Part 13

During the days whilst the piers were being built, the weather was magnificent and the sea quite calm. It never blew at all until the 3rd May, when a breeze got up from the north-east and swept clouds of sand off the ridge above "W" beach--a regular sandstorm, which hid it from the view of the ships for several hours. This fact is very good proof of the enormous amount of trampling which had converted the green ridge and gully into a waste of dry sand in only nine days. The wind increased all the night of the 3rd May, and blew quite hard on the 4th; and though "W" beach gave a "lee", a very unpleasant swell swept round the end of the Peninsula, and made the going alongside the pontoon and trestle pier very tricky work. Lighters empty and lighters loaded broke adrift, and the Orphan had the job of rescuing several; and in doing so knocked his picket-boat about a good deal, and stove a hole in her side, abreast the engine-room, which made it absolutely necessary for her to be hoisted in and patched. The Commander cursed him for his carelessness, and made the poor Orphan miserable until Captain Macfarlane happened to see him. "A day off to-day, Mr. Orpen?" he asked, with a twinkle in his eye, for he knew what had happened.

"I knocked a hole in the picket-boat, sir," the Orphan answered gloomily.

"Only one?" the Captain said, tugging at his yellow, pointed beard. "Only one? Why, when I was a midshipman---- Oh! Here comes the Admiral! I have not time to tell you what I could do in those days in the way of breaking up boats. Come to my cabin and have tea with me in half an hour." The Orphan felt a different "man" after that.

He took the opportunity of his boat being inboard to give her a coat of paint, which hardly had time to dry before she was hoisted out and back again in the water.

Now all this time the Orphan had scarcely set foot on shore, because whenever he took his picket-boat alongside one or other of the piers at "W" beach, there was so much risk of her being damaged that he dare not leave her. He was as wild and harum-scarum a young officer as could be met with, when not in his beloved picket-boat; but once he took charge of her he never forgot that he _was_ in charge of her, and responsible for her safety; and this not because he feared the Commander's sharp tongue or the displeasure of Captain Macfarlane, but from a very firm sense of duty, which he would probably have most indignantly denied if told that that was the reason.

"Hang it all!" he often said, when Bubbles tempted him "to just leave your old boat and come along and see our dug-out"; "but, old Bubbles, I can't, that's all, I'd love to, but I can't."

However, virtue was rewarded, for when the _Achates_ became "bombarding" ship, he and his picket-boat were placed under the orders of the Beach-master at "W" beach. Nothing could have given him greater pleasure. Whenever she was not actually required for duty, and could safely anchor off the beach, he lived ashore with Bubbles and the Lamp-post, and shared their tent, or their "dug-out" if they were being shelled. He had a splendid time: the best time of the three of them, for he was away in his boat most of the day, so escaped nearly all the heavy shells and the abominable pestilential flies; had every other night "in"--often two or three "running"--and could wrap himself up in his blanket and sleep splendidly, outside the tent and under the open sky, with his picket-boat safely anchored a hundred yards off the beach, with Jarvis in charge of her.

Probably of all the Honourable Mess, the Orphan enjoyed himself the most thoroughly.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*The Army comes to a Standstill*

On the day after the landing--the Monday--the French troops who had been disembarked on the Asiatic shore and had captured 500 prisoners were re-embarked, and the whole of the French Expeditionary Force commenced to land on "V" beach, where the poor old _River Clyde_ lay, aground, under the castle.

On Tuesday the whole Allied forces advanced for two miles along the plain towards the white village of Krithia and the high ridge of Achi Baba, which barred their way. They met with very little resistance.

On the Wednesday a further advance was made; but at the end of the day the Turks counter-attacked so fiercely that it became necessary for our troops to dig themselves in, when they were yet a mile from the village. The Allied army was now "up against" the position which the Turks had so carefully prepared with all the ingenuity and skill their German instructors had taught them, and, for all practical purposes, no real further impression was made on this position during the remainder of "The Great Adventure".

It was on the Tuesday afternoon that Bubbles and the Lamp-post first came under shrapnel-fire. They had obtained leave, for half an hour, to climb up the ridge above "W" beach, and watch the progress of the advance in the plain below them; and whilst there, the Turks began bursting shrapnel above and all around it. This they took all as part of the game, and were rather pleased than otherwise when one shell, bursting not very far above and in front of them, scattered bullets in the ground close by.

Bubbles burst out with a loud guffaw of enjoyment, and would have remained standing where he was--on the sky-line; but the Lamp-post, who had a very old head on his young shoulders, made him take cover in the Turkish trench there--a trench which our Sappers had already begun to deepen.

"It's no use for us to be knocked out," he said; "and it's a rotten kind of bravery not to take cover when you aren't doing anyone any good by making a target of yourself."

It was on that afternoon that Captain Macfarlane, coming ashore to stretch his long legs and to see how things were going with the beach party, happened to find Bubbles and the Lamp-post. The Beach-master's servant had just made them a cup of tea, so they, rather nervously, asked him if he would have one. Of course he would; so they sent the little man away to borrow the Pink Rat's enamelled mug. The Captain had just walked back from the lighthouse, and along the trench up which the midshipmen had carried those boxes of ammunition on the Sunday night. He had heard of this, and was speaking about it when the servant came back. Frightened out of his life he was, the miserable-looking little man, to wait upon so important an officer as Captain Macfarlane. The sight of a strange naval Captain simply terrified him, and made him quite incoherent.

"He helped us," they said. "He took up two by himself, and then helped with another. He was jolly plucky, sir!"

"You must have found them very heavy, didn't you?" the Captain said kindly. "It was a very plucky thing to do, under those conditions. What is your name? I must remember it."

But the little man looked more frightened than ever, dropped the cup he was carrying, opened his mouth, couldn't speak a word, and simply fled.

Captain Macfarlane smiled and pulled his beard. "A strange thing is courage," he said. "It comes at times to the most unlikely people. You can't legislate for it. Now, that little chap probably deserves the D.C.M.[#], if anybody does; and if he had it he would very likely suffer agonies all his life, dreading lest he should have to 'live up to it'."

[#] D.C.M. = Distinguished Conduct Medal.

Before he went away, the Captain advised them to dig "dug-outs" for themselves.

"But the shrapnel hardly comes as far as the ridge," they said; "and they tried to reach the beach this morning from the Asiatic side and couldn't. We saw the shells falling three or four hundred yards short--four of them. Nothing but a few bullets come near here."

"Young gentlemen,"--he smiled, with that kindly, humorous expression of his--"the Turks will bring up more guns in a few days, mark my word, and probably advance those they have. When they do, it won't be only shrapnel and small stuff, so you had better be ready."

But they thought this rather useless waste of time; they didn't mind what came--or thought they didn't--and besides, the soldiers would capture Achi Baba in a few days, and then no Turkish guns could reach them.

"We _shall_ capture that hill in a day or two, shan't we, sir?" they asked; but he only smiled his inscrutable smile, and added: "Young gentlemen, take my advice."

He took them round to select a spot, but nowhere within the limits which the Navy had pegged out as its camp was the ground anywhere steep enough to dig a cave, which, as he told them, "was of course the best of all." He tugged at his beard and smiled again as he looked at a very suitable place just to the left and below the Naval Camp boundary. "Well, you will have to do your best--where you are: the Navy cannot poach, can it?--not on these occasions."

So that very night, whenever they had any time to spare, they began to dig a hole for themselves in the gentle slope on the left of the gully, just behind where the naval mess-tent was eventually put up. Spades were plentiful, and they thought it great fun, although they were rather shy of being the first to do this. However, everyone followed their example--in fact the Beach-master ordered some form of protection to be dug for everyone.

They scooped a place away about four feet wide, and by digging downwards, and nibbling, and broadening it, they soon had a "funk-hole" where all three of them could squeeze uncomfortably. They did try, by undermining the slope, to get some protection overhead; but the slope was too gentle for this to be a success, and the top kept falling in, especially if someone happened to walk near it. No timber was as yet available, so their "dug-out" had really no cover at all, but was simply a deep furrow, deeper at one end than the other.

Though they did this at first for fun, and because Captain Macfarlane had advised them to do it, they were very glad they had taken his advice when, a few days later, the Turks did advance their field-guns and peppered the ridge, the gully leading to it, and "W" beach itself very liberally, not only with shrapnel, but also with common shell. Few of these common shell burst, and when they did, seldom hurt anyone; but no one, however brave or however small, can stand in a place which is being shelled, without feeling that he is the biggest thing there--for miles round--or the most conspicuous person, however many others are round him. The casualties from this first day of thoughtful and thorough shelling were very slight, considering the crowded state of the area, and the men's principal anxiety was to obtain fragments of shells or intact unexploded ones, digging those out before they had time to get cool. However, the competition in making "dug-outs" certainly became much more keen afterwards.

Neither the periods of being shelled nor the making of "dug-outs" was allowed to interfere with the work of the beach parties.

Those men who happened to be off duty crawled into their "funk-holes", but the others went on working; and of course, as most of them were employed below the cliffs, they really were not--as were the soldiers' working-parties stacking stores on the slopes--exposed the whole of the time.

In those first four days an enormous amount of work was done; mountains of stores were piled on either side of the gully, mules and horses in hundreds were landed, guns and their limbers--18-pounders, long 60-pounders, heavy guns and squat 6-inch howitzers--water carts, transport carts, and ambulance wagons. Hundreds of light two-wheeled carts were brought ashore, in readiness to follow the Army when the advance, which was fated never to take place, commenced; and by the end of the first week the slope between the ridge and the cliff, from the end of the Peninsula to Cape Helles lighthouse, was one orderly mass of mule and horse lines, transport "parks" and stores, and the ground which had been so covered with grass and scrubby bushes had been worn bare, as barren as the beach and the cliffs themselves.

Until the fifth day the beach parties had lived in the open, but on that day several marquees and tents were brought ashore and pitched for them. Quite a cosy little collection of white tents they made, at the bottom of the left-hand slope of the gully.

On the Thursday and Friday very little happened. The Army was digging itself in a mile and a half from Krithia, and about three miles from the ridge over "W" beach; practically all guns had been landed; the whole of the Royal Naval Division and other reinforcements had disembarked; and several thousand wounded had been safely sent on board the hospital ships, and transports used as hospital carriers.

On the Saturday night the Turks, at about ten o'clock, commenced a desperate effort, first to pierce our lines (which they did, momentarily, but only momentarily), and afterwards to drive the French into the sea.

The Lamp-post had a night "in" that night; and when the noise of firing woke him, was comfortably snuggled in a corner of the mess marquee, rolled in his blanket. The crackling of rifle-firing broke out on the left at first, and grew so fierce and incessant that he realized this was something quite different to anything he had heard before.

That counter-attack on the first Sunday, when he and Bubbles had helped to take up ammunition, was as nothing compared to it, and had not made him feel nervous--or perhaps anxious is a better word--as this did. He then had had something to do; but now, after a very hard day's work, and two spells of being shelled, he had nothing to do but lie there and listen to the really appalling din of musketry, field-guns, and the roar of the two 60-pounders on the end of the Peninsula, above him, which, every time they fired, lighted up the inside of the marquee and shook the ground beneath him.

As he lay, undecided as to whether or no he should get up and see what was happening, the intensity of the firing grew, until it reached such a pitch of frenzy that he felt certain that this must be the prelude to hand-to-hand fighting. He could not help but feel nervous. He was not blessed with a dull imagination, and he could not prevent himself picturing what was happening beyond the ridge, and what _would_ happen if the Turks drove in our thin lines and forced them back to the sea below. He worked himself into such a state of nerves that at last, when the French "75's" broke into rapid firing--one continuous screech--he could stand it no longer, pulled on his boots, and went outside the marquee. Out over the Straits the sea was all a glitter of transports' lights as usual, and the row of "flares" along the beach lighted up the beach parties unloading boats, and the working parties wearily carrying stores towards the two flares which marked the depots on the slopes of the gully--all went on just as usual. But horse teams with their limbers were coming down from the ridge, past him, towards the ammunition depots, at the bottom of the gully--coming down at an unaccustomed speed; and he heard their drivers shouting impatiently for their limbers to be filled.

He ran to one of these, who had swung round his limber and was now trying to calm the big horse he was sitting--the "near leader" of the team.

"What's going on?" the Lamp-post asked.

"They've broken through the 86th," the man told him; "came on without firing a shot--the beggars!" But the midshipman could get nothing more out of him.

"I don't know nothing more. Curse this darned horse! Keep still, can't you? My job's to get more of the stuff up to the guns. I don't know nothink. Chuck it, yer blighted fools! Ain't yer been long enough together? Cawn't yer smell who you've got next yer?"

The two horses were nosing each other, one trying to bite, and both fretting.

"They ain't worked together afore," he said, as the Lamp-post, who loved horses, separated their heads and rubbed their noses soothingly. "I 'ad to get a fresh 'off leader' this morning; the other was killed just t'other side of that 'ere ridge--shrapnel summat cruel there, all day--cawn't move a team but bang bursts a shrapnel--and they've been bursting shrapnel now, all along the road we've just come and have to go back by--curse them! This darned fool brute--chuck it, you blighter!"--as the horse he was sitting slyly bit the neck of the new "off leader", who sidled and trembled--"'e cawn't abide a stranger. 'Ere, stop that kicking! 'Old yer 'eads up, cawn't yer?"

He jerked the two horses apart as the two "wheelers" behind them began to plunge, and their driver to curse as he steadied them.

"'Struth! Ain't they fair cautions? Almost 'uman," growled the Lamp-post's friend.

Someone in the rear of the limber banged down the limber covers and shouted: "Right away, Bob!"

"Stand clear! Get up, you brutes!" and the drivers cracked their whips; but the wheels of the limber had stuck in the sand, and the four horses, excited and plunging, and not pulling together, could not move them.

"Clap on, you chaps! Give us a start!" shouted the drivers; and the Lamp-post and some more men hauled on the spokes of the wheels; the whips cracked, and this time the horses moved the limber, and away it went, jolting up the gully, on its way back with more shells for its battery, somewhere in the valley.

The Lamp-post followed it up the ridge, and there, for two hours and more, he watched the battle in the dark, hundreds of men standing near him. Compared to that Sunday night fight, the noise was as the inside of a boiler-shop, with work in full swing, to the noise of a country blacksmith's forge; and the sight of it like a Crystal Palace firework night, to the five or six shillings' worth of squibs and rockets he and his brothers used to have at home on the 5th November.

He had read of the famous French "75's", but he had thought the descriptions probably more picturesque than real. Now, as he listened to their extraordinarily determined voices, they seemed so self-confident, so absolutely sure of themselves, that he no longer wondered why the French almost worshipped them; and when they started rapid fire, as they did occasionally, a whole battery, sometimes two together, he realized that this was the glorious _rafale_ he had heard so much about.

More empty limbers came toiling up from the valley, unable to go fast because of the darkness, and only dashing across the area over which shrapnel were bursting. The drivers of these passed the word, as they went down the gully, that the Turks had been driven back again, and the line made good. That was reassuring.

He heard Bubbles laughing and guffawing somewhere near, and found him. "The Commander let me come along for half an hour. Isn't it a grand show?"

Whilst they stood there, many tilted wagons passed down into the valley, their wheels creaking and the mule chains jangling; and as those 60-pounders fired, their glare lighted up the white patches and the red crosses painted on them.

A regiment (it had only come back from the trenches the previous afternoon) came up the gully, the men dragging their shuffling feet through the sand, and voices calling wearily: "Step out, men! Don't go to sleep, lads! Close up, lads! Pull yourselves together!" The head of it bent over the ridge and trailed down into the valley, till, like a long snake, it disappeared in the darkness.

When the half-hour which Bubbles had been allowed was "up", the Lamp-post went back with him. The Turks had evidently broken themselves, and their attack was weakening; also, he was dead tired. He threw himself down in the marquee and slept till daybreak, not even wakened by a still more furious attack delivered, later on, against the French flank--an attack which was only repulsed after very heavy losses.

The ambulance wagons came back in the morning crammed; wounded who could walk, stumbled down to the beach, lay down, and slept; also, a large batch of Turkish prisoners came along with a grinning escort. That day there was another general advance, with heavy casualties but little progress; and on the following night the Turks attacked again, more impetuously than the night before. This time they threw their whole weight against the French flank and against the section held by the Senegalese troops, who had been very severely punished already. These troops are not suited for defensive night-work, and again they gave way. The Lamp-post--on duty this time--down on the beach, could be almost certain that they had given way, by the continuous roar of the _rafales_, and again he could not help being anxious until news came that all was well.

These two nights completely cured him of the nervousness which is only natural for anyone who has had no previous experience; and though there were countless attacks and counter-attacks in the nights to come, they never worried him, nor, if he were asleep, was he often wakened when those 60-pounders "chipped in" and shook the ground under him.

In the early mornings, after these nights, the tired, haggard, earth-stained "working-parties" came back from the trenches, where they had been fighting all night, bringing tales of creeping bombing-parties, of furious rushes right up to their parapets, and of encounters between their night patrols, helping back the wounded, and perhaps escorting a few Turkish prisoners. These tales made each night's fighting a little epic of its own.

To Bubbles, the Lamp-post never confided his ideas or emotions, because that fat, joyous midshipman looked upon the whole thing as one vast "spree", with a spice of danger that only added to its attractions. Each wounded man who was sent off to the ships, he envied his honourable wound, and the fact that many of them were maimed for life never entered his mind, nor the tragedy of the women and children dependent on them.

The day after that second big counter-attack, during a bout of shelling from some field-guns concealed below Achi Baba, a shell came into a "dug-out" where a petty officer and two men of the beach party were sitting, and killed all three. After this, more spare time than ever was spent on deepening these "dug-outs". Then followed two more days of desperate fighting for the capture of Krithia village, and ghastly, never-ending streams of wounded came down the gully to the casualty clearing-station, whose white tents had been pitched above the cliffs, to the right of it. Our losses were terrific, and our gains practically nil. As a set-off to the splendid failure of the centre, the Gurkhas captured a commanding cliff on the left flank--Gurkha Bluff--and under protection of fire from the _Talbot_ and _Dublin_, dug themselves in so securely that these gallant little men never let go their hold on it.

The continual strain of those first two weeks was already beginning to tell on the three snotties--hardly noticeable, perhaps, in the case of Bubbles, though he was undoubtedly thinner; but the Pink Rat was one mass of nerves--he jumped if anyone spoke to him suddenly--and he lost his appetite. The Lamp-post became more silent and thoughtful than before, and his nerves, too, were very "rocky", but he had such strong control over himself that no one could have thought that this was so.

Their clothes were stained with good honest dirt, and torn and ragged from honest hard work. They became such unpresentable scarecrows that at last the Beach-master suggested that an improvement was desirable. So they went across to the Ordnance Stores and hunted out the stock sizes of the soldiers suits in store, which would fit them best. They also obtained puttees, and after those first ten days or two weeks the only thing "naval" about them was their caps.