.

It was after half-past eight when the launch, now emptied, reached the _Achates_. The Sub was on watch. "You won't be wanted until the afternoon; go and have a bath, something to eat, and turn into my bunk," he said.

Down in the gun-room Uncle Podger, the Pimple, Rawlinson, and the China Doll were just finishing breakfast. They all shouted questions at him, and he was also talking and answering them when the Sub came down and cleared them all out.

"Leave him alone!" he roared angrily. "Let him have his food in peace and turn in; he hasn't had any sleep for forty-eight hours."

"I had a bit last night," the Orphan expostulated; he rather wanted to tell them about firing the maxim.

"Do as I tell you."

"Are things going on all right?" he ventured to ask.

"I don't know," growled the Sub. "Go on with your breakfast."

*CHAPTER XI*

*The Beach Party*

We must now follow the adventures of the Pink Rat, Bubbles, the Lamp-post, and the fifty men of their beach party whom we had left being towed across to the _Newmarket_ on Saturday night.

On board her had embarked details of Royal Engineers, Army Service Corps, and a weak company of the "Anson" Battalion, Royal Naval Division; also a Commander (from another ship) who took charge of the beach party, and a naval Captain to take charge of "W" beach--to act as Beach-master there--as soon as the landing commenced.

This little steamer slowly steamed across from Tenedos Island during Saturday night, and on Sunday, at daybreak, anchored about twelve hundred yards from "W" beach, just as the first of the Lancashires jumped out of their boats on to the shore. Almost immediately afterwards, stray bullets began to whistle over her or splash in the water round her.

The three midshipmen, almost too excited to notice these, stood with their hands shading the sun from their eyes, trying to pierce the cloud of smoke and haze over "W" beach and see what was happening beneath it.

The _Swiftsure_, quite close to them, fired her 7.5-inch guns very rapidly, and they were spectators of a most beautiful bit of gunnery work. This ship had already cleared the Turks away from the trenches running along the edges of the lower cliffs, on the left of "W" beach, and had driven them over the ridge above; now she began bursting shells on the higher cliffs, to the right of the beach, and as the smoke cloud melted and gave her a clear view of them and the little groups of Lancashires forming up beneath them, her shells, which had been searching those cliffs in a blind, indeterminate way, began bursting with the most marvellous accuracy, first in the galleries the Turks had cut in the cliff face, and when these were cleared, in the trenches above. Shells from the _Achates_ helped her; but the _Swiftsure_ was within shorter range and could enfilade them, so that most of the credit of stopping the murderous fire of rifles, maxims, and nordenfeldts from this position, and of driving the Turks away, is due to her. This made it possible for the Lancashires, who had already gained possession of the top of the low cliffs to the left, to press on across the head of the gully, and for those still on the beach to advance up it.

As they advanced, the three tongue-tied midshipmen could see them plainly, and as they gained ground, so did those shells drop farther along, always some fifty or seventy yards in front of them. It was grand and most efficient gunnery, a remarkably fine example of the co-operation of supporting guns and advancing troops. To realize this thoroughly, you must put yourself in the place of the men who were actually firing her guns, and who, looking through their telescopic sights, could actually see the Lancashires in the lower half of the field of vision. The slightest unsteadiness, the lowering of a sight by a hair's-breadth, at the moment when they pressed their triggers, would have sent a 200-lb. lyddite shell to burst right among them. If there had been the slightest roll on the ship this feat would have been impossible, but, as you know, the sea was absolutely calm.

All the three midshipmen could do was to gaze, open-mouthed, and burst out with excited "Oh's!" and "Look at that one!" "Look at them there--up there; those are our fellows!" "There's another shell, just in front of them! Isn't that grand!"

Then the emptied transports' boats were towed alongside by the Orphan, and down into them they and their beach party had to scramble. The boat in which they found themselves had a pool of blood in her stern-sheets, and the thwarts and gunwales were smeared with it. They were too excited to pay any attention to this, because bullets were flying round the _Newmarket_ pretty thickly at that time, and they had to shove off as quickly as possible, being towed inshore with the _Swiftsure's_ shells passing over their heads.

This beach party was actually the second unit to land, and Bubbles said afterwards that it was exactly ten minutes past six when he scrambled out on to a large boulder, and found himself at last in the enemy's country. As a matter of fact, his watch must have been nearly twenty minutes slow.

They landed, without casualties, among the rocks and under the low cliffs to the left of the sandy stretch of "W" beach, the calmness of the sea enabling the boats to run alongside, and shove themselves between the boulders scattered there, without damage. This place was hardly exposed to fire, and the whole of the beach party scrambled ashore and reached the foot of the low cliffs without loss.

Here they were met by a Staff officer, who ordered the Commander in charge of them to scale the cliff and occupy the trenches along the top.

The men had brought their rifles; were extremely pleased at the prospect of getting a shot at the Turks, and climbed up eagerly, throwing themselves into a broad, shallow trench running along the top. They waited for a few stragglers and for the men of the "Anson" Battalion, and then the little party of perhaps a hundred and fifty men trotted up the slope and towards the right, passing across one or two communication trenches, many craters made by the ships' shells, and one or two dead Lancashires. No one was hit in this little "jaunt", although many bullets were flying past. At last they were told to lie down in a trench--a deeper one--and remain there.

It was interesting to see the different behaviour of the three midshipmen. Bubbles, big and burly, bustled along with his elbows bent, his head thrown back, a laugh on his face, and his mouth wide open as usual, his red face perspiring and the collar of his tunic unbuttoned, charging through the little scrub bushes and running straight, never looking behind. The Pink Rat, with his eyes bulging out of his head, dodged and stooped, and set his teeth, very obviously conscious of the bullets; whilst the Lamp-post trotted along, swinging his long legs, and looking as little discomposed as if he was at some silly manoeuvres--possibly he was setting the noise of the bullets and the ships' shells to music. He was the only one of the three who looked back, at all, to see how the men were coming along, and to keep his section in something like order, preventing them from bunching together--as sailors always will--and steadying those who wanted to run too fast.

Once in this trench, the Pink Rat was sent along to make the men spread out and take cover properly, for again they were "bunching". The "Ansons", though they were mostly sailors, had had six months' military training, and so did not want telling what to do.

Next to where Bubbles sprawled, panting and blowing, was a bluejacket who, even at this time, had begun collecting "curios", and now showed with pride a Turkish bayonet and a trenching tool which he had picked up on his way. "If I'd left 'em there," he told Bubbles, "I'd 'ave never seed them again."

From the moment he had commenced to scramble up the low cliffs and then to trot along the slope above them, Bubbles had been entirely oblivious of anything except pushing on and saving his breath, but now he was able to look about him and see what was happening.

The trench in which he knelt ran almost at right angles to the sea and the cliff they had just climbed, and whilst the lower portion dipped into the gully which led down to the sandy portion of "W" beach, the upper part reached the sky-line formed by the ridge which extended from the end of the Peninsula, parallel to the sea, above the cliffs.

He, Bubbles, was almost in the middle of the trench, with most of the beach party lower down, and the "Ansons" above him. Looking along it and up the slope, he saw that the sky-line was, here and there, dotted by soldiers lying prone, and apparently firing inland. Straight in front of him the ground sloped a little downwards to the gully, to the ruins of a little house--a farm-building, perhaps--and then gradually rose again, rising with the higher cliffs beyond "W" beach, till it reached the spot where the white lighthouse buildings of Cape Helles stood very conspicuously. There it made another sky-line, perhaps eight hundred yards away from Bubbles, joining up with the sky-line of the ridge on his left. Behind, where these two sky-lines met, was a small eminence, and through his glasses he could see the barbed-wire which surrounded it. This was Hill 138, still strongly held by the Turks, and had to be taken before "W" beach could be used in comfort. Looking downwards to the right--where the gully sloped to the sea--a strip of "W" beach showed at the foot of the steep cliffs facing him there, with the galleries and the trenches along the upper edge, from which the _Swiftsure's_ lyddite and the shells from the _Achates_ had driven the Turks only three-quarters of an hour ago.

The green slopes were brown with a maze and network of trenches, rifle-pits, and shell craters; and beyond these the Lancashire Fusiliers still advanced towards the lighthouse--pressing forward by rushes of little groups; men running a few yards, throwing themselves down among the bushes, and firing; springing up and advancing again. When Bubbles saw a man fall, he could not know whether he was hit--so naturally did he fall--unless the line of scattered khaki figures went on and left him lying there. The _Swiftsure's_ shells screeching over the trench in which Bubbles knelt, burst continually just in front of them. Firing was very brisk at this time, both on the ridge to his left and also from the sky-line near the lighthouse, and the crackling of musketry and the angry swish of bullets over the trench were almost continuous--minor noises among the deep, thundering bellow of the ships' guns and the rush of their shells. The Pink Rat came along the trench, stooping well down.

"What's going on? What are we supposed to be doing?" Bubbles asked as he stopped for a moment.

"Doing support to the firing-line," he squeaked, and hurried along with a message for the "Ansons".