Part 26

"You'd better go up to the Mess," the R.N.R. Sub told them. "You'll probably find him up there."

He gave them two men to carry their gear, and with "Kaiser Bill" under the Orphan's arm they stumbled along the pier in the dark till their feet scrunched into the sand on "W" beach.

"What a time since we were here!" Bubbles blurted out; and: "Isn't it grand to get back again?" the Orphan chuckled.

There were no flares now, the shore was absolutely dark.

They started off along the beach towards where the main gully road used to be; but everything had so changed, and it was so dark, that they soon had to let the two seamen with their bundles lead the way--off that beach, up a broad, firm road, turning to the left along a narrow path, then down some wooden steps, and so to a dark "cutting" in the side of the slope, at the end of which a glow of light showed through half-opened folding-doors.

"Here's the Officers' Mess, sir. Glad to see you on shore, sir," said one of the seamen; and the Orphan recognized Plunky Bill's voice.

"Hello! You here? How are things going?"

"Pretty quiet, sir; nothing much doing."

"Are they going to evacuate the place?"

"I ain't 'eard nothing. We've been landing a good many of the soldiers round from Suvla--a good show--down there, sir. I ain't 'eard nothing about nobody going off."

Bubbles, looking in through the doors and seeing no one inside, asked him where the Sub was.

"Don't see much of him, sir. I works down at No. 1 Pier--mostly. Well, we'll stick your gear 'ere. Some of the officers will be a-coming up soon."

"'Kaiser Bill' has come along--for luck," the Orphan said; and Plunky Bill stepped into the lamp-light from the half-open door to have a look at him in his box.

"'E will bring luck all right, sir. I wish we'd 'ad 'im at that there Ajano place."

Then they were left alone, went inside through the door--evidently the folding-doors from the saloon of one of the sunken steamers--into a pantry sort of place, through it into a long room some 9 feet high, 20 feet long, and 12 feet broad, with a wooden floor and a wooden ceiling, from which an oil-lamp hung--the lamp which had glowed through the doorway--over a long wooden table littered with newspapers, and with a wooden bench on either side of it. At the far end was a fire-place--alight and burning cosily--some deck chairs round it, a packing-case full of coal in the corner, and a very dilapidated card-table.

"Look how they make cupboards!" said Bubbles excitedly, and pointed to two shell-boxes let into the clay walls. "Isn't that 'cute'?"

Then from outside came a loud voice. "My jumping Jimmy! D'you think I'm going to land a hundred tons of hay a night like this? Not if I know it. It would all get soaked. Tell him to wait till the morning; the sea will have gone down by then."

The Sub came in, calling out: "Outside! Outside! Pantry! Pantry! Bring me a bottle of beer!" And seeing the two midshipmen, burst out with: "Yoicks, my merry kippers! My bubbling Bubbles! My perishing Orphan! Pantry! Pantry! Bring three bottles!"

"They've sent you two here, have they? Good egg! Well, you'll have lots to do, and a lot of shell-dodging. They've got a better brand in stock now--burst every time. Hello! There goes one!" he said, as the roaring thud of a bursting shell came from somewhere up the ridge, and some bits of dried clay broke away from the walls and rattled down on the wooden floor. "That fell in the Ordnance Stores. They've had a lot there lately."

"Where's it from? Achi Baba?" asked the Orphan.

"Old 'Asiatic Annie'--a 6-inch. She's a confounded nuisance. What d'you think of my 'dug-out'? Come and see where I 'pig' it;" and the Sub took them past the fire-place into a little room beyond, and, flashing his electric torch, showed them two beds, a small table, cupboard places in the mud walls, a stove, and two little wash-stands--evidently taken out of a ship. "We've got lots of stuff from these sunken hulks. Snug little place, isn't it?--especially when we light the stove in the corner."

"Are we going to live here?" the midshipmen asked.

"Good heavens, no, my wriggling worms! You won't live with the aristocracy. Come along, and I'll show you your 'pigsty'--another 'dug-out', which we call the dormitory."

A fine-looking old Leading Seaman, an old Naval Reserve man named Richards--he may have been fifty, he may have been sixty--came in with the three glasses of beer, just as another tremendous roar shook the wooden beams overhead and made the tin lamp-shade rattle--it sounded not twenty yards away.

"In the Sappers' place, that one, sir; they're starting early to-night," the old chap said, putting the tray on the table.

"Send these officers' gear round to the dormitory; you'll find it outside," the Sub told him.

"They've gone already, sir," Richards said.

"What's on top of those beams?" the Orphan asked, a little anxiously, as another roaring explosion thudded the air, not quite so near as the last.

"A new tarpaulin, my Orphan! I stole it yesterday. It's waterproof, too!"

"Can those things come in here?"

"There's nothing to prevent 'em," grinned the Sub. "Come along, and we'll peg out a claim for you two in the dormitory. Hello! what the devil have you got there?" he said, seeing "Kaiser Bill's" box on the table, and opening it, roared with laughter. "Old Fletcher made you bring him?"

"He made me take him for Suvla evacuation--for luck--and the Captain told me I'd better bring him here, as he'd brought luck there."

"Are they going to evacuate this place?" they both asked at the same time.

The Sub shook his head. "I don't think so. So you were at Suvla? Of course you were; you'll have to tell me all about it. What a splendid show that was! Our chaps here made a pretence of advancing that same day--lost a lot of people."

By now he had taken them through the cutting. "That's the kitchen," he said, as he took them out of the mess and they passed a place with a light in it; "old Richards looks after it, and us, like a mother." He led them through another deep cutting, and through an opening closed by a door--evidently a door taken from the cabin of one of the sunken hulks. "More loot," the Sub said, switching on his torch and leading the way into a long place with a few planks laid over the clayey earth, with earth walls and a timber roof. Six beds were already there, with bags between them, and their own bundles lay, lonely, in the middle.

He showed them a corner where they could spread out their beds. "I'll get some planks put there in the morning," he told them. "You'd better come along and see the Captain now; he'll be up in his 'dug-out' by this time, I expect."

As they went out on to the open slope, climbed up to a road which ran immediately at the back of the dormitory, another high-explosive shell burst high up the ridge, lighting up a few white tents.

The Orphan winced and Bubbles chuckled.

Then it was all dark again. "Mind those steps; keep close to me; here we are," and the Sub took them along another cutting to the Naval Transport Officer's "dug-out".

They found this naval Captain there, washing the sand off his face.

"Two of our midshipmen, sir; the two we expected."

He turned round--a short, thick-set man with a bullet-shaped, closely cropped head--and he wiped the soap-suds off his mahogany-coloured face.

"All right; the Sub will show you where to go; glad to have you," and he waved them away.

They went back towards the Mess.

"You'll have to take charge of a picket-boat," the Sub told Bubbles; "and you, Orphan, will have to do odd jobs under me--all sorts of things: cleaning up the camp, fetching coal, any old thing. Ah! look out! here comes another!"

They heard the whistling swish of a shell, and then another glare, and another tremendous explosion burst, just the other side of the Naval Mess.

Instinctively they had thrown themselves down on the ground; something hurtled past and buried itself in the sand close by; and as they scrambled to their feet the Sub said angrily: "Confound them! Come along back to the Mess; you can have a wash in my basin, and then it will be time for dinner."

Two soldiers--a Major and a subaltern, the Military Landing Officers--a R.N.R. lieutenant, and two R.N.R. sub-lieutenants came in at odd times for dinner. The Sub hurried through his meal, put on a thick coat, and warmed himself in front of the fire before going down to the beach.

"Is there much to do to-night?" asked one of the soldier officers--the subaltern.

"Absolutely nothing, old chap, except to get off a tug, two steamboats, something like half a dozen lighters driven ashore last night; try and repair about twenty feet of No. 1 Pier washed away by the other gale, and see what can be done with the 'Inner Hulk'--she broke her back when the pier 'went', and we'll have to try and get a gangway across the gap; otherwise I can't think of anything."

Two of the R.N.R. officers went with him, but he sent the two midshipmen to turn in. Neither of them had had any proper sleep for three days, and they both had been nodding and yawning, and looking stupidly tired all through that meal.

So they turned in, put "Kaiser Bill" between them for luck, and slept like "tops".

*CHAPTER XXIII*

*"In 'Dug-outs' at Cape Helles"*

Richards, that splendid old Leading Seaman who "ran" the Mess, brought them both a cup of tea in the morning. "Four bells just struck, sirs; breeze gone round to the north-east, pretty nippy outside it is, but fine. Hands 'fall in' at half-past six." He lighted an oil-lamp and left them.

Bubbles snuggled down under the blankets and would have gone to sleep again, had not the Orphan pulled them off him and made him turn out.

They dressed hurriedly, saw that "Kaiser Bill" was safe in his corner; and by seven o'clock, just before the dawn commenced, Bubbles had taken charge of a very much battered, old picket-boat lying alongside No. 3 Pier; and the Orphan, with a party of five stokers, was sent up behind the Mess to deepen a shallow gutter-way between it and the road, to prevent rain washing off the road on to the top of the dormitory and that new tarpaulin which the Sub had stolen.

He met the Sub coming back from his night's work on the beach, wet through and very fagged. "I got some of those lighters off, but there's another week's work down there at that job," he said.

When daylight came, the Orphan found that "W" beach had altered very much since he had been there, six months and a half ago. The cliffs beyond were crowned by a vast number of hospital tents and marquees; where, previously, the horse and mule "lines" had been, tents and marquees, and huge masses of stores, protected by tarpaulins, now occupied these spaces, and the irregular sandy track up the gully to the ridge had become a wide well-made road with well-metalled roads branching away to left and right. Everywhere there were "dug-outs", not open ones as in those early days, but covered with wooden or galvanized-iron roofs, over which at least one protecting layer of sand-bags had been laid. Motor-lorries dashed along the roads continuously, and seemed to have taken the place of horses and mules almost entirely.

Along the face of the steep cliff, on the far side of the gully from where those one-inch Nordenfeldts and maxims had played such havoc among the Lancashire Fusiliers on the day of the landing, a steep road had been cut in the face of it, and the Orphan saw hundreds of "dug-outs" up there.

Fifty yards below him was the beach itself, with its four little piers--No. 1 Pier to his right, with a gap in it made by the first of the south-west gales; beyond it the "Inner Hulk", a sunken steamer with her back broken; and beyond her, at right angles, another sunken steamer, the "Outer Hulk". At his feet was No. 2 Pier, the first pier the Sappers had begun on the 25th April; and beyond this the longer No. 3 Pier, with its end curving towards the "Outer Hulk", so that a small harbour[#] had been formed in which now lay two little "coaster" steamers, several lighters, and a trawler.

[#] This harbour was called Port Talbot after the Captain of the poor old _Majestic_.

Beyond and to the left, under the high cliff, was No. 4 Pier, more of a mole or jetty than a pier, protected a little from the east by a reef of rocks. It was on this pier that the Orphan, later on, had so much work to do. Farther along still, several lighters had stranded, and one or two were already broken up.

Out towards Tenedos and over against the Asiatic shore the usual trawlers and drifters and a couple of destroyers patrolled for submarines.

But what struck the Orphan most vividly was the emptiness of the Straits between him and the Asiatic shore. In May they had been almost crowded with battleships, transports, hospital ships, ships of all sorts and sizes; now a solitary hospital ship lay off Helles, and only two or three small craft and tugs were anchored inshore.

The Turks fired no shells that morning until the breakfast hour, when two fell among the Sappers' stores and tents, without, however, doing any damage.

After breakfast the Orphan and his stokers had more digging to do, extending the beach party's "dug-outs" at the foot of the low cliff, below the Mess "dug-out", and commencing others. Shells came over every now and then all the morning, but none burst near the Orphan's party. When they knocked off work and started dinner, the Turks over on the Asiatic shore fired many big 6-inch high explosives, which did very little material damage, though they racked his nerves exceedingly.

The Orphan never even pretended that he did not hate those shells; and when, that afternoon, he received orders to take twenty men, embark in a tug, and go down to Rabbit Island to draw coal, he felt extremely pleased to get away from them. Rabbit Island is a tiny little island at the mouth of the Straits, and when he arrived there he found two small monitors with long-range guns busily bombarding the Asiatic guns. The Turks were firing back, and when he went alongside the collier to get his filled coal-bags, one of their wretched shells fell so close to the tug as to splash the bows. The Orphan loaded his coal-bags and started back to "W" beach, realizing that the only thing to do, if he meant to enjoy himself, was simply not to think of shells at all. Of course, in twenty-four hours he had made friends with Richards, that Leading Seaman; and the old man could not help noticing that he flinched whenever a big shell moaned through the air, and burst with its horrid, rending roar. "Look here, sir," he said; "it's just like this: don't you worry about them--it's no use worrying. If you're meant to be killed, killed you will be, wherever you go or whatever you do; so just pay no attention to them."

It is difficult for a youngster to take comfort from such a fatalistic conviction; but by the end of the week the Orphan was able to tell Bubbles that he had not "ducked" once during the last twenty-four hours. "That shows I'm not such a duffer, doesn't it, old chap?" he said proudly.

During those first few days a good deal of mysterious landing and embarking of troops went on, which nobody seemed able to explain--though, as far as anyone in the Naval Mess knew, many more were coming than going. Also, it became known that the new-comers were taking over--gradually--the French section of the line, and that French troops and guns embarked every night. The Turks naturally knew that our men were occupying the French trenches immediately opposite them, so that there was no need for secrecy, and many of the French guns were towed away from "V" beach in broad daylight. A tug would take away a heavily loaded lighter at the end of a very long tow-rope, and "Asiatic Annie" and her sisters often made "towing-target" practice at this lighter and its guns--though without ever hitting them.

The Orphan himself never went to "V" beach, but Bubbles often did so, and found quite a good harbour there, made by a big Messageries Maritimes steamer sunk this side of the _River Clyde_ (apparently none the worse for her seven months of being shelled), and an obsolete old French battleship hulk--the _Massena_--sunk almost to close the gap between them. Whenever the French happened to have a slack night, most of the British nightly reinforcements (from the 9th Corps, which had been at Suvla) landed there.

Christmas Day arrived, and the Turks greeted it with a more than usually heavy shelling of both beaches, the Sappers' and Ordnance Store Depots suffering considerably. This, and an extra good dinner that night--when Richards produced two turkeys, obtained from one of the Greek islands, and several officers contributed Christmas puddings and mince-pies, sent from home by the Christmas mail--marked the day. Otherwise all work went on as usual.

Every now and again the French battleship _Suffren_ came along up the Straits, with her protecting destroyers and trawlers and her "spotting" aeroplane, and bombarded the Asiatic guns for a couple of hours or so. At other times a British battleship repeated the performance with even greater zest; but though those annoying guns remained quiet whilst they were being bombarded, they always opened a very vigorous fire on the beaches directly the battleships had left.

On the other side of the Peninsula, round the "left flank" coast, assisting destroyers very frequently harassed the Turkish trenches on the Achi Baba right flank, and a big monitor almost daily bombarded Achi Baba or Chanak Fort with her big 14-inch guns.

Everything went on as usual, and as though we intended to hold the end of the Peninsula for ever.

Everyone in the Naval Mess was far too busy embarking and disembarking troops and stores by night, preparing for the winter, strengthening their "dug-outs", repairing piers, and patching damaged boats by day, to know exactly what was happening up in the front-line trenches. Intermittent artillery duels, at all hours of every day, went on in the usual manner, and without any apparent especial military object. At night, when working on the piers, they often heard furious bursts of rifle and machine-gun firing, sometimes the bursting of trench bombs; at times field-guns also used to "chip in" at night; but everyone had become so accustomed to all this that no one paid any attention to it or remarked about it.

Shells fell on the beaches and above them just as usual; 6-inch high explosives came from the Asiatic side--two or three an hour--from daylight until two o'clock next morning, at which time the Turkish gunners "packed up". During the men's "stand easy", in the middle of the day, perhaps twenty would come along; and again, at nine o'clock at night, they would start fairly brisk firing for three-quarters of an hour.

The Naval Camp, lying as it did just below the R.E. "Park", and not far from the Ordnance Stores--both favourite targets of "Asiatic Annie "--received a good many of her misses, and most of the "shorts" fell on the beach itself. By this time the men working within this shell area had become so accustomed and hardened to these intermittent noises of shells shrieking towards them and bursting, that work was seldom interrupted. At night, sentries along the beach would watch for the glare made by the flash of the Asiatic howitzers, and would call out "Take cover!" Eighteen seconds afterwards the shell, if fired at "V" beach, would burst there; but if fired at "W" beach twenty seconds elapsed, after the warning shout, before the shell could be heard rushing through the night air with a rapidly increasing "swishing" noise. In twenty-five seconds it arrived, burst with a very vivid flash and that nerve-shaking, rending roar, and did whatever damage it had found to do.

Sometimes, in the silence which followed, would be heard the melancholy call, "Stretcher! Stretcher!" but most frequently a hole in the ground, or a few scattered boxes of stores or bundles of fodder, alone marked where it had fallen and burst.

From Achi Baba came the little 4.1-inch shells at all hours of the day.

People told the Orphan that some ten days after the Belgrade-Nish-Constantinople railway had been reopened through conquered Serbia, it became evident that the Turks were much more lavish with their ammunition.

They must have received ample additional supplies, and, what was still more noticeable, the new shells nearly always burst.

The Orphan gradually grew accustomed to these shells, but he was always "mighty" glad when the two big "hates" of the day were finished.

Everyone had marvellous escapes; in fact, marvellous escapes were so common that the recounting of them soon failed to interest others.

One morning the Orphan was sleeping soundly in the dormitory, and at about ten o'clock Bubbles, who had somehow or other fallen overboard from his picket-boat, ran up to shift his wet clothes, and could not resist the temptation of waking up the Orphan. He had just commenced to get some sense into him and make him take an interest in his accident, when in through the roof smashed a shell, passed between the Orphan sitting on his bed and Bubbles standing over him, buried itself in the ground, and burst. Bubbles was thrown to the other side of the dormitory, the Orphan found himself on top of an awakened and angry R.N.R. Lieutenant, and all three, covered with dust, dashed through the smoke out into the open air.

"Kaiser Bill!" the Orphan cried, darted back again, and brought out the tortoise.

"He was under my bed, he wasn't quite buried; he doesn't seem to have been hit."

They tried anxiously to make him put out his head, but he wouldn't. Bubbles, seizing him, looked inside the shell. "He's all right," he said, much relieved; "I saw his mouth move."

"I bet that he got the fright of his life,", Bubbles gurgled; and then noticed that the Orphan's wrist, the right one, was bleeding, and that blood was coming through his own soaked trousers. They found a small cut on the Orphan's right wrist, and that Bubbles had a little gash behind the left knee--quite trivial things, only requiring a bandage round each. Actually, that was all the damage done to those two midshipmen, although the shell had burst immediately behind and between them.

"Fancy what might have happened if 'Kaiser Bill' had not been there," the superstitious Orphan, a little "shaken", kept saying.

The R.N.R. Lieutenant, having fixed them up with bandages, took them inside the dormitory to dig their things out again and get the place tidied up. They shook the sand and clay from their bedding; dug out the clothes which had been lying on the floor; found some of the fragments of the shell, probably a 4.1-inch from Achi Baba; looked at the jagged hole in the wooden roof; and when Bubbles, having changed his wet clothes, went away, limping a little, to take charge of his picket-boat again, the other two turned in and slept until midday. Directly the Orphan woke he hunted round for the tortoise, and felt greatly relieved when he saw "Kaiser Bill's" cunning old head peeping out.