Part 9

"Where's me rifle? I 'ad it in me 'ands, and now I cawn't find 'e," the company idiot stammered helplessly; and the man whom the Orphan was helping chuckled: "'E's a fair treat, that 'ere 'Awkins; 'e can never find nothink."

The rifle had to be found. The Captain with the lackadaisical voice was getting impatient. Matches were struck to look for it.

"Come along, Worcesters! Get up on deck!" shouted the Captain; and they began clattering up the wooden ladder, actually bandying jokes as they disappeared over the coaming, and went pattering along the deck. The company idiot, who was in a pitiable state of terror lest he should be left behind, found his rifle at last, and, clutching it, he rushed up the ladder after them.

"Now 'old on to it, and don't let it out o' yer 'ands. You'll 'ave to look arter yerself now," said the Sergeant-Major kindly, as he followed him.

Whilst these men had been getting ready, another outburst of firing had commenced, and the fusillade on shore sputtered furiously.

"I shouldn't care to have to go ashore, out into that," Dr. Gordon said; and Dr. O'Neill answered: "I wouldn't go as cheerfully as they seemed to. Grand chaps those!"

"That's the first time I've heard him praise anyone," thought the Orphan.

Firing died away again, until only an occasional shot broke the silence; and with that company of Worcesters gone, there was much more room.

The two doctors talked in a low voice. The Orphan heard Dr. O'Neill say cynically: "You can't get a night like this in Harley Street;" and the volunteer reserve doctor laughed, in his funny, nervous manner: "No, I can't. I expect my old butler wouldn't sleep much if he knew how I was spending my night. He looks after me as though I were a baby."

Someone came down the ladder--the Orphan thought he had on a naval cap--sat with his back against a stanchion, and went to sleep. A man coming down presently, knocked against him and woke him--a perfect torrent of oaths, in a very childish voice, following.

"Why, that's old Piggy Carter from the _Queen Elizabeth_," thought the Orphan. "I'd know his voice anywhere." He went across and shook him, for he had fallen fast asleep again. "Carter! You are Piggy Carter, ar'n't you? I'm Orpen; you remember me?"

He did; and listened sleepily to the Orphan telling him all about the shell and splinter holes in the _Achates_ deck and funnel, until Dr. O'Neill called out irritably: "Stop chattering!"

"Look here, Piggy, I want to go up on deck and have a look round," the Orphan whispered; but Piggy said he'd spent all day there, and in the water, with the lighters, and if the Orphan wanted to go along, more fool he, and he could go by himself. He--Carter--wanted to sleep, and didn't want to hear any more of "W" beach, or "X", or "Y", or "A", "B", or "C", or the whole tomfool alphabet of beaches.

And he went to sleep, with his back against the stanchion; and the Orphan, left to himself, sat on some sacks, watched the clouds moving across the open hatchway, and listened to the firing ashore, the pattering of bullets against the ship's side, and the snoring of tired men.

He went to sleep, and woke in the midst of a tremendous din. There was a perfect scream of rifle- and maxim-firing. He longed to go on deck, and wondered whether Dr. O'Neill would see him. Perhaps he was asleep too.

There was a new noise now--a much louder boom following a glare which lighted up the clouds, and then a smaller glare and a lesser sound; nearer they were, much nearer. "Those are field-guns," he said to himself; and after listening to them for some minutes, judging the distances of the different sounds, realized that they were our own guns. They began firing two shots, one after the other. "Two guns," he thought; and then felt certain that these were the very same guns which he had towed ashore that afternoon at "W" beach. He _must_ see what was going on.

He wriggled cautiously to the foot of the ladder--Dr. O'Neill's voice didn't call out to him--he went up it on hands and feet. As he reached the top a bullet whistled by; he ducked, and threw himself over the coaming, clung there, found himself on deck--the noise seemed louder there--and doubled himself up as he ran across to the shelter of the bulwark. He waited for half a minute to pull himself together, and then drew himself up and peered over.

Right in front of him was the dark mass of the cliffs--they seemed to be not 200 yards away--and twinkles of flame sparkled out all along the tops of them. As he looked, there was the glare of a field-gun flash which outlined the whole cliffs--the crash--and then a glare farther inland, and a fainter report of a shrapnel bursting. For an instant he saw before him a narrow strip of beach with a dark shadow above it. Then it was dark again; but all along it, all the time, spurts of rifle-flame, ten times as distinct and large as those twinkles of the Turks' rifles on the cliff, marked an irregular, uneven line, where he knew our own troops must be--those Worcesters, who had just landed, probably among them.

A little to the right, down in the centre of that spluttering line of flashes, there was a regular spout of flame--a maxim was rattling; farther away inland, twinkles darted out everywhere--the whole air seemed full of noises. Then he jumped nervously, for suddenly two or three maxims at the other end--from the bows of the _River Clyde_--opened fire at something or other, just as they had done before. He could see nothing moving; it was all very uncanny, and fearfully exciting. He forgot that bullets occasionally pinged overhead or splattered against the side of the ship, and waited there until that attack had been beaten off--or perhaps, after all, it had been a false alarm--and gradually first the maxims, then the volleys, then the individual firing died down, and left only a few snipers trying to find each other.

Then he had time to look round the deck. Close to him he saw something--some queer shape--moving in the shadow of the bulwark, and he put out his hand and felt the rough hair and the long, smooth ears which could only have belonged to a donkey. There were two of them, both tied up behind a little deck-house. They were glad for anyone to touch them; they nosed at him, as if he gave them comfort, and stamped their little feet on the deck to show their pleasure, and to make him understand how they wanted to be taken on shore.

He gave them each a friendly pat and scratched their ears, wondering what they were doing there.

But what he wanted to see were those maxims, away at the other end of the ship; to be actually behind them when they next opened fire, and to find out what was happening, and what they were firing at. So he crept along the deck, along a row of stretchers, with shapeless forms on them, lying close under the bulwark. One or two groaned, but they all seemed to be asleep, and then he gained the entrance to the dark passage or alley-way under the superstructure. In it a man was smoking--he saw the glowing end of his cigarette.

"Can I get along here?" the Orphan asked. "I want to get to the maxims."

A rough Yorkshire voice told him the passage was full of people asleep. "You'd be doing better to go up along; keep away t'other side, it's safer so."

So the Orphan retreated, crossed the open deck in front of the mast and cargo winch, found the ladder leading to the superstructure, and was just going up it, to the shelter of the starboard side of the deck-house, when he saw a stooping figure bending over a stretcher, and Dr. O'Neill's harsh voice growled out: "Here, you! come and lend a hand. Lift that corner of the stretcher."

A wounded man lay on it, very heavily asleep; and as the Orphan lifted, the Doctor pulled free a blanket which had caught under the stretcher, and spread it over him.

He had not recognized the Orphan, who promptly darted up the ladder lest he should do so, and stop him going to find those maxims. He groped his way to the ladder, which he knew must lead down to the for'ard "well" deck; found it, climbed down, and then the fo'c'sle itself was in front of him, and an iron ladder to climb up. He was up it like a redshank, and at last found himself right in the bows of the _River Clyde_.

Two almost simultaneous glares from the field-guns lighted the clouds and showed up, for a moment, the high battlemented curtain-walls and the bastions of Sedd-el-Bahr castle, and showed the fo'c'sle he stood on, the cables, the capstan winch, some sand-bags piled up in the bows, some men standing behind them, and three box-shaped structures--two on the port side and one on the starboard.

He did not know what these were.

*CHAPTER X*

*A Night Attack*

The Orphan, holding his breath, crept forward to look over the sand-bags in the bows, treading on hundreds of empty cartridge-cases which rolled about the deck.

Another glare from the field-guns, and he saw that one of the men standing there, peering through his glasses into the gloom below, was an officer of the Royal Naval Division--the "R.N.D."--a Sub-lieutenant, wearing a naval cap with the silver anchor badge. (He actually belonged to the Armoured Car Section.)

"Hello! Who are you? Where've you sprung from?" this officer called out.

The Orphan told him, and, thirsting for information, asked what was happening. "What's going on, sir?"

"I'm hanged if I know."

"But what were you firing at? Those maxims were firing a minute ago, weren't they?" he asked, disappointed.

"Were they?" the Sub-lieutenant repeated to the figure next to him, who replied dryly: "I fancy I heard them."

"I feel sure I heard some little noise too, now I come to think of it," said the Sub-lieutenant jocularly.

"What are those things?" the Orphan asked, pointing to the two dark, square, box-like structures along the port side of the fo'c'sle.

"Come along and see," said his new friend; took him to one, slid back an iron plate, and pushed him into a little space where three men crouched, in the darkness, round the breech of a maxim whose barrel stuck out through a loophole in the front.

"Quiet little cosy place, that," he heard the Sub-lieutenant say from the outside. "Come along and we'll shut them in again, or they'll catch cold."

He slid the rear plate into place, and led the Orphan back to the maxim in the bows. "They're comfortable enough in their little boxes, aren't they? Steel plates all round them, and a steel plate on top--all home comforts!"

"But what's going on? Do tell me," the Orphan begged, looking down over the bows.

"Would you like to start a battle? I bet you would;" and before the excited Orphan had time to think what he meant, he sang out: "Get hold of that gun," and pushed him down astride the tripod.

Mechanically the bewildered and flustered midshipman gripped the two handles, and stood by to press his thumbs on the firing-button.

"Now don't be in a hurry; point the thing over there. No, not there; that's where our chaps are; they wouldn't like it--beastly 'touchy' they are; point the other way; that's better."

The Orphan found himself training the gun towards where he could just distinguish the biggest and nearest of all the bastions, straight ahead of the ship.

"There's the front door of the castle, down there," continued his friend. "Turks are always coming in or out--lazy beggars they are--they want 'gingering up'. Wait till those field-guns, up beyond Cape Helles, fire; then you'll see it; the front door-steps show up white. Ah! there they go! That's about right! Keep her there! Let her rip!"

The Orphan, not really realizing what he was doing, pointed the gun towards a white patch, and jerked both his thumbs against the button. His eyes were blinded as "tut! tut! tut! tut!" flashed the gun, and the jar on his unaccustomed thumbs and wrists took off the pressure.

"Keep her going!" he heard his new friend shout; and setting his teeth and pressing with all his might, he tried to keep the maxim gun pointing in the right direction as it shook and rattled, and the empty cartridge-cases tumbled on to others upon the deck.

Immediately there were answering twinkles and sparks of rifles--a maxim somewhere above the castle doorway flamed out--the firing rang along the length of the beach, was taken on up above the cliffs; hundreds, thousands of shots were fired, and bullets whizzed over the fo'c'sle of the _River Clyde_, one or two thudding against the sand-bags.

"All right; let 'em go to sleep again," the Sub-lieutenant laughed, as the Orphan's tired thumbs and wrists refused to press the button any longer and the maxim stopped. In two minutes there was absolute silence.

"Well! Enjoy your battle?"

"Thank you very much!" the Orphan answered, tremendously pleased, and picking up a couple of the cartridge-cases he had fired, to keep as curios.

"What did happen?" he asked as he stood up again.

"A strong attack on the _River Clyde_ was beaten off with heavy loss, thanks to the brilliant handling of the maxims under the charge of--what did you say your name is?"

"Orpen of the _Achates_."

"----under the charge of Midshipman Orpen of H.M.S. _Achates_."

"But there wasn't any attack, was there, sir?"

"Not as I know of; but it sounds better, and we'll leave it at that," laughed the Sub-lieutenant.

He kept on peering into the darkness; he seemed a little anxious, taking advantage of the frequent glares from the field-guns to look very closely through his glasses.

"There's something going on down there--I'm blest if I know what! You have a look," and he handed the glasses to the midshipman. The Orphan peered through them, waited for the sudden coming of a glare, thought he saw figures moving, and said so.

"So do I; but I can't make out whether they are our fellows or not."

"Where are our men?" the Orphan asked.

"More to the left, along the beach--there's no cover just in front of the bows down there. You see those dark shadows under the bows; they're the lighters your chaps fixed up. The Turks have some maxims in one of the bastions of that old castle; they're the guns which did all the mischief this morning. We've been trying to knock 'em out all day, but can't seem to get hold of 'em."

"Was it very bad this morning?"

"Bad! My God! it was awful. You see those pontoons or lighters--wait for a flash from the field-guns. Ah! now you see them! By half-past eight this morning they were actually heaped with our men--dead and wounded. If a wounded man moved a finger, they filled him with bullets. Not one man out of three got ashore. They're still lying on them; thank God, the night hides them! Keep your eyes skinned; I'm certain there's something going on down there," he added sharply.

A messenger came from the bridge, climbing the fo'c'sle ladder, and calling out: "The officer! Where's the machine-guns officer?"

"Here I am."

"The Colonel thinks the Turks are going to try and rush the pontoons. He wants you to 'stand by' with your maxims."

"All right; let 'em try," and he calmly filled his pipe, struck a match, the flare of which seemed to the excited Orphan to illuminate the whole fo'c'sle, and proceeded very slowly to light it; whilst the Orphan hardly knew whether he was standing on his head or his heels for excitement.

"Tell those two guns in the 'boxes' to train on the shore, near the pontoons, and 'stand by' to fire," the Sub-lieutenant said, casually giving the order, and sucking at his pipe as though he was thoroughly enjoying it.

"I'm certain there are some chaps down there, but we've landed nearly twelve hundred more since dark, and those may be some of them. I'm hanged if I know!"

"Ah, look!" he said quietly, as a glare from the field-guns showed, unmistakably, a figure approaching the end of the pontoons. "What kind of a cap has he? The Turks wear a shapeless thing, almost like one of our Balaclava helmets."

The Orphan, hugely excited, had caught a glimpse of him, but could not see the shape of his cap. He was scrambling from one pontoon to the next, moving about and then disappearing in a particularly dark shadow. It struck him that the man seemed to be putting his feet down very cautiously, almost as if he were looking for something and was afraid of treading on it.

"He has to move carefully, there are so many dead lying there," his friend explained.

"He's going back now," the Orphan whispered.

"That's rummy; so he is! and there are a lot more other chaps--a whole mass of them--coming towards him."

As he spoke a tremendous fusillade broke out on shore, above where the dark line of pontoons ended and these dark figures were moving, and the air over their heads seemed to be filled with whistling bullets. Bullets rattled up against the bows of the ship and smacked into the sand-bags, one or two pinged against the plates in front of the other two maxims; rifles began firing from the other side of the ship, from the lower sea walls. An answering crackle of musketry broke out along the shore to the left; and as the Orphan ducked his head below the sand-bags, his friend the officer, not waiting for any further orders, opened fire with all three maxims, and two more, down on the port side of the fo'c'sle well deck, joined in as well.

It was the most furious firing the Orphan had heard since he came aboard the _River Clyde_. He pushed his hand and arm between the sand-bags, and tried to look through the gap. Rifles began firing below him, close to him, and _towards_ him; the men firing them must be on the pontoons themselves. The Sub-lieutenant saw them; jumped to the gun, yelling, "Depress! depress! fire on the last two pontoons." A sand-bag was pulled away to allow the maxim to depress, and it spurted fire and bullets; left off to correct the depression, and started again. The Orphan thought he heard shrieks (afterwards he swore he did); those rifles on the pontoons dropped from twenty or more to three--then to one--then to none; but the firing behind, up above the bank, went on more furiously than ever, and the bigger flashes of the English rifles, along the beach to the left, seemed to be blazing all the time. Two maxims among them made spouts of flame quite three feet long.

The din was so terrific that the Orphan could only just hear what his friend yelled in his ears: "Pretty to watch, sonny; but you'd better scoot back aft--they may come on again, and that doctor of yours may want you. Keep your head down, well down, as you go."

The Orphan, who had entirely forgotten Dr. O'Neill, and would have given his soul to stay and see the end of this, found himself stumbling down the ladder from. the fo'c'sle, up again and along the superstructure, down and along the line of stretchers; bumped into the donkeys at the top of the hatch, crawled over the coaming, and very gently went down the ladder, hoping that Dr. O'Neill had not missed him and would not see him coming back.

He need not have bothered himself about that. There was a great deal of confusion down there; orders were being yelled out, men were gathering at each side of the gangway port, rifle-butts were banging on the deck, and bayonets snapping on the muzzles. He was pushed out of the way, and found himself next to Dr. O'Neill and the chief sick-berth steward. He expected to get a "wigging", but Dr. O'Neill only snarled: "They've started a silly yarn that the Turks are trying to board along the platforms--all this silly, stupid fuss--it's confounded nonsense. You've slept through the last two hours, you lucky little devil!"

The Orphan was just going to say that it wasn't nonsense, that he had seen the Turks trying to get across the pontoons to the platform, but he thought it wiser to keep quiet. He asked the chief sick-berth steward where Dr. Gordon was.

"Gone back, sir, an hour ago; a steamboat came along, and the Fleet-Surgeon sent him back to the ship. I wish he'd sent me. I'd be just as happy there, sir."

That snotty--Piggy Carter--was still sitting with his back to the stanchion, at the foot of the ladder, his chin on his chest, and snoring. The Orphan thinking that he would love to know that the Turks were trying to board through the gangway port (about twenty feet away from him), shook him till he woke, asking: "What's the matter?"

The Orphan told him excitedly.

"Oh, bother the Turks! I don't care a tuppenny curse for them; what d'you want to wake me for?" and promptly went to sleep again.

For a few minutes everyone was in a state of nerves, expecting at any moment to see the heads of Turks appearing at that big opening in the ship's side; the noise of firing, on the other side of the ship, rose to a perfect frenzy.

Although the Orphan had seen the first attempt crumpled up, he could not know what would happen to a second, and felt very jumpy, too; but presently the firing gradually subsided, and word was passed down that all the soldiers there were to go ashore. These men unfixed bayonets, strapped on their packs, and went on deck, knocking against the sleeping midshipman, who cursed them in his juvenile voice. That was about three o'clock, and for some time afterwards things were very quiet. The Fleet-Surgeon, the Orphan, the chief sick-berth steward, and Piggy Carter snoring against his stanchion, were alone, as far as they could see although from the dark recesses of the space round them they heard a great multitude of snores of every variety. The Orphan's launch's crew had not been seen since they had come inboard, and no doubt four of those snores belonged to them.

The Orphan himself dozed off once or twice, but kept on being awakened by bursts of firing. He did not want to go to sleep, for fear of missing any of the excitement, so went and leant up against the edge of the gangway port, only putting his nose out, because bullets were still coming along from those snipers on the low sea walls which jutted into the sea on this side. A cool breeze blew in through the port and made a pleasant "popple" against his launch, which was bumping gently against the side of the _River Clyde_. It was raining a little, and the cool drops on his forehead were jolly refreshing.

Even standing there he could not keep awake; his brain began to lull itself with the burbling noise of the sea and the boat, until suddenly the most appalling, panic-stricken shrieks came from overhead, and the noise of heavy boots trampling along the deck.

The Orphan, with his heart in his mouth, dashed to the foot of the ladder, just in time to see a half-naked figure, his chest and neck swathed in blood-stained bandages, throw himself over the coaming of the hatchway above him; dragging a blanket after him he came scrambling down the ladder, yelling that the Turks had boarded the ship and were bayoneting everyone on deck. There happened to be the sound of many feet running about overhead at the time, and for a moment the Orphan was entirely terror-struck--his heart really seemed to stop beating; but the Fleet-Surgeon, jumping to his feet, seized the man, who was still yelling, "Save me! save me! the Turks will get me; they're bayoneting everyone!" cursed him, and told him to lie down in a corner and cover himself with his blanket.

With another yell the man tore himself away, shrieked out that "it wasn't safe anywhere in the ship"; and before the Orphan could stop him, he dashed to the big gangway port and half-fell, half-slid down the ladder into the launch. There, in the stern-sheets, he coiled himself up, covered himself with his blanket, and appeared to go to sleep.

"Nightmare, that's what's the matter with him," the Fleet-Surgeon said, a little shakily. "If he prefers to lie there in the rain and the sniping, he can. Phew! it gave me a bit of a fright."

Piggy Carter snored peacefully--even through this incident.