Part 7

There are no words which will properly and soberly describe the admiration felt by the officers and men of the _Achates_ for that battalion. When the last boat had shoved off, and the transports' boats and their six steamboats had taken up their stations in line abreast and began to move slowly away, Captain Macfarlane turned to the Commander and said gravely: "I've seen, Commander, a good deal of war on shore, but I have never seen anything which has stirred me so greatly as the quietness and discipline of those fellows--as the majesty of their bearing."

He went up on the bridge, and the _Achates'_ engines rumbled slowly ahead.

It was now a quarter to five on Sunday morning, the 25th April, the greyest of shadowy dawns--the formless clouds were grey--a darker streak of grey, where grey sea and sky met, was the Gallipoli Peninsula; and three grey patches, darker still, were the _Swiftsure_, _Cornwallis_, and _Albion_, close inshore, waiting for the moment to commence bombarding.

Behind the _Achates_, like a shoal of minnows, followed the steamboats and their twenty-four transports' boats; behind them were fleet sweepers, and looming indistinctly in the distance, as wide as the eye could pierce, came transports and store-ships in great numbers, the _River Clyde_ among them.

On board the _Achates_ the fo'c'sle and after shelter deck were crowded with officers and men anxiously gazing ahead.

"You know that R.H.A. officer," the China Doll kept on telling anyone who would listen to him--"that cheery chap who's going in with them to make signals. He promised to send me off a Turk's rifle. Wasn't that decent of him?"

On the bridge Captain Macfarlane, tugging nervously at his pointed beard, and standing next to the Commander, muttered to himself: "Thank God! they had a good breakfast."

"Every one of them, sir," the Commander jerked out, in the most matter-of-fact way.

"There's nothing like having your stomach full to keep up your pluck, Commander. It makes all the difference."

"I expect it does, sir. The books say so, at any rate."

"I know it does," the Captain said, thinking of what he had been through himself, and turning to speak to the Navigator, busy taking bearings.

The thudding of heavy guns broke the stillness, and splashes of flames lighted up the greyness of the daybreak.

"Hullo! they've started!" said the Commander. "They're three minutes late by my watch. I expect the blessed thing is losing again. I'm hanged if I know what's wrong with it."

The Great Adventure[#] had commenced.

[#] The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps had already effected a landing beyond Gaba Tepe, 15 miles to the north-east.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*The Landing on Gallipoli*

For half an hour there was one constant rumbling of guns fired by the _Swiftsure_, _Cornwallis_, _Albion_, _Prince George_, _Lord Nelson_, and _Agamemnon_; and shells from the first two of these, bursting in scores on the last half-mile of the Peninsula, hid it almost continuously under a cloud of lyddite smoke.

The six picket-boats steamed in steadily towards this smoke cloud with the Lancashire Fusiliers behind them, not advancing very rapidly because the current, flowing out of the Dardanelles, was against them, and the transports' boats were so heavily laden.

The crews of these boats had already tossed their oars--four in each boat--in readiness to pull in to the land when the steamboats should cast them off.

The Orphan steered his picket-boat--the fifth boat from the left--with one hand; in the other he held a half-eaten sandwich. Jarvis stood one side of him, the Sub the other, all three behind the bullet-proof protecting shield. Jarvis had slept a little through the night; the other two had not.

"Practise stooping and steering through the slit," the Sub ordered. "If you keep standing up and looking over the top, you'll get a bullet in your head when the time comes."

"But there can't possibly be anyone left alive there," the Orphan protested, as he watched the shells bursting.

"Just wait! You'll soon find out!" the Sub answered grimly, and noticing that the picket-boat was forging ahead of the line, sung out to the stoker petty officer to "ease her". This man was looking out of the engine-room hatch, just in front of the bullet-proof screen, and popped his head down to give another twist to the steam-valve. Old Fletcher, peering out of the stokehold hatch, farther for'ard, thought he, too, had been told to do so, and also bobbed his head down.

"Has the tortoise come along with us this time?" the Sub asked. The Orphan did not know; but Jarvis snorted: "Yes, 'Kaiser Bill's' 'ere all right; the old 'umbug!"--though whether he meant the tortoise was a humbug, or the old stoker, he didn't say.

The picket-boat fell back into line, and the Hun, standing behind his bullet-proof screen in the pinnace on the right, waved cheerfully across to the Orphan.

It was now clear daylight--about a quarter-past five.

The battleships still pounded the end of the Peninsula, and the six steamboats drew ahead of the _Achates_, which had now stopped engines. Behind them followed the trawlers, and the _Newmarket_, fleet sweeper, with the Pink Rat, Bubbles, the Lamp-post, and their beach parties, and behind her--far behind--came many transports.

"There's the _River Clyde_," called the Orphan, pointing away over the starboard quarter to where she was coming along, very slowly, towing the hopper and lighters which were presently to bridge the gap between her bows and the shore. After her, and with difficulty keeping pace with her, more ships' steamboats towed half a battalion of the Dublin Fusiliers.

"That's Cape Tekke--that high end bit, and that's Cape Helles--the higher cliff to the right, with the white lighthouse 'affair' on top," the Sub explained. "We've to land in between them. There's a bay there--'W' beach--underneath that smoke."

The sun itself had not yet been visible, but now it shot up from behind a distant ridge, humped like the back of a huge pig, and blazed straight in their faces.

"Old Achi Baba," said the Sub, shielding his eyes. "If they get as far as that to-night, they'll be able to look down on the Narrows and on the forts there."

"The Navigator told the Pimple that the soldiers expect to have dinner at Achi Baba," the Orphan said. "I jolly well hope they will. Isn't this sun beastly? I can't see where I'm going."

"Well, don't get too far ahead, and don't look into it," the Sub growled. "This isn't a race; ease down and give the pinnace a chance."

They were now about a thousand yards off the smoke cloud which concealed "W" beach, and the incessant crash of high-explosive shells bursting there, and on the high ground above it, made the most infernal din. At this point the two left-hand steamboats diverged from the other four and steamed towards the rocks under the actual end of the Peninsula; the Sub, with the remainder, maintained the original course. But "W" beach, and the scooped-out gully which led upwards to the high ground, and the cliffs at each side of it were hidden in dense clouds of lyddite smoke and by a thick morning haze which lay on the water. Unfortunately the sun, shining over Achi Baba, shone full on this smoke and mist, and lighted it up to such a dazzling extent that from the boats one could see nothing whatever of the shore, and judging distances was impossible.

The boats were now drawing very near their destination, and the Sub had all the responsibility on his shoulders of judging the moment when to slip them. A blast from his steam-whistle was to be the signal for all to be cast off, and Jarvis picked up the whistle lanyard and only waited the order to tug it. Plunky Bill, in the bows, kept a sharp look-out for'ard, and every now and then dipped the boat-hook in the water to find its depth.

The Sub, his face set and anxious, seized a megaphone and shouted: "Out oars!"

The transports' boats' crews immediately dropped their tossed oars into the rowlocks, and the soldiers in these boats turned round to have a look where they were going. They had, until then, been sitting stolidly in the boats with only their packs and the backs of their caps visible, and this sudden swinging round of heads as the oars dropped, and the almost simultaneous appearance of five hundred faces, made an unforgettable sight. Nothing could be seen through the dazzling smoke and mist.

"It's twenty to six," the Sub jerked out, looking at his wrist watch. "We're a few minutes late. We ought to be right there now."

Not a shot had been fired from shore, and the ship's shells were still bursting--very close the explosions seemed to be. "They must be able to see us," the Orphan whispered, nervously peering through the steering slit.

Then there was a yell from Plunky Bill: "Stakes right ahead, sir! Only four foot of water, sir!" Others took up the cry--the crew of the Hun's steam pinnace had seen them and were shouting and pointing.

The Sub looked under the bows and saw them himself.

"We're there!" he roared. "Pull, Jarvis; one long blast! Let go aft! Full speed astern! Hard a-starboard!"

The steam spluttered out for a moment--the Orphan thought the whistle would never clear itself--then it shrieked--the echo came back from the shore almost immediately, proving how close they must be--splash went the tow-rope into the water--the other steamboats slipped their tow-ropes--the stern of the picket-boat swerved to port and trembled as the screw went full speed astern, and the oars of the transports' boats splashed madly in the water.

Not a rifle-shot came from the shore.

As the picket-boat gathered stern-way, the crowded transports' boats splashed past on either side; their coxswains, perched in the sterns, yelling: "Go it: give way! Pull hard! Shove your backs into it!"

"Good luck to you all!" the picket-boat's crew shouted.

The soldiers turned round with grim, set faces, their hands on the gunwales gripping very tightly, ready for the moment when they would have to jump out. The leading boat wavered; she had come up against the stakes and the barbed-wire netting stretched between them. These checked her for a moment, but her weight carried her through, and she almost disappeared in the very thick and dazzling haze. The other boats dashed after her.

In the bows of one--with his machine-gun--was a very cheery subaltern who had dined in the gun-room the night before, and also his equally cheery chum the subaltern of Royal Horse Artillery--the brigade signaller. The latter, as he passed, called out: "Tell your China Doll I won't forget his rifle." "Good luck!" shouted the Sub, "I'll tell the little beggar."

"Turn her round! Take her out to the trawlers!" he roared to the Orphan. Round the picket-boat swung, and just as she commenced to steam out there was a shout of "The first one's beached herself, sir! The soldiers are scrambling out, sir!" And then from behind the haze and smoke clouds, from both sides and above, there burst out the most terrific rattle of maxims, and rifles and the bark of something heavier than either.[#]

[#] One-inch Nordenfeldts.

The picket-boat steamed out at full speed, whilst stray bullets hit the water near her and others pinged overhead. The Orphan and the Sub looked back. They could only see indistinctly through the haze with the sun on it; they could not see what was happening, but neither of them--down inside them--could imagine that any men in those crowded boats could pass through that fire and live. The Orphan held his breath and gripped the steering-wheel. His heart seemed to stop beating: the Sub's face was set, and he had bitten his lip. "They're getting it in the neck--my God, they are!" Jarvis said, as the awful rattling and banging went on without a moment's pause.

The steamboats reached the trawlers, a thousand yards or more from that glare of mist and smoke which hid "W" beach and its tragedy, and there they waited until, suddenly, first one and then another, then half a dozen--a dozen transports' boats, some with three oars working, others with only two, one with only one, scarcely any had all four, came into view, emerging from the mist, and bullet splashes leapt up in hundreds around and among them.

For one horrible second they thought that the boats had been beaten off, but then they saw that they had no soldiers in them, and knew that, at any rate, the soldiers had managed to land; the haze still made it impossible to see what had happened to them.

Breathlessly the crews of the steamboats, clustering round the two trawlers, watched these boats struggling off. The boat with only one oar working, and no coxswain, was turning circles, but drifting slowly out with the current. The man himself was evidently sitting on the bottom boards, because only his hands appeared above the gunwales, and he kept changing the oar from side to side.

Another boat near this one had two oars working, and they watched the coxswain in the stern crouching down and trying with his free hand to make these two keep time.

Just picture to yourself a stream with a tin floating some ten yards from the bank, and half a dozen boys, with their caps full of stones, throwing stones at it as fast as they can. Picture to yourself that tin with the splashes round it, and you will be able to realize something of what the Sub and the Orphan saw; only, instead of one tin, there were sixteen crippled boats--some of them already half filled with dead and wounded--and the bullet splashes leapt six feet and more out of the water.

Then imagine that, instead of a tin, it was a struggling cat the boys were trying to drown with their stones, and that you were making up your mind to slip off your clothes, swim in, and rescue it, knowing that the boys on the banks would throw stones faster than ever, and bigger ones too, which would really hurt.

Well, at this moment the Sub decided to steam into the hail of bullets and rescue those boats.

He roared out: "We can't sit here doing nothing. Go in and help them!"

The Orphan, pale and staring, rang "full speed ahead", turned the picket-boat's bows round, and dashed back towards the boats. The Hun, yelling and half mad with excitement, followed in the pinnace, and so did some of the other steamboats. The Orphan hardly knew what happened. Bullets hit the protecting screen, a chip of wood from the gunwale hit his cap; splashes leapt up all round him; his ears hummed with the whistling noise. He remembered hearing the Sub roar: "Go for those two over there!" and feeling him grip his hand on the steering-wheel to turn towards the two most crippled boats. He got alongside one--saw Plunky Bill and another hand get hold of her--had a picture of grey faces looking up at him from the bottom of her, and a muddle of khaki lying there across her thwarts; towed her across to the boat with only one man; saw the Sub get hold of her painter, and then found himself, dazed and horribly shaky and sick, back again at the trawler. Plunky Bill came aft, grinning: "There's a 'ole in the funnel, sir, slap-bang through!" and proudly showed a bullet which he had found lying on the deck.

No one who looked into those transports' boats as they were towed alongside the trawlers will ever forget what he saw: men dead, dying, and wounded, all huddled and jumbled together on the thwarts of the boats and on the bottom boards, with legs and arms twisted strangely; wounded unable to free themselves from the weight of dead bodies on top of them--those grey, placid faces and sightless eyes which, ten minutes before, had glowed with excitement as they turned them to the sun; the blood-stained, torn khaki; the blood-stained water lapping round them, and the one, two, and in some boats three bluejackets, in their Condy's-fluid-dyed jumpers, sitting among them, flopping, exhausted, over their oars.

In one boat there was a Scotsman, in gold spectacles--not unlike Fletcher the stoker--a St. John's Ambulance man, and now a Territorial ambulance orderly. He had already dressed all the wounded in his boat, and now stepped into another, working away quietly, as if he was doing it in the accident-room of a hospital.

"We must get a doctor," he told the Sub; and as the trawlers had not one, the boats requiring most urgent assistance were towed across to the _Newmarket_ anchored near. Here the wounded--most of them--received further treatment.

There was no time for sentiment. The boats were all urgently required to take more men ashore; three of them, those with the most dead and wounded, were told off to take on board the wounded from the others; bluejackets were told off to take the places of those of the crews who had been killed and wounded; and then the beach parties, Bubbles, the Pink Rat, and the Lamp-post, tumbled down into them. Bullets began flying round them and the _Newmarket_, but no one was hit. "Shove off!" was shouted; "land them under the rocks to the left of the beach;" and the Sub and the Orphan towed them inshore.

There was much less rifle-firing now, but many bullets came over and splashed round the picket-boat. The mist and smoke had cleared away, and the _Swiftsure_ was still firing very rapidly at the Turks' trenches on the edge of the cliff, to the right of the beach, the _Achates_ assisting with her small guns. Their shells burst along it one after the other, all along the dark line which marked the trenches, and scarcely a Turk dare expose himself to fire down at the beach.

The Sub, as he approached, saw through his glasses two Turks close together, leaning over and pointing their rifles down at the beach, and saw spurts of sand fly up where the bullets struck among a line of men lying prone, half in and half out of the water, in front of lines of barbed wire. One of the shells from the _Achates_ burst close to them, and when the smoke had drifted away the two Turks were still there--motionless--in exactly the same attitude, but their rifles were sliding down the rocks. He cast off the boats with the beach parties, and waved to them as they pulled past him inshore. The three snotties crowded in the stern, and looking up at the cliffs with eyes wide open, were, however, too excited to take any notice of the Orphan's shout of "Good luck, you chaps!"

Back he went to the _Newmarket_, meeting steamboats towing in boats packed with more troops. Another trip ashore with sappers and "details", and then he towed those three boats with the wounded to the _Achates_, where they were taken on board.

It was exactly half-past seven when he got alongside her, busy firing her small guns in the port battery, and her for'ard 9.2 turret-gun.

The Captain wanted to see the Sub, so he climbed up and went for'ard to the bridge.

The Orphan, left to himself, was sent off to a transport to tow more soldiers ashore; and on the way to her he saw, over against the Asiatic shore and the fort of Kum Kali, the French fleet, the _Jeanne d'Arc_ with her six quaint, squat funnels, and the Russian _Askold_ with her five thin, tall ones, and two battleships, all firing very rapidly.

Behind them lay big transports, and dozens of boats loaded with dark-coated infantry on their way ashore.

He reached the transport, got his orders, and steamed back to "W" beach with a long string of crowded boats behind him.

It was then, whilst he waited for them to be emptied, that he had the first clear view of "W" beach and the broad gully leading up to the green ridge above it.

No bullets--or only very few--came near him, and he could look on undisturbed. On the right, where the barbed wire was thickest, a row of dead Lancashire Fusiliers lay as if they had all been swept by the same torrent of maxim bullets. He knew that they were dead, because other men, springing into the water and wading ashore, stepped over them, looked down at them, and left them.

Higher up the beach, men were hanging on the barbed wire itself. At first he thought it was only clothes hanging there; then he saw that they had been men. Fresh troops were scaling the cliffs; soldiers advanced up the green slope above, singly and in little groups. Away to the left, under the rocks, more men clustered; and as some of them limped along to the boats, some with bandages, some without, he knew that these were wounded waiting to be dressed. They crowded into the boats he had just brought ashore, and many were carried down--among these being a wounded Brigadier shot through the leg. He saw nothing of Bubbles, the Pink Rat, or the tall, lanky Lamp-post; but he did feel certain that the landing had been made good.

Trawlers, loaded with stores, approached as close inshore as they could get; boats of every description were flocking in, and already the sappers were lashing pontoons together on the left, under the rocks, to make a temporary pier.

Then the boats he had towed in came out to him, and he towed them and their wounded back to the _Achates_. For the remainder of that morning the Orphan was employed taking Staff Officers backwards and forwards between the ship and "W" beach.

The beach parties had laid down six buoys at about ten yards apart and some fifty yards from the beach, and had led ropes from these to the same number of stakes driven into the beach opposite to them. The intervals between these ropes made waterways into which the big lighters could haul themselves ashore without colliding with each other. But there was a certain amount of jostling just beyond the buoys, and the Orphan had his work cut out, whenever he went near the beach, to prevent his boat being damaged by the crowds of steamboats "mothering" the big lighters into position. She had a big rope fender projecting across her bows, another lashed across her stern, and two lengths of six-inch "grass" hawser secured all round her side to protect her from bumps; but, in spite of these, she soon had one corner of her stern crushed, and her steering gear was jammed. The Orphan managed to take her back to the _Achates_ safely, and, very sad about it, reported the damage to the Commander.

The Commander, at his wits' end for boats, was very angry.

"I'll take you out of her, Mr. Orpen, if you can't manage her," he said angrily, but then sent him away to get his boat coaled and watered whilst the repairs were being made. "You and your crew can come in-board and get some food," he called after the miserable Orphan.

So presently he was able to dash down to the gun-room, where Barnes had some cold meat and pickles waiting for him. He had had nothing to eat, except a couple of sandwiches, since the previous night, and the sight of food made him realize that he was ravenously hungry. It was now half-past one. The China Doll--the only one there--lay fast asleep on one of the cushioned benches; and he ate his food in peace, with the burly Barnes waiting on him. He was nearly as hungry for news as he was for food; but the old marine would not talk or tell him anything. "Just you go on with your food; there ain't no time for talking," and he gave him a cup of strong coffee afterwards. "That'll keep you awake," he said, as he cleared away.

The Orphan looked at the China Doll and longed to throw himself down on a cushion and sleep; but heavy firing broke out again, and, too excited to think of doing so, he went up on the quarter-deck to see what was going on.

"Your boat will be ready in half an hour," the officer of the watch told him.

The _Cornwallis_, _Swiftsure_, and _Albion_ were now firing at a small knoll which showed up above Cape Helles, the big cliff half-way between "W" beach and Sedd-el-Bahr. This knoll was known as Hill 138, and barbed-wire entanglements round its slopes were plainly visible through the Orphan's telescope.

He asked the Fleet-Paymaster and the Navigator, standing on the quarter-deck and looking through their glasses, what was happening.