Part 11

Left to himself again, Bubbles looked out across the blue waters of the Straits to the Asiatic shore and its high mountains fading away in the distance. The reddish ridge showing on the Asiatic shore was Kum Kali fort, and under it the French fleet was hammering away at the shore, the most conspicuous ships being the _Jeanne d'Arc_, with her six funnels, and the curiously shaped _Henri IV_. Not far from them was the lighter grey of the Russian _Askold_ and her five tall, thin funnels, lighted by continuous flashes from her guns--the "Packet of Woodbines" the sailors called her. Farther away lay the big Messageries Maritimes transports, the huge _La Provence_, and rows of boats being towed inshore. Destroyers and French torpedo-boats dashed about; the whole surface of the sea was a mass of ships--one solitary white-painted hospital ship among them; and away beyond the lighthouse on Cape Helles--far up the Straits--Bubbles could hear the heavy guns of the _Lord Nelson_ and _Agamemnon_, and the 6-inch salvoes of the _Queen Elizabeth_. He could not see these ships because the cliffs hid them from sight.

Firing died down, and the Lamp-post came sauntering along, looking bored, and sat down beside him, with his long, thin legs drawn up, resting his chin on his knees. "Those are the Plains of Troy," he said, pointing across the Straits to the belt of green pastures lying behind Kum Kali fort. "We should be able to see the ruins of Troy itself," and he got out his glasses, and looked disappointed when he failed to find them.

Bubbles watched him with amusement. "Go it, old Lampy, keep your head in the clouds, and get a bullet in it! Who wants to see your silly old Troy! let's have some grub. I'm terribly hungry."

They pulled some stale sandwiches from their haversacks, and commenced munching them contentedly.

"I'm jolly glad I'm not the Orphan--out there," said Bubbles, talking with his mouth full, and waving a half-eaten sandwich across beyond "W" beach--"pegging away in his old steam bus. I wouldn't be him for anything."

"Jolly hard luck on Rawlins to be left in the ship," added the Lamp-post.

"Hello! there's a chap badly knocked about--look--dragging himself towards us through the grass!" The Lamp-post had "spotted" him about a hundred yards away from the trench.

"Let's go and give him a hand," suggested Bubbles.

"Right oh!" said the Lamp-post, pushing his field-glasses back into their case, and together these two midshipmen stepped out of the trench and walked towards the man. Only a few stray bullets were coming along just then. "Hullo! What's up?" they asked the soldier when they reached him.

"Got me in the knee," he said--his face ghastly white--as he turned over on his back, with one leg helpless and that trouser-leg soaked in blood.

The Lamp-post knew all about "First Aid"--there were not many things he did not know something about--and the two midshipmen, kneeling down beside him, lashed his two legs together with his puttees, and began to carry him back.

On the way the Lamp-post stumbled once, and the wounded man let out a groan: "For God's sake be careful!"--but they got him into the trench and laid him down. Then the Lamp-post crumpled up. "Something gave me an awful whack when I stumbled," he said; "I believe I'm hit," and put his hand to his side.

Bubbles, frightened, made him lie down, and examined him. "There's no blood outside--I can't find any--oh! but look here!" and he lifted up the field-glass case. It had a slanting hole right across it, and when he wrenched out the glasses themselves, the "joining" piece had a ragged notch in it, and a small piece of torn white metal had been caught in it.

"My aunt! Old chap, that's a bit of nickel casing--a bullet hit it--you _are_ a lucky chap! If you hadn't put those glasses away you'd have been a 'deader'."

The two snotties examined the field-glasses eagerly, and passed them to the men close by. They all looked at the Lamp-post as if they envied him very much, and Bubbles kept on gurgling: "You are a lucky chap, Lampy!"

They hunted to see if there was a bruise under the Lamp-post's shirt, and were disappointed when they found none.

"It feels jolly sore," the Lamp-post said as he felt the place.

"There'll sure to be a bruise to-morrow," Bubbles gurgled excitedly; "you _are_ a lucky beggar."

By this time the stretcher-parties were already out, and they handed over their wounded "knee" man to some of them. The others went up past the trench towards the firing-line, searching the grass and bushes. The two snotties watched them moving about. They would go across to a bush, stoop down, and Bubbles and the Lamp-post would know that a man was lying hidden there. If someone sat up between them, or they put down and opened out their stretcher, they knew they had found a wounded man. If nothing happened, and they went on with their stretcher, still folded, they knew that it was a dead man who was lying there.

More soldiers now began coming up the gully, extending in long lines as they debouched at the top of it. They turned to the left, coming over the trench, and marching up to the slope behind and to the left. A bluejacket shouted out: "Who are you, matey?" "Essex!" they called back as they scrambled past, panting beneath their heavy packs. A youthful subaltern, struggling under the weight of his, stopped a moment to get Bubbles and the Lamp-post to hold it up, whilst he pulled the webbing-straps more tightly.

"Thanks! that's better," and off he went.

"Good luck!" they sang out after him.

Almost directly after this, the order came for the "Ansons" and the beach party to fall back to the beach. "That finishes soldiering; now we've got to be labourers," the men grumbled as they straggled down the gully, helping any wounded they met on the way.

And now they saw that horrible line of dead, lying at the water's edge, with the sea lapping round their legs and bodies, and the men hanging over the rows of barbed wire.

"It's rotten. It spoils all the fun," said the Lamp-post, as he stepped across the body of a very finely-made man lying face downwards in the sand, one hand still gripping his rifle, and the fingers of the other still dug into the sand. "Look at those bits of firewood in the straps of his pack. Poor chap! He'll never want them to cook his food with. It's rather rotten, isn't it?"

"Don't be an ass," Bubbles said comfortingly. He wasn't much of a philosopher, and these sights did not affect him.

It was now about half-past nine, and by this time a large number of boats, full of stores, had wedged themselves among the rocks--farther along, where the beach party had landed--and the crews were throwing them out, shoving off, and going back for more. Army Service Corps men were already taking charge of them and taking them higher up the beach; the Sappers were already busy building a pier with casks and pontoons; and among all this hustle and bustle, the wounded sat or lay huddled up against the foot of the cliffs, waiting whilst the army doctors went from one to the other. The first thing that the Lamp-post and Bubbles had to do was to drive six stakes into the beach whilst six buoys were being moored, some sixty yards out, in the sea, and then stretch hawsers from each stake to its opposite buoy--as you have read before. That took a good hour, and when the big lighters came hauling themselves into these rope "gangways" they and their men had to unload them.

Whenever there was not a boat to unload, there were wounded men to carry down to the empty boats. They were not idle for a moment, and all the time stray bullets were falling on the beach and occasionally wounding some of the men there. One of the Lamp-post's "section" got a bullet in his side and had to be sent off to the _Achates_, but no other of the beach party was hit that day. However, they were all much too busy to worry about, or even notice, these bullets, and never had a "stand easy" until about two o'clock, when they watched the shells from the _Albion_ and _Cornwallis_ bursting round Hill 138, beyond the lighthouse ridge, and listened to the _Swiftsure's_ shells screaming overhead again to burst in front of the advancing Worcesters. They hastily munched a bit of biscuit and tore off a bit of bully beef, had a pull at their nearly empty water-bottles; but more lighters coming in, crammed with stores, they went on with their work. Much heavy firing went on, stray bullets flipped about in all directions, and by half-past three they heard that the Worcesters had captured the hill; and, half an hour later still, had to help the wounded who streamed back down the gully from that gallant little assault.

The Orphan brought them in a barricoe of water about this time, but that the wounded drank. Fortunately, a water lighter was brought ashore and beached shortly afterwards, and the Sappers pumped the water into a canvas tank they set up at the water's edge, so they didn't really want for long. It was rather unpleasant to go and get it, because you had to pass along and step across those dead men lying there. There was no time to move these, and they lay where they had fallen, when scrambling out of the boats, all that day and all the night, until next morning.

After the Worcesters captured Hill 138, there was very little firing for some time. Later on, before sunset, the beach party had the joy of helping to run two field-guns out of horse-boats, and helped to haul them up the gully with hook-ropes--hauling them almost as high as the trench they had occupied in the early morning, then hurrying back for their limbers.

"What a thing to remember!" the Lamp-post said, patting the tarpaulin-covered gun, and panting with the exertion of hauling it up the steep gully. "Fancy helping with the very first gun to land!"

Dusk came, and night fell grey and calm. Flares--oil flares, the same as those one sees over a green-grocer's barrow, in a market, at home--were lighted and placed along the beach. No one had a "stand easy".

"What have you got?" would be shouted as a loaded boat crept in through the dark. "Come over this way--haul on that rope under your bows--that's better--there's room here."

Perhaps they were Ordnance stores or Army Service stores--each had to be kept apart--the coloured stripes on the boxes would be scanned by the light of a lantern or of the flares. The bluejackets hoisted them on to the shore, and placed them in separate heaps for the soldier working-parties to take away to their proper "depots", already formed, one on one side of the gully, the other on the other side. Hour after hour this work went on; the men commenced to realize that they were almost "played out", and, without thinking, would throw themselves down and rest whenever there was the chance. Rifle-fire grew as the night went on, and wounded came back with stories of strong Turkish counter-attacks on the ridge beyond the cliffs. If they had had time to notice it they would have heard one continuous splutter of musketry, but they were too tired to do anything except go on working mechanically.

At about midnight things became serious. Several men on the beach had been hit by stray bullets, and word was passed round to put out all the flares; news came that the troops up above were exhausted and running short of ammunition, and eventually the order ran along the beach: "Everyone with a rifle to fall in!"

The bluejacket beach party dropped their boxes and groped for their rifles, fell in, and were marched by the Lamp-post and Bubbles up the gully again. The Pink Rat dashed about carrying orders from the Commander and the Beach-master.

Those who had no rifles were told to get hold of ammunition-boxes and find their way up to the firing-line. The position was really serious at this time, though Bubbles and the Lamp-post were much too stupefied with fatigue to realize this.

Once up at the top of the gully, someone gave the order to turn to the left, and led the beach party up the slope. Things were evidently pretty lively; the air seemed alive with bullets, and the ridge was outlined by spurts of flame. They came to a trench running parallel with, and below, this ridge, and were told to lie down in it. "Line out, men! You may be wanted to reinforce the firing-trench in front. Don't fire unless you get the order," and the officer, whoever he was, disappeared in the dark, leaving Bubbles and the Lamp-post--now thoroughly awake--to spread their men along the trench. Some of their friends--the Ansons--joined them, and presently the Beach-master, the Commander, and the Pink Rat found them too.

For an hour they lay there doing nothing, Bubbles and the Lamp-post lying flat on their stomachs, next to a Staff officer at a telephone, who told them from time to time how things were "going". They both hoped that the front trench _would_ require reinforcing.

Then they were taken out of that trench, and brought back to one still farther in the rear--almost on the edge of the cliffs. The men, losing interest, coiled up and went to sleep.

Some time afterwards there were calls for "volunteers to carry up ammunition"--the firing-line was "shrieking" for more cartridges.

"Let's go!" the Lamp-post suggested. "We're not doing any good here; we can carry boxes all right."

They found the Commander, who gave them leave. "Be careful," he said; "and you're not to stop up there."

They scrambled to their right, to the foot of the gully, and found the stacked ammunition-boxes by marking the line of men who came from them carrying boxes on their shoulders.

They seized a box between them. A small man--it was the Beach-master's servant--was trying to lift one on his shoulder. The three of them took the two between them--Bubbles gripping a loop of each box--and together they "lugged" them up the gully.

At the top stood someone shouting out: "You go straight on along the edge of the cliff.--Keep along the Turks' trench there, as far as you can go; that'll take you right.--You go straight up the slope, away from the sea.--You get along to the left, as far as you can go--keep going uphill."

As the Lamp-post, Bubbles, and the little servant came panting up, he sent them along the edge of the cliff, in the lighthouse direction. "Hurry along!" he called after them. "Keep along the trench."

Off they went as fast as they could; an ill-assorted trio, for the Lamp-post's long legs and the servant's short ones did not keep step. The little man panted in the rear, but kept on bravely; Bubbles's two hands soon began to be cramped.

They found the trench and followed it. The night was almost pitch-dark; but the rifle-firing ahead, to the left of them, gave an unsteady light, just sufficient for them to see the dark line of the trench. On their right, the cool wind blew gently up from the sea and the edge of the cliffs; it seemed to be humming with bullets. People kept meeting them--appearing out of the darkness, bumping into them, and disappearing; all had the same cry--"Hurry up!" as they dashed down for more ammunition.

"How much farther?" Bubbles, whose hands were so cramped that he could not now feel his fingers, called to a passing soldier.

"A hundred yards," the man shouted as he ran past.

The Lamp-post caught his foot in something and fell; the box of ammunition fell out of Bubbles's cramped fingers--fell on something soft--a dead man. The Lamp-post jumped up, seized the box, hoisted it on his shoulder, and disappeared ahead; Bubbles and the servant followed with the other.

They were very near the front trench now; the whole ridge near the lighthouse and to the left of them was almost continuously outlined by the flashes of incessant musketry.

Bubbles panted--his ear-drums were splitting--the little servant was catching his breath with half-frightened gulps. Then they cannoned against a bend in the trench, and were going on, when a gruff voice sang out: "Put it down here! Keep your heads down, damn you! Cut away back for more!"

The Lamp-post joined them, breathing hard, and together, empty-handed, they ran back as fast as the narrowness of the trench and the darkness would allow them; the noise of the bullets coming along from behind, and pinging round their ears, making them go faster.

Those two field-guns began firing just about then, lighting up the whole place with the glare of their flash, so that they could see, every time they fired, the trench in front of them, and the "drawn" faces of the men coming along it with more ammunition-boxes.

The noise of these guns and their bursting shrapnel was most comforting. They realized then why it is that soldiers so love the sound of supporting guns.

They regained the gully, dashed down it, and got hold of more ammunition. Each of the midshipmen put a box on his shoulder this time, and left the little servant to bring up a case by himself as best he could. On their way along the trench, at a place where it was deep and narrow, they had to push past two men crouching together.

"What's the matter? What are you doing?" they asked, taking a breather.

"We're wounded," they answered in a dull, stupid way.

"Can you walk?"

"Yes."

"Well, don't block up the place. Get away back to the beach."

When they returned, these two were still there.

The Lamp-post had tripped over their feet and their rifles, and they blocked the trench.

"Where are you wounded?" he asked savagely.

"In the arm," one said, holding his right arm; the other growled sullenly that he'd been hit in the shoulder.

Like lightning the Lamp-post pulled up the man's sleeve and his shirt-sleeve, and ran his fingers up the arm. He tore open the other man's tunic, and passed his hand under his shirt and over his shoulder--felt nothing--felt no blood on his hands--looked at them as a field-gun flashed, and found none.

"Get out of it!" he yelled at them. "You're neither of you touched."

"We ain't 'ad nothink to eat since last night," one of them whined.

"Get out of it!" the Lamp-post kept yelling. "Go back to your regiment," and losing his temper completely, as the two men never attempted to move, struck one in the face--hard; but he was so absolutely cowed and exhausted that he only uttered a pitiful moan, and sunk a little farther down in the trench.

"If you are here when I come back," the Lamp-post hissed, "I'll shoot the two of you!" and the two snotties doubled back for more ammunition, passing the little servant staggering along under his load. "I'm all right, sir!" he gasped as they passed along the trench. When they did come back for the third time, those two men had disappeared, they never knew where. They were the only panic-stricken men they saw that day or night.

On their third return journey the volume of fire was appreciably lessening, and they brought back word that no more ammunition was wanted in that direction. They were sent back to the beach party, and wandered about for a long time on the exposed slope above the gully until they stumbled across them, and reported themselves to the Commander. "We took up six cases between us, and the Captain's servant--that little chap--took up two at least." Then they flung themselves down beside their friend with the telephone, who told them that "all was gay".

Most of the men in that trench were sound asleep, and the two tired snotties would have fallen asleep too, had not the Pink Rat glided along the trench to ask them where they'd been and what they'd done.

"I should have loved it," he kept on saying, "only the Commander wouldn't let me go."

They did not altogether believe him.

Rifle-firing had now dwindled to an occasional shot from some nervous rifle. The Turks by this time had given up any idea of pushing our people back into the sea, and only the two field-guns kept up a monotonous barking all night through.

Just before dawn the beach party was withdrawn, and staggered down to "W" beach to commence another day's work; and, later on, Bubbles overheard one horny A.B. explain to a fat A.S.C. sergeant: "If those soldier chaps 'ad given way a bit, us chaps would 'ave 'ad a chawnce; but they 'eld on--the silly blighters!"

That beach party, ever afterwards, had a grievance.

Before the men "set to" again, they were given a little time to get food. Then they started to unload more stores. Stores simply poured ashore: clumsy bulky things like water-carts--more guns--two 60-pounder "heavy" guns and their limbers (these were placed in position behind the ridge, almost at the end of the Peninsula)--reels of telephone cable--tents for stores--hundreds and hundreds of boxes of ammunition--balks of timber for piers.

Horses began to arrive--big fellows for the heavy guns--Clydesdales perhaps--great lovable fellows with a roguish eye for the beach, which made the sailors love them all the more. These last they handled as no one else in the world can handle them. Give a bluejacket anything on four feet, from an elephant to a pig, and he'll get it ashore all right. They've got "a way with them", and can coax a nervous horse or an obstinate mule better than anyone else--or think they can, which is more than half the battle. Perhaps the whole secret lies in the fact that they are so accustomed to shifting heavy weights that, if a beast resists all their blandishments, they know that hauling on to a rope passed round their "sterns" will work the oracle.

Luckily, by the time they reached the shore in horse-boats, these poor, patient creatures had gone through so many extraordinary experiences that they did not worry much what happened to them. It was grand to see their pleasure when they felt firm ground once more under their feet and, when they were taken up the gully, saw grass growing once again. Mules came--mules in hundreds; but nobody can be really fond of a mule--not in a passing acquaintance, anyway.

The Sappers made great headway with their pier of trestles, casks, and planks--No. 3 Pier--some way to the east of the pontoons they had placed in position, the day before, and called No. 2 Pier. They also discovered a freshwater spring at the foot of the cliffs, about two hundred yards beyond "W" beach. The discovery of this seems now a little matter, hardly worth recording; but quite possibly it was the most important event of the twenty-four hours.

That day, also, the few Turkish prisoners who had been captured, unwounded, set to work with a will to build a small breakwater, which eventually became the base of No. 1 Pier.

The "Howe" Battalion, R.N.D., also began making roadways.

Work for the beach party became slacker towards night, not because there was less to do, but because the men were absolutely "played out". Officers and men had a regular "stand off", after dark, and a proper meal. They also had time to peg off the site for the naval camp with ropes, just below the Ordnance Store Depots, and to lay down some strips of canvas on the sandy ground. They were also put in two "watches", half of them working for four hours, and the other half working for the next four, and so on.

Bubbles, who had the first watch "off", crept under his bit of canvas and fell asleep in a "brace of shakes", whilst the Lamp-post stalked back to the beach with his own section of men, and went on working. If it had been light enough to see that young officer's face, you would have noticed that his eyes seemed to have sunk back into his head, and that he kept on biting his lips to keep himself awake.

*CHAPTER XII*

*Off Cape Helles*