CHAPTER XXIIA Terrible NightThe Orphan had returned to Kephalo at nine o'clock in the morning—that Monday morning after the evacuation of Suvla. He had had no sleep for forty-eight hours, and was allowed none now. In the afternoon the largest tug received orders to tow four picket-boats and a steam pinnace to Mudros—the two picket-boats belonging to theLord Nelson, the boat belonging to theSwiftsure, another, and the steam pinnace.The Orphan thought this would be rather a "spree", and did not notice that the north-easterly breeze which had held all that past week had backed to the south-west.At half-past four in the afternoon, he and the other boats followed the tug out of harbour under their own steam. Beyond the "nets" the tug waited for them to come along and make fast, one behind the other."This is just the time when it's best to be last," Marchant, his coxswain, suggested. "I don't feel quite certain of the weather, and if we are the last boat we can slip whenever we want to."The Orphan agreed, and wasted a good deal of time—on purpose—going out of harbour, and found the other boats all secured to each other, in one long line, by the time he joined them. The captain of the tug was not very polite to him, but he did not worry about that, and made fast his tow-rope to the last boat—theLord Nelson'sNo. 1 picket-boat.The Cheese-mite shouted across: "I say, Orphan, you've cut me out of the stern billet—I wanted that.""So did I," the Orphan laughed.Away they all went, one after another, the tug steaming very slowly; and outside Suvla Point they found quite a fresh breeze, blowing straight in their faces, and the sea which had been so calm had already begun to cover itself with little "white horses".Four "water-beetles" joined company, puffing along with them as fast as they could.Fires were allowed to die out gradually in all the steamboats, and there was nothing to do but steer them.The crew now lighted the bogey, made tea, and fried some bacon. Everyone had a good meal; and after it the Orphan felt much too comfortable and sleepy to chaff the Cheese-mite ahead of him through his megaphone. "I'm going to have a bit of sleep," he told Marchant, and snuggled down below in the little cabin, with a rolled-up overcoat as pillow.It was bright moonlight when he woke up, and he felt the picket-boat bumping into waves every other second. He rubbed his eyes, and jumped on deck to the wheel."Hullo, what's that?" he said, noticing smoke coming up out of the funnel."I didn't wake you, sir; there's nothing to worry about—not yet; but I don't like the look of the weather, so I'm raising steam in case anything happens. You'd better get an oilskin on, sir," he added, as the bows bumped into a wave and the spray came over them.But the Orphan had not one, so he took the wheel whilst Marchant went for his.The breeze had indeed risen, and the sea too. The picket-boats ahead of him were going up and down like the boats at a circus roundabout; and behind him those motor-lighters, looking more like "water-beetles" than ever, in the moonlight, were slowly falling astern, yawing from side to side and covered with spray.He saw Kephalo South Point light and the fires over at Anzac, which still burnt furiously, and knew that the boats had only just got past Aliki Bay. He could not have been asleep for long.The wind and sea increased every minute, and made the steering of the picket-boat quite a hard job. Marchant came back and took the wheel from him. "I've known this boat for nearly three years, sir," he said; and the Orphan, knowing how he hated letting anyone steer his own old picket-boat, knew what he meant."What extraordinary luck, sir!" Marchant said presently. "Fancy if it had blown like this last night! Right on shore it would have been, and not a boat could have gone near it. We could not possibly have taken the soldiers off, to say nothing about their guns."In half an hour the motor-lighters were evidently in difficulties. In order to keep their screws in the water they had to be much ballasted down by the stern. This made their bluff bows come right out of the water; and every sea hitting them, besides almost stopping their way, tended to throw them off their course. They could not steer properly, yawing this way, yawing that; and it was impossible for them to keep up with the five and a half knots of the tug, which was then about the speed she was towing the picket-boats.She stopped and, as the motor-lighters struggled towards her, hailed them, and made two come alongside, abreast each other, on each side of her. She made them fast, and with them working their motors and doing their best to steer, she went on again. But you can imagine what a terribly clumsy "tow" they made, bumping into each other, bumping into the tug, simply covered with spray minute after minute."Look here, sir," said Marchant presently, as the weather rapidly grew worse; "if those lighters break adrift, they'll come down on us and finish us.""What d'you want to do?""I'd like to slip, and try and get along by ourselves. We can do it, sir; she's a very good steamer."The Orphan didn't know quite what to do. He realized the danger, but he didn't relish the idea of steaming nearly fifty miles to wind'ard, in the teeth of the rapidly rising wind.However, he realized that Marchant probably knew, better than he did, what the boat could or could not do; so he agreed.He seized the megaphone and yelled to the Cheese-mite to slip his tow-rope. The Cheese-mite, who also had raised steam, wanted to know where he was going."Make for Mudros!" yelled the Orphan."D'you know the way?""The coxswain does.""I'll follow you," the Cheese-mite shouted, as the tow-rope fell into the water.The two of them swerved outside the clumsy motor-lighters and gradually forged ahead, lost sight of them, and went plunging into the head seas, steering by compass and by the glow of the fires of Anzac. In a very short time they had to batten down everything—the forepeak hatch, the engine-room, and the stokehold hatches. The Orphan and Marchant (who had taken off his boots and oilskin) were wet through, waves washed a foot deep over the picket-boat, and she made very little progress.For two hours they struggled on; but by that time a regular gale was blowing, driving a short steep sea in front of it so fiercely that the picket-boat not only made scarcely any way, but could hardly keep her bows to it."We can't do it, sir," Marchant at last said, when, at one extra lurch, two of the spare water-barricoes (full they were) tore themselves from their lashings round the engine-room casings and went overboard. "We haven't enough water now—to say nothing of coal.""We'll have to go back, sir!" he shouted."Right-o!" yelled the Orphan, clinging to the rail round the cabin, and not at all liking the idea of turning the boat round in such a sea.Very gently Marchant edged her round; a wave buried her bows and threw her over; she righted herself, and the next wave, catching her almost broadside on, simply flung her on her beam-ends. For a moment the Orphan thought she would never right herself; then she did with a jerk, a wave came green almost over the wheel, the picket-boat lurched more heavily than before. The Orphan, swept off his feet, clung to the rail, and by the time he had gained his feet again she was round, and going ahead with the waves roaring after her, lifting her stern, foaming over the counter and trying to fling it round. He groped his way aft, clinging to the cabin rail, and found that already there were two feet of water in the stern-sheets.He suddenly remembered "Kaiser Bill", jumped down into the water, went into the cabin, and found his box floating about. He took it out into the moonlight, and was much relieved when the tortoise peeped out of his shell to see what all the "bobbery" was about. He jammed the box in a rack inside the cabin, near the top of it, and went back to the wheel."Much, sir?" Marchant asked anxiously."Two feet!" the Orphan shouted, and told him about rescuing "Kaiser Bill"."I'd forgotten all about him, sir. We're all right now, he'll bring us through. We must get that water out of her."The Orphan knew that the ejector was choked, so he made his way for'ard, clinging to the wire round the engine-room casings, the funnel-stays, and the gun-mounting, to call two of the men, huddled down under the forepeak, to come aft and bale the water out with buckets.They came and worked hard, but the waves constantly lopped in, and the amount of water diminished very slowly. He knew that if her stern swung round and she "broached to", the seas would fill the big stern-sheets completely, and as he could not trust to the engine-room bulkhead being watertight, she would probably sink. He understood then why Marchant had taken off his boots and oilskin.He went back to the steering-wheel.Just then the stokehold hatch opened, the stoker drew himself out, and scrambled cautiously aft. He began unlashing one of the two remaining barricoes of water, when a sudden lurch of the boat threw him off his feet, and he slid overboard.Like lightning Marchant, shouting "Take the wheel, sir!" jumped in front of the protecting shield, flung himself down, gripping the wire round the engine-room casing with one hand, leant over the gunwale, and seized the stoker almost before he had fallen completely over the side. There was the crash of something being overturned, the sizzle of red-hot cinders falling in the water, and Marchant, with a jerk, wrenched the man against the boat's side. He gripped the life-line; Marchant gave a heave, and he climbed on board again. It all happened in the twinkling of an eye.Marchant came back and took the wheel."Pretty quick work, that!" the Orphan said. "He'd have been drowned; we couldn't have turned round to pick him up.""No; it wouldn't have been safe," Marchant shouted back, meeting a vicious swerve of the stern with a touch of helm."Look at my hands and face, sir," he said, when the picket-boat had quieted herself. "I knocked over that bogey; it hadn't gone out, and the cinders burnt me or scalded me when they fell into the water."By the moonlight the Orphan saw that his face and hands were very red."I can't see thatLord Nelson'sboat, sir," Marchant shouted in a minute or two. "She ought to have seen us turn and followed. I can't see her now."The Orphan looked astern and could see nothing. In ordinary circumstances he would have gone back to look for her; but with that raging, roaring, steep sea racing after them, both he and Marchant knew this was now out of the question.The only thing they could do they did; Marchant going aft, lighting a lantern, and lashing it to show astern.He left the wheel to the Orphan.By the time Marchant came back the tug hove in sight, tossing and tumbling in the white foaming seas, evidently standing by two motor-lighters which had broken adrift and were almost hidden in spray, broadside-on to the waves. They saw nothing of the other two.They passed them, and caught up with one of the other picket-boats. Marchant roared through his megaphone for her to keep Kephalo Light well clear to port because of the "submarine detector" nets. He knew where they were, and this steamboat seemed to be steering for them."There's one caught in them, over there, sir!" Marchant shouted, pointing far away to port. "She'll probably drift on to the rocks.""Can't we go and help?" the Orphan shouted, knowing full well that this was impossible, for once the propeller fouled those nets his picket-boat would be helpless, and drift on the rocks herself when the waves tore her out of the nets.Marchant shook his head.In half an hour they had Kephalo Light a couple of miles on their port beam; half an hour later they had edged the picket-boat into comparatively smooth water, and by eleven o'clock that night they went in through the gate in the submarine net at Kephalo, and ran alongside theAchates.By this time Marchant's face and hands had begun to swell and blister from that scald or burn, and were very painful.The Orphan sent him inboard to Dr. Gordon, and took his steamboat round the sunken breakwater ships alongside the landing-place. Then he stumbled, wet through and fearfully tired, up to the wooden hut, woke the Fierce One, and reported himself.He became horribly unpopular, and was ordered to report in the morning. So back he went to the picket-boat, tied her up alongside the sunken Oruba; and he and his crew went to sleep, and would have slept for ever, if the crew of another picket-boat, tied up close to them, had not given them a "shake" next morning.In the forenoon the Orphan was sent outside the harbour to search for the other picket-boats which had not arrived. He saw the Cheese-mite's boat hard and fast on shore, and another breaking up not far from her. He expected that the crews had swum or scrambled ashore (they had done so); but the seas ran much too high for him to go in and give assistance, so back he came into harbour and reported this."Hum!" growled the Fierce One. "You don't belong to me any more; go back to your ship."The tired midshipman, thinking that he had disgraced himself, went back.Bubbles met him at the top of the gangway—his face redder, and his chuckling, snorting noises louder than ever. "Orphan! Orphan!" he blurted out; "you and I are off to 'W' beach. The Sub went there yesterday, and we're going to-night. Really—honour bright!" as he saw that the Orphan thought that his leg was being "pulled"."Phew! That's grand! My word, what luck!" the Orphan burst out, his tired eyes lighting up as he realized that Bubbles meant it.Marchant, with his left hand bandaged up and his face all oily and red, was waiting to go down into the boat."Good-bye!" the Orphan said. "We've had a splendid time together, haven't we? Good luck to you!" and darted away to see the Commander and get his orders; but then, remembering "Kaiser Bill", ran back again."He's all right; they're bringing him up along with your gear," Bubbles told him. "I'll look after everything. You do look a prize burglar!"He found the Commander. "Yes, you are to go across in a trawler—about five o'clock. The Captain wishes to see you."So aft he went, and found Captain Macfarlane in his cabin smoking a cigarette, as usual."Hum!" he said, smiling when he saw how unkempt the Orphan looked, his face dirty, and his clothes hardly dry from last night's soaking. "Hum, Mr. Orpen! We don't seem to be able to carry on this war without you, do we? You have to go across to 'W' beach to-night, and you'll probably be there for some time.""Are they going to evacuate Helles, sir?" the Orphan asked."I expect you will be able to tell me that, when you've been there a few days. You were out in that gale last night, I hear, and the only one of those five boats to get back. Hum! You seem lucky.""We had 'Kaiser Bill' on board. Old Fletcher, the stoker, made me take him.""Oh! was that it?" smiled the Captain, tugging his beard. "Well, off you go, and good luck to you! You'll have plenty of shells to dodge—over there. You'd better take 'Kaiser Bill' with you.""I will, sir, if Fletcher lets me." And the Orphan, hugely happy and delighted, went away to the gun-room to tell all his adventures.At four o'clock that afternoon Bubbles and the Orphan stood at the top of the accommodation ladder, with all the clothes and gear they wanted in two ordinary sailor's kit-bags, and their bedding made up in two bundles. On top of the bundles rested "Kaiser Bill's" wooden box, with the tortoise inside. Old Fletcher had come aft, and was "fussing" round him."We'll look after him all right. Thank you for lending him!" they called out as they went down into the Hun's steam pinnace. "Kaiser Bill" and their gear were carried down after them, and the Hun took them across to the waiting trawler.By five o'clock theAchateswas once more out of sight, and the trawler was steaming towards Cape Helles with the remnants of last night's gale on her starboard beam. The two midshipmen both wore once again the khaki which the Fierce One had forbidden, the same clothes they had worn when they left "W" beach at the end of May, six months and a half ago; and they felt supremely happy, crouching in the lee of the trawler's galley, and watching the island of Kephalo gradually fading out of sight till darkness hid it altogether.At half-past six the trawler ran alongside a sunken steamer—the outer hulk of Pier No. 1; a steamboat came for them, and landed them and their gear at No. 3 Pier—the pier they had watched being commenced by the Sappers the very day of the landing. By the light of a single lantern they found the Pier-master—a Sub-lieutenant, R.N.R.—and were ordered to report themselves to the Naval Transport Officer."You'd better go up to the Mess," the R.N.R. Sub told them. "You'll probably find him up there."He gave them two men to carry their gear, and with "Kaiser Bill" under the Orphan's arm they stumbled along the pier in the dark till their feet scrunched into the sand on "W" beach."What a time since we were here!" Bubbles blurted out; and: "Isn't it grand to get back again?" the Orphan chuckled.There were no flares now, the shore was absolutely dark.They started off along the beach towards where the main gully road used to be; but everything had so changed, and it was so dark, that they soon had to let the two seamen with their bundles lead the way—off that beach, up a broad, firm road, turning to the left along a narrow path, then down some wooden steps, and so to a dark "cutting" in the side of the slope, at the end of which a glow of light showed through half-opened folding-doors."Here's the Officers' Mess, sir. Glad to see you on shore, sir," said one of the seamen; and the Orphan recognized Plunky Bill's voice."Hello! You here? How are things going?""Pretty quiet, sir; nothing much doing.""Are they going to evacuate the place?""I ain't 'eard nothing. We've been landing a good many of the soldiers round from Suvla—a good show—down there, sir. I ain't 'eard nothing about nobody going off."Bubbles, looking in through the doors and seeing no one inside, asked him where the Sub was."Don't see much of him, sir. I works down at No. 1 Pier—mostly. Well, we'll stick your gear 'ere. Some of the officers will be a-coming up soon.""'Kaiser Bill' has come along—for luck," the Orphan said; and Plunky Bill stepped into the lamp-light from the half-open door to have a look at him in his box."'E will bring luck all right, sir. I wish we'd 'ad 'im at that there Ajano place."Then they were left alone, went inside through the door—evidently the folding-doors from the saloon of one of the sunken steamers—into a pantry sort of place, through it into a long room some 9 feet high, 20 feet long, and 12 feet broad, with a wooden floor and a wooden ceiling, from which an oil-lamp hung—the lamp which had glowed through the doorway—over a long wooden table littered with newspapers, and with a wooden bench on either side of it. At the far end was a fire-place—alight and burning cosily—some deck chairs round it, a packing-case full of coal in the corner, and a very dilapidated card-table."Look how they make cupboards!" said Bubbles excitedly, and pointed to two shell-boxes let into the clay walls. "Isn't that 'cute'?"Then from outside came a loud voice. "My jumping Jimmy! D'you think I'm going to land a hundred tons of hay a night like this? Not if I know it. It would all get soaked. Tell him to wait till the morning; the sea will have gone down by then."The Sub came in, calling out: "Outside! Outside! Pantry! Pantry! Bring me a bottle of beer!" And seeing the two midshipmen, burst out with: "Yoicks, my merry kippers! My bubbling Bubbles! My perishing Orphan! Pantry! Pantry! Bring three bottles!""They've sent you two here, have they? Good egg! Well, you'll have lots to do, and a lot of shell-dodging. They've got a better brand in stock now—burst every time. Hello! There goes one!" he said, as the roaring thud of a bursting shell came from somewhere up the ridge, and some bits of dried clay broke away from the walls and rattled down on the wooden floor. "That fell in the Ordnance Stores. They've had a lot there lately.""Where's it from? Achi Baba?" asked the Orphan."Old 'Asiatic Annie'—a 6-inch. She's a confounded nuisance. What d'you think of my 'dug-out'? Come and see where I 'pig' it;" and the Sub took them past the fire-place into a little room beyond, and, flashing his electric torch, showed them two beds, a small table, cupboard places in the mud walls, a stove, and two little wash-stands—evidently taken out of a ship. "We've got lots of stuff from these sunken hulks. Snug little place, isn't it?—especially when we light the stove in the corner.""Are we going to live here?" the midshipmen asked."Good heavens, no, my wriggling worms! You won't live with the aristocracy. Come along, and I'll show you your 'pigsty'—another 'dug-out', which we call the dormitory."A fine-looking old Leading Seaman, an old Naval Reserve man named Richards—he may have been fifty, he may have been sixty—came in with the three glasses of beer, just as another tremendous roar shook the wooden beams overhead and made the tin lamp-shade rattle—it sounded not twenty yards away."In the Sappers' place, that one, sir; they're starting early to-night," the old chap said, putting the tray on the table."Send these officers' gear round to the dormitory; you'll find it outside," the Sub told him."They've gone already, sir," Richards said."What's on top of those beams?" the Orphan asked, a little anxiously, as another roaring explosion thudded the air, not quite so near as the last."A new tarpaulin, my Orphan! I stole it yesterday. It's waterproof, too!""Can those things come in here?""There's nothing to prevent 'em," grinned the Sub. "Come along, and we'll peg out a claim for you two in the dormitory. Hello! what the devil have you got there?" he said, seeing "Kaiser Bill's" box on the table, and opening it, roared with laughter. "Old Fletcher made you bring him?""He made me take him for Suvla evacuation—for luck—and the Captain told me I'd better bring him here, as he'd brought luck there.""Are they going to evacuate this place?" they both asked at the same time.The Sub shook his head. "I don't think so. So you were at Suvla? Of course you were; you'll have to tell me all about it. What a splendid show that was! Our chaps here made a pretence of advancing that same day—lost a lot of people."By now he had taken them through the cutting. "That's the kitchen," he said, as he took them out of the mess and they passed a place with a light in it; "old Richards looks after it, and us, like a mother." He led them through another deep cutting, and through an opening closed by a door—evidently a door taken from the cabin of one of the sunken hulks. "More loot," the Sub said, switching on his torch and leading the way into a long place with a few planks laid over the clayey earth, with earth walls and a timber roof. Six beds were already there, with bags between them, and their own bundles lay, lonely, in the middle.He showed them a corner where they could spread out their beds. "I'll get some planks put there in the morning," he told them. "You'd better come along and see the Captain now; he'll be up in his 'dug-out' by this time, I expect."As they went out on to the open slope, climbed up to a road which ran immediately at the back of the dormitory, another high-explosive shell burst high up the ridge, lighting up a few white tents.The Orphan winced and Bubbles chuckled.Then it was all dark again. "Mind those steps; keep close to me; here we are," and the Sub took them along another cutting to the Naval Transport Officer's "dug-out".They found this naval Captain there, washing the sand off his face."Two of our midshipmen, sir; the two we expected."He turned round—a short, thick-set man with a bullet-shaped, closely cropped head—and he wiped the soap-suds off his mahogany-coloured face."All right; the Sub will show you where to go; glad to have you," and he waved them away.They went back towards the Mess."You'll have to take charge of a picket-boat," the Sub told Bubbles; "and you, Orphan, will have to do odd jobs under me—all sorts of things: cleaning up the camp, fetching coal, any old thing. Ah! look out! here comes another!"They heard the whistling swish of a shell, and then another glare, and another tremendous explosion burst, just the other side of the Naval Mess.Instinctively they had thrown themselves down on the ground; something hurtled past and buried itself in the sand close by; and as they scrambled to their feet the Sub said angrily: "Confound them! Come along back to the Mess; you can have a wash in my basin, and then it will be time for dinner."Two soldiers—a Major and a subaltern, the Military Landing Officers—a R.N.R. lieutenant, and two R.N.R. sub-lieutenants came in at odd times for dinner. The Sub hurried through his meal, put on a thick coat, and warmed himself in front of the fire before going down to the beach."Is there much to do to-night?" asked one of the soldier officers—the subaltern."Absolutely nothing, old chap, except to get off a tug, two steamboats, something like half a dozen lighters driven ashore last night; try and repair about twenty feet of No. 1 Pier washed away by the other gale, and see what can be done with the 'Inner Hulk'—she broke her back when the pier 'went', and we'll have to try and get a gangway across the gap; otherwise I can't think of anything."Two of the R.N.R. officers went with him, but he sent the two midshipmen to turn in. Neither of them had had any proper sleep for three days, and they both had been nodding and yawning, and looking stupidly tired all through that meal.So they turned in, put "Kaiser Bill" between them for luck, and slept like "tops".CHAPTER XXIII"In 'Dug-outs' at Cape Helles"Richards, that splendid old Leading Seaman who "ran" the Mess, brought them both a cup of tea in the morning. "Four bells just struck, sirs; breeze gone round to the north-east, pretty nippy outside it is, but fine. Hands 'fall in' at half-past six." He lighted an oil-lamp and left them.Bubbles snuggled down under the blankets and would have gone to sleep again, had not the Orphan pulled them off him and made him turn out.They dressed hurriedly, saw that "Kaiser Bill" was safe in his corner; and by seven o'clock, just before the dawn commenced, Bubbles had taken charge of a very much battered, old picket-boat lying alongside No. 3 Pier; and the Orphan, with a party of five stokers, was sent up behind the Mess to deepen a shallow gutter-way between it and the road, to prevent rain washing off the road on to the top of the dormitory and that new tarpaulin which the Sub had stolen.He met the Sub coming back from his night's work on the beach, wet through and very fagged. "I got some of those lighters off, but there's another week's work down there at that job," he said.When daylight came, the Orphan found that "W" beach had altered very much since he had been there, six months and a half ago. The cliffs beyond were crowned by a vast number of hospital tents and marquees; where, previously, the horse and mule "lines" had been, tents and marquees, and huge masses of stores, protected by tarpaulins, now occupied these spaces, and the irregular sandy track up the gully to the ridge had become a wide well-made road with well-metalled roads branching away to left and right. Everywhere there were "dug-outs", not open ones as in those early days, but covered with wooden or galvanized-iron roofs, over which at least one protecting layer of sand-bags had been laid. Motor-lorries dashed along the roads continuously, and seemed to have taken the place of horses and mules almost entirely.Along the face of the steep cliff, on the far side of the gully from where those one-inch Nordenfeldts and maxims had played such havoc among the Lancashire Fusiliers on the day of the landing, a steep road had been cut in the face of it, and the Orphan saw hundreds of "dug-outs" up there.Fifty yards below him was the beach itself, with its four little piers—No. 1 Pier to his right, with a gap in it made by the first of the south-west gales; beyond it the "Inner Hulk", a sunken steamer with her back broken; and beyond her, at right angles, another sunken steamer, the "Outer Hulk". At his feet was No. 2 Pier, the first pier the Sappers had begun on the 25th April; and beyond this the longer No. 3 Pier, with its end curving towards the "Outer Hulk", so that a small harbour[#] had been formed in which now lay two little "coaster" steamers, several lighters, and a trawler.[#] This harbour was called Port Talbot after the Captain of the poor oldMajestic.Beyond and to the left, under the high cliff, was No. 4 Pier, more of a mole or jetty than a pier, protected a little from the east by a reef of rocks. It was on this pier that the Orphan, later on, had so much work to do. Farther along still, several lighters had stranded, and one or two were already broken up.Out towards Tenedos and over against the Asiatic shore the usual trawlers and drifters and a couple of destroyers patrolled for submarines.But what struck the Orphan most vividly was the emptiness of the Straits between him and the Asiatic shore. In May they had been almost crowded with battleships, transports, hospital ships, ships of all sorts and sizes; now a solitary hospital ship lay off Helles, and only two or three small craft and tugs were anchored inshore.The Turks fired no shells that morning until the breakfast hour, when two fell among the Sappers' stores and tents, without, however, doing any damage.After breakfast the Orphan and his stokers had more digging to do, extending the beach party's "dug-outs" at the foot of the low cliff, below the Mess "dug-out", and commencing others. Shells came over every now and then all the morning, but none burst near the Orphan's party. When they knocked off work and started dinner, the Turks over on the Asiatic shore fired many big 6-inch high explosives, which did very little material damage, though they racked his nerves exceedingly.The Orphan never even pretended that he did not hate those shells; and when, that afternoon, he received orders to take twenty men, embark in a tug, and go down to Rabbit Island to draw coal, he felt extremely pleased to get away from them. Rabbit Island is a tiny little island at the mouth of the Straits, and when he arrived there he found two small monitors with long-range guns busily bombarding the Asiatic guns. The Turks were firing back, and when he went alongside the collier to get his filled coal-bags, one of their wretched shells fell so close to the tug as to splash the bows. The Orphan loaded his coal-bags and started back to "W" beach, realizing that the only thing to do, if he meant to enjoy himself, was simply not to think of shells at all. Of course, in twenty-four hours he had made friends with Richards, that Leading Seaman; and the old man could not help noticing that he flinched whenever a big shell moaned through the air, and burst with its horrid, rending roar. "Look here, sir," he said; "it's just like this: don't you worry about them—it's no use worrying. If you're meant to be killed, killed you will be, wherever you go or whatever you do; so just pay no attention to them."It is difficult for a youngster to take comfort from such a fatalistic conviction; but by the end of the week the Orphan was able to tell Bubbles that he had not "ducked" once during the last twenty-four hours. "That shows I'm not such a duffer, doesn't it, old chap?" he said proudly.During those first few days a good deal of mysterious landing and embarking of troops went on, which nobody seemed able to explain—though, as far as anyone in the Naval Mess knew, many more were coming than going. Also, it became known that the new-comers were taking over—gradually—the French section of the line, and that French troops and guns embarked every night. The Turks naturally knew that our men were occupying the French trenches immediately opposite them, so that there was no need for secrecy, and many of the French guns were towed away from "V" beach in broad daylight. A tug would take away a heavily loaded lighter at the end of a very long tow-rope, and "Asiatic Annie" and her sisters often made "towing-target" practice at this lighter and its guns—though without ever hitting them.The Orphan himself never went to "V" beach, but Bubbles often did so, and found quite a good harbour there, made by a big Messageries Maritimes steamer sunk this side of theRiver Clyde(apparently none the worse for her seven months of being shelled), and an obsolete old French battleship hulk—theMassena—sunk almost to close the gap between them. Whenever the French happened to have a slack night, most of the British nightly reinforcements (from the 9th Corps, which had been at Suvla) landed there.Christmas Day arrived, and the Turks greeted it with a more than usually heavy shelling of both beaches, the Sappers' and Ordnance Store Depots suffering considerably. This, and an extra good dinner that night—when Richards produced two turkeys, obtained from one of the Greek islands, and several officers contributed Christmas puddings and mince-pies, sent from home by the Christmas mail—marked the day. Otherwise all work went on as usual.Every now and again the French battleshipSuffrencame along up the Straits, with her protecting destroyers and trawlers and her "spotting" aeroplane, and bombarded the Asiatic guns for a couple of hours or so. At other times a British battleship repeated the performance with even greater zest; but though those annoying guns remained quiet whilst they were being bombarded, they always opened a very vigorous fire on the beaches directly the battleships had left.On the other side of the Peninsula, round the "left flank" coast, assisting destroyers very frequently harassed the Turkish trenches on the Achi Baba right flank, and a big monitor almost daily bombarded Achi Baba or Chanak Fort with her big 14-inch guns.Everything went on as usual, and as though we intended to hold the end of the Peninsula for ever.Everyone in the Naval Mess was far too busy embarking and disembarking troops and stores by night, preparing for the winter, strengthening their "dug-outs", repairing piers, and patching damaged boats by day, to know exactly what was happening up in the front-line trenches. Intermittent artillery duels, at all hours of every day, went on in the usual manner, and without any apparent especial military object. At night, when working on the piers, they often heard furious bursts of rifle and machine-gun firing, sometimes the bursting of trench bombs; at times field-guns also used to "chip in" at night; but everyone had become so accustomed to all this that no one paid any attention to it or remarked about it.Shells fell on the beaches and above them just as usual; 6-inch high explosives came from the Asiatic side—two or three an hour—from daylight until two o'clock next morning, at which time the Turkish gunners "packed up". During the men's "stand easy", in the middle of the day, perhaps twenty would come along; and again, at nine o'clock at night, they would start fairly brisk firing for three-quarters of an hour.The Naval Camp, lying as it did just below the R.E. "Park", and not far from the Ordnance Stores—both favourite targets of "Asiatic Annie "—received a good many of her misses, and most of the "shorts" fell on the beach itself. By this time the men working within this shell area had become so accustomed and hardened to these intermittent noises of shells shrieking towards them and bursting, that work was seldom interrupted. At night, sentries along the beach would watch for the glare made by the flash of the Asiatic howitzers, and would call out "Take cover!" Eighteen seconds afterwards the shell, if fired at "V" beach, would burst there; but if fired at "W" beach twenty seconds elapsed, after the warning shout, before the shell could be heard rushing through the night air with a rapidly increasing "swishing" noise. In twenty-five seconds it arrived, burst with a very vivid flash and that nerve-shaking, rending roar, and did whatever damage it had found to do.Sometimes, in the silence which followed, would be heard the melancholy call, "Stretcher! Stretcher!" but most frequently a hole in the ground, or a few scattered boxes of stores or bundles of fodder, alone marked where it had fallen and burst.From Achi Baba came the little 4.1-inch shells at all hours of the day.People told the Orphan that some ten days after the Belgrade-Nish-Constantinople railway had been reopened through conquered Serbia, it became evident that the Turks were much more lavish with their ammunition.They must have received ample additional supplies, and, what was still more noticeable, the new shells nearly always burst.The Orphan gradually grew accustomed to these shells, but he was always "mighty" glad when the two big "hates" of the day were finished.Everyone had marvellous escapes; in fact, marvellous escapes were so common that the recounting of them soon failed to interest others.One morning the Orphan was sleeping soundly in the dormitory, and at about ten o'clock Bubbles, who had somehow or other fallen overboard from his picket-boat, ran up to shift his wet clothes, and could not resist the temptation of waking up the Orphan. He had just commenced to get some sense into him and make him take an interest in his accident, when in through the roof smashed a shell, passed between the Orphan sitting on his bed and Bubbles standing over him, buried itself in the ground, and burst. Bubbles was thrown to the other side of the dormitory, the Orphan found himself on top of an awakened and angry R.N.R. Lieutenant, and all three, covered with dust, dashed through the smoke out into the open air."Kaiser Bill!" the Orphan cried, darted back again, and brought out the tortoise."He was under my bed, he wasn't quite buried; he doesn't seem to have been hit."They tried anxiously to make him put out his head, but he wouldn't. Bubbles, seizing him, looked inside the shell. "He's all right," he said, much relieved; "I saw his mouth move.""I bet that he got the fright of his life,", Bubbles gurgled; and then noticed that the Orphan's wrist, the right one, was bleeding, and that blood was coming through his own soaked trousers. They found a small cut on the Orphan's right wrist, and that Bubbles had a little gash behind the left knee—quite trivial things, only requiring a bandage round each. Actually, that was all the damage done to those two midshipmen, although the shell had burst immediately behind and between them."Fancy what might have happened if 'Kaiser Bill' had not been there," the superstitious Orphan, a little "shaken", kept saying.The R.N.R. Lieutenant, having fixed them up with bandages, took them inside the dormitory to dig their things out again and get the place tidied up. They shook the sand and clay from their bedding; dug out the clothes which had been lying on the floor; found some of the fragments of the shell, probably a 4.1-inch from Achi Baba; looked at the jagged hole in the wooden roof; and when Bubbles, having changed his wet clothes, went away, limping a little, to take charge of his picket-boat again, the other two turned in and slept until midday. Directly the Orphan woke he hunted round for the tortoise, and felt greatly relieved when he saw "Kaiser Bill's" cunning old head peeping out.On the next night it blew hard from the north-east—away from the end of the Peninsula. Unfortunately for Bubbles, he had the job, that night, of towing a big Malta lighter, full of mules, out to a transport, and when away from the shelter of the land something went wrong with the tow-rope, and it fouled the screw of his picket-boat. Both lighter and picket-boat drifted helplessly out to sea, and eventually became separated. It was a bitterly cold night—so dark that you could not see fifty yards in front of you, and two miles from the end of the Peninsula a very unpleasant sea was running. The lighter full of mules drifted away, but by some lucky chance stranded on Rabbit Island, and Bubbles in his helpless, waterlogged picket-boat had the luck to be found and picked up by a patrolling trawler, which towed him into safety.He did not get back to "W" beach until long after daylight, and was then sent up to get his breakfast and some sleep. For some reason or other, his bed had been moved into the small "sleeping 'dug-out'" at the side of the Mess opposite to the dormitory, and almost at the same hour as the day before, a big shell from "Asiatic Annie" came in and completely wrecked it. No one else slept there that morning, and he had a most marvellous escape. The three empty beds, the wash-stands, and little stove were destroyed, and a macintosh which he had pulled over his blankets had several gashes torn in it, but he himself had not a scratch. Old Richards, running in through the Mess, and unable to see owing to the dust and smoke, switched on an electric torch and called out "Are you all right, sir?" never thinking that he could possibly be alive."I woke up," said Bubbles afterwards, bubbling over with excitement, "and found the whole place blooming dark; everything seemed to be tumbling down on top of me, and my hair was full of sand and stuff. I couldn't think what was the matter, and the smell of the place was simply beastly. It wasn't till old Richards came in, flashed his torch, wanted to know whether I was alive or not, and told me a shell had come in, that I knew what had happened. It spoilt that new macintosh I paid one pound ten for yesterday up at the Ordnance, confound it!"The rest of the morning Bubbles and Richards spent digging out his "gear". They found his watch some two feet under the sand, still going, but the glass cracked. The "dug-out" was completely wrecked and quite uninhabitable.He shifted back again into the dormitory, but had no more time for sleep. "I'll stick nearer to old 'Kaiser Bill' another time," he told the Orphan, poking fun at him and his superstitions.The very next day, when on his way to the Mess for a hasty lunch, he stopped to speak to Richards, the Leading Seaman, who had just come out of the kitchen. At that moment a shell came past them, fell through the open kitchen door, and burst inside. Richards calmly put down the tureen of pea soup which he was carrying, and together they went in through the smoke to see if anyone had been injured. One man lay dead, and another had been badly cut about the shoulder by a splinter. He was carried away immediately to the Casualty Clearing-station beyond the gully, and the dead man covered up and removed. "Poor chap!" Richards muttered, "he only landed two hours ago for the first time. It's a strange thing how some get picked off, sir, isn't it?""Well, that's the third close shave for me—in three days too. I'll tell the Orphan that. He'll think it tremendously lucky," Bubbles said."I shouldn't like to say that it isn't, sir," Richards replied thoughtfully.These three "experiences" seemed to have absolutely no effect on this midshipman's nerves, and the Orphan marvelled at him, and despised himself for hating and dreading shells so much.
CHAPTER XXII
A Terrible Night
The Orphan had returned to Kephalo at nine o'clock in the morning—that Monday morning after the evacuation of Suvla. He had had no sleep for forty-eight hours, and was allowed none now. In the afternoon the largest tug received orders to tow four picket-boats and a steam pinnace to Mudros—the two picket-boats belonging to theLord Nelson, the boat belonging to theSwiftsure, another, and the steam pinnace.
The Orphan thought this would be rather a "spree", and did not notice that the north-easterly breeze which had held all that past week had backed to the south-west.
At half-past four in the afternoon, he and the other boats followed the tug out of harbour under their own steam. Beyond the "nets" the tug waited for them to come along and make fast, one behind the other.
"This is just the time when it's best to be last," Marchant, his coxswain, suggested. "I don't feel quite certain of the weather, and if we are the last boat we can slip whenever we want to."
The Orphan agreed, and wasted a good deal of time—on purpose—going out of harbour, and found the other boats all secured to each other, in one long line, by the time he joined them. The captain of the tug was not very polite to him, but he did not worry about that, and made fast his tow-rope to the last boat—theLord Nelson'sNo. 1 picket-boat.
The Cheese-mite shouted across: "I say, Orphan, you've cut me out of the stern billet—I wanted that."
"So did I," the Orphan laughed.
Away they all went, one after another, the tug steaming very slowly; and outside Suvla Point they found quite a fresh breeze, blowing straight in their faces, and the sea which had been so calm had already begun to cover itself with little "white horses".
Four "water-beetles" joined company, puffing along with them as fast as they could.
Fires were allowed to die out gradually in all the steamboats, and there was nothing to do but steer them.
The crew now lighted the bogey, made tea, and fried some bacon. Everyone had a good meal; and after it the Orphan felt much too comfortable and sleepy to chaff the Cheese-mite ahead of him through his megaphone. "I'm going to have a bit of sleep," he told Marchant, and snuggled down below in the little cabin, with a rolled-up overcoat as pillow.
It was bright moonlight when he woke up, and he felt the picket-boat bumping into waves every other second. He rubbed his eyes, and jumped on deck to the wheel.
"Hullo, what's that?" he said, noticing smoke coming up out of the funnel.
"I didn't wake you, sir; there's nothing to worry about—not yet; but I don't like the look of the weather, so I'm raising steam in case anything happens. You'd better get an oilskin on, sir," he added, as the bows bumped into a wave and the spray came over them.
But the Orphan had not one, so he took the wheel whilst Marchant went for his.
The breeze had indeed risen, and the sea too. The picket-boats ahead of him were going up and down like the boats at a circus roundabout; and behind him those motor-lighters, looking more like "water-beetles" than ever, in the moonlight, were slowly falling astern, yawing from side to side and covered with spray.
He saw Kephalo South Point light and the fires over at Anzac, which still burnt furiously, and knew that the boats had only just got past Aliki Bay. He could not have been asleep for long.
The wind and sea increased every minute, and made the steering of the picket-boat quite a hard job. Marchant came back and took the wheel from him. "I've known this boat for nearly three years, sir," he said; and the Orphan, knowing how he hated letting anyone steer his own old picket-boat, knew what he meant.
"What extraordinary luck, sir!" Marchant said presently. "Fancy if it had blown like this last night! Right on shore it would have been, and not a boat could have gone near it. We could not possibly have taken the soldiers off, to say nothing about their guns."
In half an hour the motor-lighters were evidently in difficulties. In order to keep their screws in the water they had to be much ballasted down by the stern. This made their bluff bows come right out of the water; and every sea hitting them, besides almost stopping their way, tended to throw them off their course. They could not steer properly, yawing this way, yawing that; and it was impossible for them to keep up with the five and a half knots of the tug, which was then about the speed she was towing the picket-boats.
She stopped and, as the motor-lighters struggled towards her, hailed them, and made two come alongside, abreast each other, on each side of her. She made them fast, and with them working their motors and doing their best to steer, she went on again. But you can imagine what a terribly clumsy "tow" they made, bumping into each other, bumping into the tug, simply covered with spray minute after minute.
"Look here, sir," said Marchant presently, as the weather rapidly grew worse; "if those lighters break adrift, they'll come down on us and finish us."
"What d'you want to do?"
"I'd like to slip, and try and get along by ourselves. We can do it, sir; she's a very good steamer."
The Orphan didn't know quite what to do. He realized the danger, but he didn't relish the idea of steaming nearly fifty miles to wind'ard, in the teeth of the rapidly rising wind.
However, he realized that Marchant probably knew, better than he did, what the boat could or could not do; so he agreed.
He seized the megaphone and yelled to the Cheese-mite to slip his tow-rope. The Cheese-mite, who also had raised steam, wanted to know where he was going.
"Make for Mudros!" yelled the Orphan.
"D'you know the way?"
"The coxswain does."
"I'll follow you," the Cheese-mite shouted, as the tow-rope fell into the water.
The two of them swerved outside the clumsy motor-lighters and gradually forged ahead, lost sight of them, and went plunging into the head seas, steering by compass and by the glow of the fires of Anzac. In a very short time they had to batten down everything—the forepeak hatch, the engine-room, and the stokehold hatches. The Orphan and Marchant (who had taken off his boots and oilskin) were wet through, waves washed a foot deep over the picket-boat, and she made very little progress.
For two hours they struggled on; but by that time a regular gale was blowing, driving a short steep sea in front of it so fiercely that the picket-boat not only made scarcely any way, but could hardly keep her bows to it.
"We can't do it, sir," Marchant at last said, when, at one extra lurch, two of the spare water-barricoes (full they were) tore themselves from their lashings round the engine-room casings and went overboard. "We haven't enough water now—to say nothing of coal."
"We'll have to go back, sir!" he shouted.
"Right-o!" yelled the Orphan, clinging to the rail round the cabin, and not at all liking the idea of turning the boat round in such a sea.
Very gently Marchant edged her round; a wave buried her bows and threw her over; she righted herself, and the next wave, catching her almost broadside on, simply flung her on her beam-ends. For a moment the Orphan thought she would never right herself; then she did with a jerk, a wave came green almost over the wheel, the picket-boat lurched more heavily than before. The Orphan, swept off his feet, clung to the rail, and by the time he had gained his feet again she was round, and going ahead with the waves roaring after her, lifting her stern, foaming over the counter and trying to fling it round. He groped his way aft, clinging to the cabin rail, and found that already there were two feet of water in the stern-sheets.
He suddenly remembered "Kaiser Bill", jumped down into the water, went into the cabin, and found his box floating about. He took it out into the moonlight, and was much relieved when the tortoise peeped out of his shell to see what all the "bobbery" was about. He jammed the box in a rack inside the cabin, near the top of it, and went back to the wheel.
"Much, sir?" Marchant asked anxiously.
"Two feet!" the Orphan shouted, and told him about rescuing "Kaiser Bill".
"I'd forgotten all about him, sir. We're all right now, he'll bring us through. We must get that water out of her."
The Orphan knew that the ejector was choked, so he made his way for'ard, clinging to the wire round the engine-room casings, the funnel-stays, and the gun-mounting, to call two of the men, huddled down under the forepeak, to come aft and bale the water out with buckets.
They came and worked hard, but the waves constantly lopped in, and the amount of water diminished very slowly. He knew that if her stern swung round and she "broached to", the seas would fill the big stern-sheets completely, and as he could not trust to the engine-room bulkhead being watertight, she would probably sink. He understood then why Marchant had taken off his boots and oilskin.
He went back to the steering-wheel.
Just then the stokehold hatch opened, the stoker drew himself out, and scrambled cautiously aft. He began unlashing one of the two remaining barricoes of water, when a sudden lurch of the boat threw him off his feet, and he slid overboard.
Like lightning Marchant, shouting "Take the wheel, sir!" jumped in front of the protecting shield, flung himself down, gripping the wire round the engine-room casing with one hand, leant over the gunwale, and seized the stoker almost before he had fallen completely over the side. There was the crash of something being overturned, the sizzle of red-hot cinders falling in the water, and Marchant, with a jerk, wrenched the man against the boat's side. He gripped the life-line; Marchant gave a heave, and he climbed on board again. It all happened in the twinkling of an eye.
Marchant came back and took the wheel.
"Pretty quick work, that!" the Orphan said. "He'd have been drowned; we couldn't have turned round to pick him up."
"No; it wouldn't have been safe," Marchant shouted back, meeting a vicious swerve of the stern with a touch of helm.
"Look at my hands and face, sir," he said, when the picket-boat had quieted herself. "I knocked over that bogey; it hadn't gone out, and the cinders burnt me or scalded me when they fell into the water."
By the moonlight the Orphan saw that his face and hands were very red.
"I can't see thatLord Nelson'sboat, sir," Marchant shouted in a minute or two. "She ought to have seen us turn and followed. I can't see her now."
The Orphan looked astern and could see nothing. In ordinary circumstances he would have gone back to look for her; but with that raging, roaring, steep sea racing after them, both he and Marchant knew this was now out of the question.
The only thing they could do they did; Marchant going aft, lighting a lantern, and lashing it to show astern.
He left the wheel to the Orphan.
By the time Marchant came back the tug hove in sight, tossing and tumbling in the white foaming seas, evidently standing by two motor-lighters which had broken adrift and were almost hidden in spray, broadside-on to the waves. They saw nothing of the other two.
They passed them, and caught up with one of the other picket-boats. Marchant roared through his megaphone for her to keep Kephalo Light well clear to port because of the "submarine detector" nets. He knew where they were, and this steamboat seemed to be steering for them.
"There's one caught in them, over there, sir!" Marchant shouted, pointing far away to port. "She'll probably drift on to the rocks."
"Can't we go and help?" the Orphan shouted, knowing full well that this was impossible, for once the propeller fouled those nets his picket-boat would be helpless, and drift on the rocks herself when the waves tore her out of the nets.
Marchant shook his head.
In half an hour they had Kephalo Light a couple of miles on their port beam; half an hour later they had edged the picket-boat into comparatively smooth water, and by eleven o'clock that night they went in through the gate in the submarine net at Kephalo, and ran alongside theAchates.
By this time Marchant's face and hands had begun to swell and blister from that scald or burn, and were very painful.
The Orphan sent him inboard to Dr. Gordon, and took his steamboat round the sunken breakwater ships alongside the landing-place. Then he stumbled, wet through and fearfully tired, up to the wooden hut, woke the Fierce One, and reported himself.
He became horribly unpopular, and was ordered to report in the morning. So back he went to the picket-boat, tied her up alongside the sunken Oruba; and he and his crew went to sleep, and would have slept for ever, if the crew of another picket-boat, tied up close to them, had not given them a "shake" next morning.
In the forenoon the Orphan was sent outside the harbour to search for the other picket-boats which had not arrived. He saw the Cheese-mite's boat hard and fast on shore, and another breaking up not far from her. He expected that the crews had swum or scrambled ashore (they had done so); but the seas ran much too high for him to go in and give assistance, so back he came into harbour and reported this.
"Hum!" growled the Fierce One. "You don't belong to me any more; go back to your ship."
The tired midshipman, thinking that he had disgraced himself, went back.
Bubbles met him at the top of the gangway—his face redder, and his chuckling, snorting noises louder than ever. "Orphan! Orphan!" he blurted out; "you and I are off to 'W' beach. The Sub went there yesterday, and we're going to-night. Really—honour bright!" as he saw that the Orphan thought that his leg was being "pulled".
"Phew! That's grand! My word, what luck!" the Orphan burst out, his tired eyes lighting up as he realized that Bubbles meant it.
Marchant, with his left hand bandaged up and his face all oily and red, was waiting to go down into the boat.
"Good-bye!" the Orphan said. "We've had a splendid time together, haven't we? Good luck to you!" and darted away to see the Commander and get his orders; but then, remembering "Kaiser Bill", ran back again.
"He's all right; they're bringing him up along with your gear," Bubbles told him. "I'll look after everything. You do look a prize burglar!"
He found the Commander. "Yes, you are to go across in a trawler—about five o'clock. The Captain wishes to see you."
So aft he went, and found Captain Macfarlane in his cabin smoking a cigarette, as usual.
"Hum!" he said, smiling when he saw how unkempt the Orphan looked, his face dirty, and his clothes hardly dry from last night's soaking. "Hum, Mr. Orpen! We don't seem to be able to carry on this war without you, do we? You have to go across to 'W' beach to-night, and you'll probably be there for some time."
"Are they going to evacuate Helles, sir?" the Orphan asked.
"I expect you will be able to tell me that, when you've been there a few days. You were out in that gale last night, I hear, and the only one of those five boats to get back. Hum! You seem lucky."
"We had 'Kaiser Bill' on board. Old Fletcher, the stoker, made me take him."
"Oh! was that it?" smiled the Captain, tugging his beard. "Well, off you go, and good luck to you! You'll have plenty of shells to dodge—over there. You'd better take 'Kaiser Bill' with you."
"I will, sir, if Fletcher lets me." And the Orphan, hugely happy and delighted, went away to the gun-room to tell all his adventures.
At four o'clock that afternoon Bubbles and the Orphan stood at the top of the accommodation ladder, with all the clothes and gear they wanted in two ordinary sailor's kit-bags, and their bedding made up in two bundles. On top of the bundles rested "Kaiser Bill's" wooden box, with the tortoise inside. Old Fletcher had come aft, and was "fussing" round him.
"We'll look after him all right. Thank you for lending him!" they called out as they went down into the Hun's steam pinnace. "Kaiser Bill" and their gear were carried down after them, and the Hun took them across to the waiting trawler.
By five o'clock theAchateswas once more out of sight, and the trawler was steaming towards Cape Helles with the remnants of last night's gale on her starboard beam. The two midshipmen both wore once again the khaki which the Fierce One had forbidden, the same clothes they had worn when they left "W" beach at the end of May, six months and a half ago; and they felt supremely happy, crouching in the lee of the trawler's galley, and watching the island of Kephalo gradually fading out of sight till darkness hid it altogether.
At half-past six the trawler ran alongside a sunken steamer—the outer hulk of Pier No. 1; a steamboat came for them, and landed them and their gear at No. 3 Pier—the pier they had watched being commenced by the Sappers the very day of the landing. By the light of a single lantern they found the Pier-master—a Sub-lieutenant, R.N.R.—and were ordered to report themselves to the Naval Transport Officer.
"You'd better go up to the Mess," the R.N.R. Sub told them. "You'll probably find him up there."
He gave them two men to carry their gear, and with "Kaiser Bill" under the Orphan's arm they stumbled along the pier in the dark till their feet scrunched into the sand on "W" beach.
"What a time since we were here!" Bubbles blurted out; and: "Isn't it grand to get back again?" the Orphan chuckled.
There were no flares now, the shore was absolutely dark.
They started off along the beach towards where the main gully road used to be; but everything had so changed, and it was so dark, that they soon had to let the two seamen with their bundles lead the way—off that beach, up a broad, firm road, turning to the left along a narrow path, then down some wooden steps, and so to a dark "cutting" in the side of the slope, at the end of which a glow of light showed through half-opened folding-doors.
"Here's the Officers' Mess, sir. Glad to see you on shore, sir," said one of the seamen; and the Orphan recognized Plunky Bill's voice.
"Hello! You here? How are things going?"
"Pretty quiet, sir; nothing much doing."
"Are they going to evacuate the place?"
"I ain't 'eard nothing. We've been landing a good many of the soldiers round from Suvla—a good show—down there, sir. I ain't 'eard nothing about nobody going off."
Bubbles, looking in through the doors and seeing no one inside, asked him where the Sub was.
"Don't see much of him, sir. I works down at No. 1 Pier—mostly. Well, we'll stick your gear 'ere. Some of the officers will be a-coming up soon."
"'Kaiser Bill' has come along—for luck," the Orphan said; and Plunky Bill stepped into the lamp-light from the half-open door to have a look at him in his box.
"'E will bring luck all right, sir. I wish we'd 'ad 'im at that there Ajano place."
Then they were left alone, went inside through the door—evidently the folding-doors from the saloon of one of the sunken steamers—into a pantry sort of place, through it into a long room some 9 feet high, 20 feet long, and 12 feet broad, with a wooden floor and a wooden ceiling, from which an oil-lamp hung—the lamp which had glowed through the doorway—over a long wooden table littered with newspapers, and with a wooden bench on either side of it. At the far end was a fire-place—alight and burning cosily—some deck chairs round it, a packing-case full of coal in the corner, and a very dilapidated card-table.
"Look how they make cupboards!" said Bubbles excitedly, and pointed to two shell-boxes let into the clay walls. "Isn't that 'cute'?"
Then from outside came a loud voice. "My jumping Jimmy! D'you think I'm going to land a hundred tons of hay a night like this? Not if I know it. It would all get soaked. Tell him to wait till the morning; the sea will have gone down by then."
The Sub came in, calling out: "Outside! Outside! Pantry! Pantry! Bring me a bottle of beer!" And seeing the two midshipmen, burst out with: "Yoicks, my merry kippers! My bubbling Bubbles! My perishing Orphan! Pantry! Pantry! Bring three bottles!"
"They've sent you two here, have they? Good egg! Well, you'll have lots to do, and a lot of shell-dodging. They've got a better brand in stock now—burst every time. Hello! There goes one!" he said, as the roaring thud of a bursting shell came from somewhere up the ridge, and some bits of dried clay broke away from the walls and rattled down on the wooden floor. "That fell in the Ordnance Stores. They've had a lot there lately."
"Where's it from? Achi Baba?" asked the Orphan.
"Old 'Asiatic Annie'—a 6-inch. She's a confounded nuisance. What d'you think of my 'dug-out'? Come and see where I 'pig' it;" and the Sub took them past the fire-place into a little room beyond, and, flashing his electric torch, showed them two beds, a small table, cupboard places in the mud walls, a stove, and two little wash-stands—evidently taken out of a ship. "We've got lots of stuff from these sunken hulks. Snug little place, isn't it?—especially when we light the stove in the corner."
"Are we going to live here?" the midshipmen asked.
"Good heavens, no, my wriggling worms! You won't live with the aristocracy. Come along, and I'll show you your 'pigsty'—another 'dug-out', which we call the dormitory."
A fine-looking old Leading Seaman, an old Naval Reserve man named Richards—he may have been fifty, he may have been sixty—came in with the three glasses of beer, just as another tremendous roar shook the wooden beams overhead and made the tin lamp-shade rattle—it sounded not twenty yards away.
"In the Sappers' place, that one, sir; they're starting early to-night," the old chap said, putting the tray on the table.
"Send these officers' gear round to the dormitory; you'll find it outside," the Sub told him.
"They've gone already, sir," Richards said.
"What's on top of those beams?" the Orphan asked, a little anxiously, as another roaring explosion thudded the air, not quite so near as the last.
"A new tarpaulin, my Orphan! I stole it yesterday. It's waterproof, too!"
"Can those things come in here?"
"There's nothing to prevent 'em," grinned the Sub. "Come along, and we'll peg out a claim for you two in the dormitory. Hello! what the devil have you got there?" he said, seeing "Kaiser Bill's" box on the table, and opening it, roared with laughter. "Old Fletcher made you bring him?"
"He made me take him for Suvla evacuation—for luck—and the Captain told me I'd better bring him here, as he'd brought luck there."
"Are they going to evacuate this place?" they both asked at the same time.
The Sub shook his head. "I don't think so. So you were at Suvla? Of course you were; you'll have to tell me all about it. What a splendid show that was! Our chaps here made a pretence of advancing that same day—lost a lot of people."
By now he had taken them through the cutting. "That's the kitchen," he said, as he took them out of the mess and they passed a place with a light in it; "old Richards looks after it, and us, like a mother." He led them through another deep cutting, and through an opening closed by a door—evidently a door taken from the cabin of one of the sunken hulks. "More loot," the Sub said, switching on his torch and leading the way into a long place with a few planks laid over the clayey earth, with earth walls and a timber roof. Six beds were already there, with bags between them, and their own bundles lay, lonely, in the middle.
He showed them a corner where they could spread out their beds. "I'll get some planks put there in the morning," he told them. "You'd better come along and see the Captain now; he'll be up in his 'dug-out' by this time, I expect."
As they went out on to the open slope, climbed up to a road which ran immediately at the back of the dormitory, another high-explosive shell burst high up the ridge, lighting up a few white tents.
The Orphan winced and Bubbles chuckled.
Then it was all dark again. "Mind those steps; keep close to me; here we are," and the Sub took them along another cutting to the Naval Transport Officer's "dug-out".
They found this naval Captain there, washing the sand off his face.
"Two of our midshipmen, sir; the two we expected."
He turned round—a short, thick-set man with a bullet-shaped, closely cropped head—and he wiped the soap-suds off his mahogany-coloured face.
"All right; the Sub will show you where to go; glad to have you," and he waved them away.
They went back towards the Mess.
"You'll have to take charge of a picket-boat," the Sub told Bubbles; "and you, Orphan, will have to do odd jobs under me—all sorts of things: cleaning up the camp, fetching coal, any old thing. Ah! look out! here comes another!"
They heard the whistling swish of a shell, and then another glare, and another tremendous explosion burst, just the other side of the Naval Mess.
Instinctively they had thrown themselves down on the ground; something hurtled past and buried itself in the sand close by; and as they scrambled to their feet the Sub said angrily: "Confound them! Come along back to the Mess; you can have a wash in my basin, and then it will be time for dinner."
Two soldiers—a Major and a subaltern, the Military Landing Officers—a R.N.R. lieutenant, and two R.N.R. sub-lieutenants came in at odd times for dinner. The Sub hurried through his meal, put on a thick coat, and warmed himself in front of the fire before going down to the beach.
"Is there much to do to-night?" asked one of the soldier officers—the subaltern.
"Absolutely nothing, old chap, except to get off a tug, two steamboats, something like half a dozen lighters driven ashore last night; try and repair about twenty feet of No. 1 Pier washed away by the other gale, and see what can be done with the 'Inner Hulk'—she broke her back when the pier 'went', and we'll have to try and get a gangway across the gap; otherwise I can't think of anything."
Two of the R.N.R. officers went with him, but he sent the two midshipmen to turn in. Neither of them had had any proper sleep for three days, and they both had been nodding and yawning, and looking stupidly tired all through that meal.
So they turned in, put "Kaiser Bill" between them for luck, and slept like "tops".
CHAPTER XXIII
"In 'Dug-outs' at Cape Helles"
Richards, that splendid old Leading Seaman who "ran" the Mess, brought them both a cup of tea in the morning. "Four bells just struck, sirs; breeze gone round to the north-east, pretty nippy outside it is, but fine. Hands 'fall in' at half-past six." He lighted an oil-lamp and left them.
Bubbles snuggled down under the blankets and would have gone to sleep again, had not the Orphan pulled them off him and made him turn out.
They dressed hurriedly, saw that "Kaiser Bill" was safe in his corner; and by seven o'clock, just before the dawn commenced, Bubbles had taken charge of a very much battered, old picket-boat lying alongside No. 3 Pier; and the Orphan, with a party of five stokers, was sent up behind the Mess to deepen a shallow gutter-way between it and the road, to prevent rain washing off the road on to the top of the dormitory and that new tarpaulin which the Sub had stolen.
He met the Sub coming back from his night's work on the beach, wet through and very fagged. "I got some of those lighters off, but there's another week's work down there at that job," he said.
When daylight came, the Orphan found that "W" beach had altered very much since he had been there, six months and a half ago. The cliffs beyond were crowned by a vast number of hospital tents and marquees; where, previously, the horse and mule "lines" had been, tents and marquees, and huge masses of stores, protected by tarpaulins, now occupied these spaces, and the irregular sandy track up the gully to the ridge had become a wide well-made road with well-metalled roads branching away to left and right. Everywhere there were "dug-outs", not open ones as in those early days, but covered with wooden or galvanized-iron roofs, over which at least one protecting layer of sand-bags had been laid. Motor-lorries dashed along the roads continuously, and seemed to have taken the place of horses and mules almost entirely.
Along the face of the steep cliff, on the far side of the gully from where those one-inch Nordenfeldts and maxims had played such havoc among the Lancashire Fusiliers on the day of the landing, a steep road had been cut in the face of it, and the Orphan saw hundreds of "dug-outs" up there.
Fifty yards below him was the beach itself, with its four little piers—No. 1 Pier to his right, with a gap in it made by the first of the south-west gales; beyond it the "Inner Hulk", a sunken steamer with her back broken; and beyond her, at right angles, another sunken steamer, the "Outer Hulk". At his feet was No. 2 Pier, the first pier the Sappers had begun on the 25th April; and beyond this the longer No. 3 Pier, with its end curving towards the "Outer Hulk", so that a small harbour[#] had been formed in which now lay two little "coaster" steamers, several lighters, and a trawler.
[#] This harbour was called Port Talbot after the Captain of the poor oldMajestic.
Beyond and to the left, under the high cliff, was No. 4 Pier, more of a mole or jetty than a pier, protected a little from the east by a reef of rocks. It was on this pier that the Orphan, later on, had so much work to do. Farther along still, several lighters had stranded, and one or two were already broken up.
Out towards Tenedos and over against the Asiatic shore the usual trawlers and drifters and a couple of destroyers patrolled for submarines.
But what struck the Orphan most vividly was the emptiness of the Straits between him and the Asiatic shore. In May they had been almost crowded with battleships, transports, hospital ships, ships of all sorts and sizes; now a solitary hospital ship lay off Helles, and only two or three small craft and tugs were anchored inshore.
The Turks fired no shells that morning until the breakfast hour, when two fell among the Sappers' stores and tents, without, however, doing any damage.
After breakfast the Orphan and his stokers had more digging to do, extending the beach party's "dug-outs" at the foot of the low cliff, below the Mess "dug-out", and commencing others. Shells came over every now and then all the morning, but none burst near the Orphan's party. When they knocked off work and started dinner, the Turks over on the Asiatic shore fired many big 6-inch high explosives, which did very little material damage, though they racked his nerves exceedingly.
The Orphan never even pretended that he did not hate those shells; and when, that afternoon, he received orders to take twenty men, embark in a tug, and go down to Rabbit Island to draw coal, he felt extremely pleased to get away from them. Rabbit Island is a tiny little island at the mouth of the Straits, and when he arrived there he found two small monitors with long-range guns busily bombarding the Asiatic guns. The Turks were firing back, and when he went alongside the collier to get his filled coal-bags, one of their wretched shells fell so close to the tug as to splash the bows. The Orphan loaded his coal-bags and started back to "W" beach, realizing that the only thing to do, if he meant to enjoy himself, was simply not to think of shells at all. Of course, in twenty-four hours he had made friends with Richards, that Leading Seaman; and the old man could not help noticing that he flinched whenever a big shell moaned through the air, and burst with its horrid, rending roar. "Look here, sir," he said; "it's just like this: don't you worry about them—it's no use worrying. If you're meant to be killed, killed you will be, wherever you go or whatever you do; so just pay no attention to them."
It is difficult for a youngster to take comfort from such a fatalistic conviction; but by the end of the week the Orphan was able to tell Bubbles that he had not "ducked" once during the last twenty-four hours. "That shows I'm not such a duffer, doesn't it, old chap?" he said proudly.
During those first few days a good deal of mysterious landing and embarking of troops went on, which nobody seemed able to explain—though, as far as anyone in the Naval Mess knew, many more were coming than going. Also, it became known that the new-comers were taking over—gradually—the French section of the line, and that French troops and guns embarked every night. The Turks naturally knew that our men were occupying the French trenches immediately opposite them, so that there was no need for secrecy, and many of the French guns were towed away from "V" beach in broad daylight. A tug would take away a heavily loaded lighter at the end of a very long tow-rope, and "Asiatic Annie" and her sisters often made "towing-target" practice at this lighter and its guns—though without ever hitting them.
The Orphan himself never went to "V" beach, but Bubbles often did so, and found quite a good harbour there, made by a big Messageries Maritimes steamer sunk this side of theRiver Clyde(apparently none the worse for her seven months of being shelled), and an obsolete old French battleship hulk—theMassena—sunk almost to close the gap between them. Whenever the French happened to have a slack night, most of the British nightly reinforcements (from the 9th Corps, which had been at Suvla) landed there.
Christmas Day arrived, and the Turks greeted it with a more than usually heavy shelling of both beaches, the Sappers' and Ordnance Store Depots suffering considerably. This, and an extra good dinner that night—when Richards produced two turkeys, obtained from one of the Greek islands, and several officers contributed Christmas puddings and mince-pies, sent from home by the Christmas mail—marked the day. Otherwise all work went on as usual.
Every now and again the French battleshipSuffrencame along up the Straits, with her protecting destroyers and trawlers and her "spotting" aeroplane, and bombarded the Asiatic guns for a couple of hours or so. At other times a British battleship repeated the performance with even greater zest; but though those annoying guns remained quiet whilst they were being bombarded, they always opened a very vigorous fire on the beaches directly the battleships had left.
On the other side of the Peninsula, round the "left flank" coast, assisting destroyers very frequently harassed the Turkish trenches on the Achi Baba right flank, and a big monitor almost daily bombarded Achi Baba or Chanak Fort with her big 14-inch guns.
Everything went on as usual, and as though we intended to hold the end of the Peninsula for ever.
Everyone in the Naval Mess was far too busy embarking and disembarking troops and stores by night, preparing for the winter, strengthening their "dug-outs", repairing piers, and patching damaged boats by day, to know exactly what was happening up in the front-line trenches. Intermittent artillery duels, at all hours of every day, went on in the usual manner, and without any apparent especial military object. At night, when working on the piers, they often heard furious bursts of rifle and machine-gun firing, sometimes the bursting of trench bombs; at times field-guns also used to "chip in" at night; but everyone had become so accustomed to all this that no one paid any attention to it or remarked about it.
Shells fell on the beaches and above them just as usual; 6-inch high explosives came from the Asiatic side—two or three an hour—from daylight until two o'clock next morning, at which time the Turkish gunners "packed up". During the men's "stand easy", in the middle of the day, perhaps twenty would come along; and again, at nine o'clock at night, they would start fairly brisk firing for three-quarters of an hour.
The Naval Camp, lying as it did just below the R.E. "Park", and not far from the Ordnance Stores—both favourite targets of "Asiatic Annie "—received a good many of her misses, and most of the "shorts" fell on the beach itself. By this time the men working within this shell area had become so accustomed and hardened to these intermittent noises of shells shrieking towards them and bursting, that work was seldom interrupted. At night, sentries along the beach would watch for the glare made by the flash of the Asiatic howitzers, and would call out "Take cover!" Eighteen seconds afterwards the shell, if fired at "V" beach, would burst there; but if fired at "W" beach twenty seconds elapsed, after the warning shout, before the shell could be heard rushing through the night air with a rapidly increasing "swishing" noise. In twenty-five seconds it arrived, burst with a very vivid flash and that nerve-shaking, rending roar, and did whatever damage it had found to do.
Sometimes, in the silence which followed, would be heard the melancholy call, "Stretcher! Stretcher!" but most frequently a hole in the ground, or a few scattered boxes of stores or bundles of fodder, alone marked where it had fallen and burst.
From Achi Baba came the little 4.1-inch shells at all hours of the day.
People told the Orphan that some ten days after the Belgrade-Nish-Constantinople railway had been reopened through conquered Serbia, it became evident that the Turks were much more lavish with their ammunition.
They must have received ample additional supplies, and, what was still more noticeable, the new shells nearly always burst.
The Orphan gradually grew accustomed to these shells, but he was always "mighty" glad when the two big "hates" of the day were finished.
Everyone had marvellous escapes; in fact, marvellous escapes were so common that the recounting of them soon failed to interest others.
One morning the Orphan was sleeping soundly in the dormitory, and at about ten o'clock Bubbles, who had somehow or other fallen overboard from his picket-boat, ran up to shift his wet clothes, and could not resist the temptation of waking up the Orphan. He had just commenced to get some sense into him and make him take an interest in his accident, when in through the roof smashed a shell, passed between the Orphan sitting on his bed and Bubbles standing over him, buried itself in the ground, and burst. Bubbles was thrown to the other side of the dormitory, the Orphan found himself on top of an awakened and angry R.N.R. Lieutenant, and all three, covered with dust, dashed through the smoke out into the open air.
"Kaiser Bill!" the Orphan cried, darted back again, and brought out the tortoise.
"He was under my bed, he wasn't quite buried; he doesn't seem to have been hit."
They tried anxiously to make him put out his head, but he wouldn't. Bubbles, seizing him, looked inside the shell. "He's all right," he said, much relieved; "I saw his mouth move."
"I bet that he got the fright of his life,", Bubbles gurgled; and then noticed that the Orphan's wrist, the right one, was bleeding, and that blood was coming through his own soaked trousers. They found a small cut on the Orphan's right wrist, and that Bubbles had a little gash behind the left knee—quite trivial things, only requiring a bandage round each. Actually, that was all the damage done to those two midshipmen, although the shell had burst immediately behind and between them.
"Fancy what might have happened if 'Kaiser Bill' had not been there," the superstitious Orphan, a little "shaken", kept saying.
The R.N.R. Lieutenant, having fixed them up with bandages, took them inside the dormitory to dig their things out again and get the place tidied up. They shook the sand and clay from their bedding; dug out the clothes which had been lying on the floor; found some of the fragments of the shell, probably a 4.1-inch from Achi Baba; looked at the jagged hole in the wooden roof; and when Bubbles, having changed his wet clothes, went away, limping a little, to take charge of his picket-boat again, the other two turned in and slept until midday. Directly the Orphan woke he hunted round for the tortoise, and felt greatly relieved when he saw "Kaiser Bill's" cunning old head peeping out.
On the next night it blew hard from the north-east—away from the end of the Peninsula. Unfortunately for Bubbles, he had the job, that night, of towing a big Malta lighter, full of mules, out to a transport, and when away from the shelter of the land something went wrong with the tow-rope, and it fouled the screw of his picket-boat. Both lighter and picket-boat drifted helplessly out to sea, and eventually became separated. It was a bitterly cold night—so dark that you could not see fifty yards in front of you, and two miles from the end of the Peninsula a very unpleasant sea was running. The lighter full of mules drifted away, but by some lucky chance stranded on Rabbit Island, and Bubbles in his helpless, waterlogged picket-boat had the luck to be found and picked up by a patrolling trawler, which towed him into safety.
He did not get back to "W" beach until long after daylight, and was then sent up to get his breakfast and some sleep. For some reason or other, his bed had been moved into the small "sleeping 'dug-out'" at the side of the Mess opposite to the dormitory, and almost at the same hour as the day before, a big shell from "Asiatic Annie" came in and completely wrecked it. No one else slept there that morning, and he had a most marvellous escape. The three empty beds, the wash-stands, and little stove were destroyed, and a macintosh which he had pulled over his blankets had several gashes torn in it, but he himself had not a scratch. Old Richards, running in through the Mess, and unable to see owing to the dust and smoke, switched on an electric torch and called out "Are you all right, sir?" never thinking that he could possibly be alive.
"I woke up," said Bubbles afterwards, bubbling over with excitement, "and found the whole place blooming dark; everything seemed to be tumbling down on top of me, and my hair was full of sand and stuff. I couldn't think what was the matter, and the smell of the place was simply beastly. It wasn't till old Richards came in, flashed his torch, wanted to know whether I was alive or not, and told me a shell had come in, that I knew what had happened. It spoilt that new macintosh I paid one pound ten for yesterday up at the Ordnance, confound it!"
The rest of the morning Bubbles and Richards spent digging out his "gear". They found his watch some two feet under the sand, still going, but the glass cracked. The "dug-out" was completely wrecked and quite uninhabitable.
He shifted back again into the dormitory, but had no more time for sleep. "I'll stick nearer to old 'Kaiser Bill' another time," he told the Orphan, poking fun at him and his superstitions.
The very next day, when on his way to the Mess for a hasty lunch, he stopped to speak to Richards, the Leading Seaman, who had just come out of the kitchen. At that moment a shell came past them, fell through the open kitchen door, and burst inside. Richards calmly put down the tureen of pea soup which he was carrying, and together they went in through the smoke to see if anyone had been injured. One man lay dead, and another had been badly cut about the shoulder by a splinter. He was carried away immediately to the Casualty Clearing-station beyond the gully, and the dead man covered up and removed. "Poor chap!" Richards muttered, "he only landed two hours ago for the first time. It's a strange thing how some get picked off, sir, isn't it?"
"Well, that's the third close shave for me—in three days too. I'll tell the Orphan that. He'll think it tremendously lucky," Bubbles said.
"I shouldn't like to say that it isn't, sir," Richards replied thoughtfully.
These three "experiences" seemed to have absolutely no effect on this midshipman's nerves, and the Orphan marvelled at him, and despised himself for hating and dreading shells so much.