Chapter VI: Part 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*CHAPTER XII*

*Off Cape Helles*

The movements of the transports, store ships, and auxiliaries of all kinds were controlled from the _Achates_, and to cope with this work additional officers had been attached to her. An Admiral hoisted his flag in her, and brought his Staff, including two Assistant Clerks; three Captains joined as Naval Transport Officers--"N.T.O.'s"--and round her gangways hovered, night and day, a restless crowd of steamboats, picket-boats, and pinnaces--lent for various purposes from other ships. Each of these steamboats had its midshipman--some of them two, working watch and watch, twenty-four hours "on", and twenty-four hours "off" duty--with the result that the Honourable Mess was completely overrun with strangers.

With the Pink Rat, the Lamp-post, and Bubbles away _all_ the time, the Orphan, the Hun, and Rawlins--who relieved these, two in turn--away _most_ of the time, and the Pimple spending most of his days and a good many of his nights visiting transports with the Navigator, when that officer went away to anchor them in their proper places, there was practically no one left except Uncle Podger, the China Doll, and the Sub. Now the Sub was in charge of all steamboats; it was his duty to hoist them out of the water when they required repairs, to get the repairs carried out as quickly as possible, and then hoist them into the water again. He also was in charge of all the coaling and watering of these boats. These duties kept him so constantly employed that he very seldom spent much time in the gun-room. In fact, Barnes generally left something in his cabin for him to eat, whenever the opportunity permitted.

Of all the Honourable Mess, practically only Uncle Podger and the China Doll remained and came to meals as before. The result was that, twenty-four hours after the _Achates_ had anchored off "W" beach, the mess groaned under the weight of the Barbarians, and the Midianites, in the guise of tired, hungry snotties from other ships, and the Admiral's two Assistant Clerks had descended, pretty completely, on the fruitful land of her gun-room. They crowded down into it in their Condy's-fluid-stained "ducks"; they lay on the cushions and slept; lay in the one easy-chair and slept; came in at all hours of the day and night, demanding food, and drove the patient Barnes and the little messman nearly off their heads.

The miserable little rat of a messman, thoughtless of the morrow, and eager to turn an honest penny just as quickly as he could, produced all the stores he had laid in at Portsmouth and again at Malta--stores which had been intended to delight the stomachs of the Honourable Mess for many "moons": tins of dainty biscuits, cakes, boxes of chocolate and preserved fruit, bottles of anchovies, jars of bloater and anchovy paste, jars of Oxford marmalade, and tins of Oxford sausages and of tongue--and many other rare delicacies, impossible now to replace; and this insatiable crowd of sojourners realized, like one man, that though their work was hard and the hours long, their feet were indeed cast in fruitful and pleasing places. Now the Pimple and the China Doll worshipped their stomachs with an unswerving devotion, unalloyed by the pangs of indigestion, so watched these intruders working havoc among the gun-room stores with feelings of keen agony. They realized, only too well, the barrenness which would soon fall to their lot, and they implored the Sub to stop these devastating demands on luxuries and "extras" before it was too late. Worst blow of all: that one last barrel of beer wouldn't drip another drop, however hard you blew down the vent.

But the Sub was so seldom in the gun-room that he did not, for the first few days, realize the impending danger. It was on the third day, just as he had received an imploring, urgent order from the Commander, "to hoist in the General's picket-boat and hack away a coil of rope which had wrapped itself round the screw and shaft, and get her into the water again as quickly as ever he could", that he was waylaid by these two young gentlemen, who rushed to him with anxious faces. "Can't something be done? It's simply awful! One of the _Lord Nelson's_ snotties has just had his second box--his second box to-day--of those "chocs" with walnuts on the top!"

They ran back much faster than they came; but that very day the Sub had the whole tragedy brought vividly before him, when, later on, going down to his cabin for a cup of tea, and feeling he wanted something "tasty", he ordered a pot of anchovy paste.

Barnes came back with a long face. "That 'ere rat of a messman, 'e's been and gone and let all of 'em strange young gen'l'men 'ave all the han-chovy, sir. 'E ain't got none left, sir, but 'e 'as just one pot of chicken-and-'am what's gone an' got a bit mouldy. There won't be 'ardly nothink left of nothink, what with them strange young gen'l'men, and the young gen'l'men what's gone with the beach parties a-sending off chits for this and chits for that, as if this 'ere ship was a Lipton's store-shop."

"It's just as bad along in the canteen, for'ard, sir," he added dolefully; "beach parties and all of these stranger boats' crews, they've just been and gone and raided it, that they 'ave; nothink there now, scarcely, but penny bottles of Worcester sauce and tins of blackin'. It ain't 'ardly fair; no, nor it isn't."

Even Uncle Podger thought things were going too far when one day a midshipman from one of these ships ordered four tins of Oxford sausages to be sent down to his boat's crew.

"It may be very pretty to watch," he said, finding the Sub in his cabin, "but it's rotten bad luck on us."

The Sub was worried. "You see, it's like this," he answered; "they're rather like guests, and we can't be rude to them. But I'll write out a notice which won't hurt their feelings, and may be some good; we'll stick it on the notice board."

He wrote out several; he didn't like any of them, and tore them up, saying: "We can't be rude, can we?" And then, getting impatient, tore up the last, and burst out with: "Well, let the blessed things go, and don't let's worry, Uncle, old chap! You and I aren't particular."

So things took their course unchecked, till the messman, at the end of ten days or so, announced to the rapacious throng, and the miserable Pimple and China Doll, that he had nothing left in his private store except one bottle of pickles and a bottle of Eno's fruit salt. Even that pot of mouldy "chicken-and-ham" had been "taken up".

It is certain that if the Pimple or the China Doll were asked, now, what went on during the days following the landing of "The Great Adventure", and what struck them most forcibly, both of them would tell of the snotty who had eaten two boxes of "walnut chocolates" in one day--the two last boxes in the messman's store.

The China Doll would also recount days of unaccustomed toil, when he was attached to one of the Naval Transport Officers as Clerk, and had to copy out sailing orders and check lists of arrivals and sailings of ships; work which frequently interfered with his great delight of climbing to the main-top, and looking through the range-finder there (against all orders, it may be said) at the shells bursting on the slopes of Achi Baba and among the windmills and houses of the village of Krithia. For the first few days he had felt very proud of his new job, carried a big correspondence book about with him, and felt himself as important as those very important young officers, the Admiral's Assistant Clerks; but as the days wore on, it became monotonous and irksome. The Captain whom he thus "assisted" was none too gentle with his mistakes--which were many--and he wished that the old days would return, when he had nothing to do but sit on the office stool in front of a ship's ledger, and kick his feet against the bulkhead until Uncle Podger told him to clear out of it. If only he kicked that bulkhead hard enough and often enough, Uncle Podger would never keep him long. It had been such a pleasant kind of a life, and in those days he had only to run into the gun-room and make some cheeky remark, to be rolled on the deck and be ragged; but even that was finished; the gun-room was no longer like home nowadays, for the snotties were mostly strangers, who took no notice of him if they were awake; and even if the Orphan, Rawlins, or the Hun happened to be there, they were much too tired to skylark. With the Pimple, who was more often available, he did not like skylarking, for the Pimple generally hurt him--intentionally.

So, what with one thing and another, the China Doll was not entirely happy whilst he copied out these "silly" orders, and guns thudded from the ships all round him--guns whose shells he could not always run up on deck to see burst.

There was so much to see, and it was so irritating to come out all this way to the Dardanelles, and then to find that he had to stick in a stupid office just when some of the most exciting things were going on. However, he could always make sure of watching a duel between the howitzers on the Asiatic shore--somewhere behind Kum Kali fort--and the ship told off to keep them quiet--the _Prince George_ or the _Albion_, sometimes the _Agamemnon_. At almost any hour of the day he went on deck, he could make certain of soon seeing a splash leap up, close to whichever ship was on duty, and then see her fire her 12-inch guns, and watch till the brownish-red or black clouds flew up behind Kum Kali ridge as the shells burst, hoping intensely that bits of "Asiatic Annie" were flying up in it, and wondering what the spotting aeroplane, circling high above in the blue sky like a hawk, had seen and signalled.

Then there were the shrapnel bursting behind "W" beach, and the little shells which sometimes burst there, but, more often than not, only buried themselves with a little spurt of dust. He would wonder whether Bubbles or the Lamp-post had been hit, and hoped they had not, because they had promised to send him off a shell, or anything interesting, as a curio. And, later on, there were the high-explosive shells, which sometimes burst in the air over that beach, and at other times burst on the ground with a horrid noise which frightened him, even where he was, in the ship, and made him rather alter his mind about going ashore to see the fun.

The Turkish aeroplanes, or German most probably--the "Taubes" he had heard so much of--they came often; and at the first news of "hostile aeroplane approaching from the north-east" he would dash on deck, and try to spot them as they appeared over the top of Achi Baba--little moving spots which he lost sight of, if he was not very careful, until they came nearer and nearer, and the sun made their wings glisten like silver. He knew that each carried bombs, and often he could actually see these little things at the moment they were released from the body of the aeroplane, to burst somewhere near "W" beach, raising a cloud of dust and smoke, or drop in the sea among the ships, sending up a rather silly splash--such a waste of energy. And it was so "ripping" to hear guns firing at the aeroplane and see the shrapnel bursting. He did so long to see one crumple up and come tumbling down, but he was always being disappointed; and when that particular aeroplane had seen what it wanted, dropped all its bombs--seldom where it wanted--and turned back up the Straits, the China Doll felt rather miserable.

Sometimes British and French aeroplanes went up after the Taube, and chased him to his home up above the Narrows, whilst the Turkish shrapnel burst round them just as they had done at Smyrna, only making better shooting as the days went on and their practice improved.

At first the British and French aeroplanes had their home at Tenedos; and if they rested, slid down on the open ground close to Helles lighthouse, flighting back to their island before dark to spend the night. That, too, was always "pretty to watch", as Uncle Podger would have said.

Then the bombardments of Achi Baba and Krithia, on the days that the troops attacked, gave him intense enjoyment; and sometimes, though not often, the China Doll, from his post up aloft in the main-top, could see, through the forbidden range-finder, little groups of khaki figures darting about among the scrub and the ravines which intersected that plain, though he could never be sure whether they were British or Turks. But what excited him most, and kept him in some quiet corner for hours, holding on to the rigging or a stanchion, stretching his head out in the dark, and hardly daring to breathe, were the night attacks by the Turks. The noise of them would wake him, and up on to the after shelter deck he would slip, in his ragged pyjamas, and watch the glare of the field-guns, the bursts of shrapnel-flame, the bright star-shells as they sunk in graceful curves of dazzling white light, and would listen to the rattle of the musketry and the Maxims, and the fierce barking of the guns--especially of the French "75's".

On one of these nights Mr. Meredith found his funny little figure squeezed up against the rails, close to the life-buoy.

"Hullo, youngster!" he said cheerfully. "Would you like to be right in among it all--there on shore?"

"No, sir! I mean yes, sir! No, sir!"

"Which do you mean?" he asked.

"I don't know, sir. It sounds so awful."

"Well, you'd better turn in. They're packing up for the night now."

And so the China Doll would patter down the ladder in his bare feet, listen for a moment at the top of the hatchway to make sure that they had stopped fighting, and then go back to the dark half-deck and his hammock, and lie listening until he could not keep awake any longer.

In the picket-boat and steam pinnace the Orphan, the Hun, and Rawlins (who first relieved one and then the other) had never, all that first week or ten days, six hours' consecutive sleep.

Steamboats! Why! fifty more would have found plenty to do; and of those which were actually available, so many were constantly in the Sub's hands being repaired, or back on board their own ships being repaired, that those remaining were running practically day and night continuously. The Hun's pinnace smashed in her stem and stove in her bows against a trawler on the Thursday, and that laid her up for two whole days whilst she was being patched. On one of these two days he took charge of a boat whose midshipman had been killed by a stray bullet at another beach--"X" beach--round the corner, and on the second he and the Orphan kept "watch and watch" in the picket-boat. For all practical purposes their only chance of a rest was when their boats ran short of coal and water and had to go back to the _Achates_. The job of filling up with water and coal often took half an hour--time enough to get some food, sometimes even a bath; more often, all they wanted was sleep. Occasionally they had a stroke of luck after getting back to the ship, and might be told that they would not be wanted for an hour, perhaps longer. Then the Orphan, Rawlins, or the Hun--whoever it was who had such luck--would coil up on a cushion in the gun-room and sleep, or lie down on the Sub's bunk--if he was not there--which was more peaceful. More often than not, something would happen: an urgent signal would come from somewhere or other, to take a Staff officer "off" from "W" beach to the _Arcadia_--the General Head-quarters Staff ship---or to tow inshore a lighter full of stores, urgently needed--bombs, barbed wire, empty sandbags, whatever it might be; his boat might be the only one available, and away he would have to go.

This used to happen day and night, for during those first ten days there was no relaxation of effort whatever, all the twenty-four hours round the clock.

Very often the Orphan had to take his boat alongside hospital ships, and several times it happened that men climbed down their tall, white sides and asked for a passage ashore. One of these, on one occasion, was a stretcher-bearer of the Worcesters, an old soldier evidently. The air, just about this time, was full of rumours of Turkish atrocities, and these caused much anger until they were contradicted--as they generally were--although the contradictions never went the rounds as did the original rumours. The Orphan had just heard one particular story, vouched for, of four English--evidently prisoners--having been found burnt to death in Sedd-el-Bahr castle. So, thinking this man might know something about it, he asked him.

"Know about them? I should think I did; all nonsense, that story. They were burnt right enough--I saw them myself--but so was the wooden storehouse the Turks had put them in. Everything was burnt, and there was the base of a 6-inch lyddite shell lying close by them; one of our ships' shells which had set the place on fire during the bombardment."

He told him of his own experiences. "Why, sir," he said, "twice the Worcesters have had to fall back a bit at night, and leave wounded behind; and at daybreak we got back the ground again and found them all right, though we never expected they would be alive. 'We thought to find you scuppered,' we told them--at first, that was; not afterwards. I remember one--the Sergeant-Major of my company. We found him in the morning, and we asked him how he'd managed to keep clear of the Turks. 'Keep clear of 'em,' he says; 'keep clear of 'em! why, they crept up after you'd fallen back, found me in the dark, and gave me water; pulled me along behind some cover--your firing being so hot--and covered me with a blanket.'"

"Then haven't you seen anything wrong?" the Orphan asked.

"Well, I wouldn't exactly say that; there's a young chap in there"--and he pointed to the hospital ship--"what has some thirty-five bayonet wounds--just pricks--in him. They caught him in a trench and did handle him pretty rough, till he pretended to be dead; then they left him. He'll be up and about in ten days' time. Then I saw two of those Senegalese chaps see 'blue murder' one day; but what can you expect?"

"Are our fellows playing the game?" the Orphan asked.

"You don't know Bert Smith, he's in my section. Well, he and I was carrying a wounded Turk in our stretcher, he taking the head, and me going along in front with his feet, and I notices that he starts a-jerking his end up and down pretty violent, so I says to him: 'Here, Bert, what are you a-doing of? you'll hurt the poor blighter!' and he up and says: 'Poor blighter be darned; he's only a blooming Turk!'"

"What did you do?" asked the Orphan, smiling at the man's so very transparent earnestness.

"I just told him that, Turk or no Turk, he was a-fighting for his home and country, and it wasn't for us to say he was doing wrong--us who was trying to drive him out of it--and to go a-hurting of him."

"He carried him proper like after that, but of course, sir, you don't know Bert Smith; he's a fair 'card'."

The Orphan, noticing that he had a blood-stained bandage round his neck, asked him what he had been doing aboard the hospital ship.

"They sent me off," the man said indignantly. "Just had a bit of a clip--went in in front--came out at the back--under the skin--nothing. I stayed aboard there a little, and then, when the doctors were too busy to notice, I skipped into the first boat that would take me ashore, and am off back again. I can do all the doctoring I wants, and they're getting pretty short of chaps like me up there," and he jerked his thumb Krithia way.

During these days the Orphan allowed a good many men to scramble down from the hospital ships into his picket-boat--men slightly wounded, and who wanted to go back to their regiments. Many of these were Australians and New Zealanders, a brigade of whom had been brought round from Anzac, and had suffered extremely heavy losses in a most gallant but unsuccessful endeavour to capture Krithia.

He often had to take his picket-boat into "W" beach when shells were dropping on it or into the water close by; and these were times when he had to pull himself together, so that Jarvis and the crew should not know that he hated it; especially did he dislike the buzzing noise which just gave him sufficient warning to make him wonder where _that_ shell was going to hit. He also had an extremely narrow escape one day when he was taking a General and his Staff officers to "V" beach. As he approached the _River Clyde_ he saw that some big shells were dropping close to her, and just before he reached her, swish--sh--sh came along the noise of one and it flopped into the sea just ahead, fortunately without bursting. It heaved the bows of his boat right clear of the water, and the splash that fell over them fell on the deck, the General, and on his Staff officers. The Orphan's breath came very fast then; but he could not help laughing as he saw Plunky Bill, who'd been standing in the bows with his boat-hook all ready for going alongside the _River Clyde_, turn a complete somersault and disappear, head first, down the little hatch there. It was such a relief to have something to laugh at.

One day he was sent to the French flagship--she was probably the _Suffren_--with a note to the French Admiral, and had to wait on her quarter-deck for an answer. The Admiral brought it up himself; a dapper little man he was--all springs--and when he saw the Orphan standing stiffly to attention, he darted across, laid both his thin, aristocratic hands on his shoulders, gave him a friendly, encouraging shake, and talked French to him, the only words the Orphan was able to understand and remember being: "Ah, mon petit brave! mon pauvre petit garcon!"

On the way back with the answer he told Jarvis about this. "He called me lots of things, and he called me 'his poor little boy'--rather cheek, wasn't it?" In fact, the Orphan rather thought that his dignity had been hurt.

"A funny old bird, that 'ere Gay Pratty, sir," Jarvis said. "D'you know Porter--'Frenchy' Porter, they calls him now--that 'ere leading signalman what comed from the _Swiftsure_? 'E was lent to that 'ere French ship for the 18th March--when the _Bouvet_ and _Ocean_ and _Irresistible_ were 'outed'. 'E tells me that that 'ere little ladylike gen'l'man was on the bridge all the time, a 'opping about like a bloomin' sparrow, and wouldn't go down in the conning-tower nohow. They had shells all over 'em and all round 'em, and Frenchy Porter couldn't 'elp ducking 'is 'ead. Just as a big one come sloshing along--right over the bridge, it seemed--an' Frenchy 'ad ducked--that 'ere little box-of-tricks comes up to 'im, a-smiling and as jaunty as you please, and says to 'im, a-jerkin' 'is arms and 'is 'ands: 'When the noise come, you duck your 'ead--but then she 'as gone--you are too late'--it ain't no bloomin' use, or words to that heffect. A great, little gen'l'man, that be, sir."

After hearing this story, the Orphan was jolly glad the Admiral _had_ spoken to him.

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.

On the 12th May--a most perfect day it was--the three snotties were sitting outside their tent after lunch, smoking cigarettes, and watching an aeroplane, circling gracefully above them, looking for a good landing-place on the cliffs, close to the lighthouse Suddenly a great, tearing, rending noise seemed to fill all space. Everyone dropped, automatically, what was in his hand and bent his head; then, looking up, saw a cloud, black and oily--a hellish-looking balloon of smoke--suspended in the air above the ridge.

This was the first high-explosive shell which burst near "W" beach. "Gallipoli Bill"--a stumpy 6-inch howitzer--fired it, and fired many more that afternoon and again an hour before sunset, some of his shells bursting on impact, others in the air--all with that rending, awe-inspiring crash.