Chapter X A Night Attack
The Orphan, holding his breath, crept forward to look over the sand-bags in the bows, treading on hundreds of empty cartridge-cases which rolled about the deck.
Another glare from the field-guns, and he saw that one of the men standing there, peering through his glasses into the gloom below, was an officer of the Royal Naval Division—the “R.N.D.”—a Sub-lieutenant, wearing a naval cap with the silver anchor badge. (He actually belonged to the Armoured Car Section.)
“Hello! Who are you? Where’ve you sprung from?” this officer called out.
The Orphan told him, and, thirsting for information, asked what was happening. “What’s going on, sir?”
“I’m hanged if I know.”
“But what were you firing at? Those maxims were firing a minute ago, weren’t they?” he asked, disappointed.
“Were they?” the Sub-lieutenant repeated to the figure next to him, who replied dryly: “I fancy I heard them.”
“I feel sure I heard some little noise too, now I come to think of it,” said the Sub-lieutenant jocularly.
“What are those things?” the Orphan asked, pointing to the two dark, square, box-like structures along the port side of the fo’c’sle.
“Come along and see,” said his new friend; took him to one, slid back an iron plate, and pushed him into a little space where three men crouched, in the darkness, round the breech of a maxim whose barrel stuck out through a loophole in the front.
“Quiet little cosy place, that,” he heard the Sub-lieutenant say from the outside. “Come along and we’ll shut them in again, or they’ll catch cold.”
He slid the rear plate into place, and led the Orphan back to the maxim in the bows. “They’re comfortable enough in their little boxes, aren’t they? Steel plates all round them, and a steel plate on top—all home comforts!”
“But what’s going on? Do tell me,” the Orphan begged, looking down over the bows.
“Would you like to start a battle? I bet you would;” and before the excited Orphan had time to think what he meant, he sang out: “Get hold of that gun,” and pushed him down astride the tripod.
Mechanically the bewildered and flustered midshipman gripped the two handles, and stood by to press his thumbs on the firing-button.
“Now don’t be in a hurry; point the thing over there. No, not there; that’s where our chaps are; they wouldn’t like it—beastly ‘touchy’ they are; point the other way; that’s better.”
The Orphan found himself training the gun towards where he could just distinguish the biggest and nearest of all the bastions, straight ahead of the ship.
“There’s the front door of the castle, down there,” continued his friend. “Turks are always coming in or out—lazy beggars they are—they want ‘gingering up’. Wait till those field-guns, up beyond Cape Helles, fire; then you’ll see it; the front door-steps show up white. Ah! there they go! That’s about right! Keep her there! Let her rip!”
The Orphan, not really realizing what he was doing, pointed the gun towards a white patch, and jerked both his thumbs against the button. His eyes were blinded as “tut! tut! tut! tut!” flashed the gun, and the jar on his unaccustomed thumbs and wrists took off the pressure.
“Keep her going!” he heard his new friend shout; and setting his teeth and pressing with all his might, he tried to keep the maxim gun pointing in the right direction as it shook and rattled, and the empty cartridge-cases tumbled on to others upon the deck.
Immediately there were answering twinkles and sparks of rifles—a maxim somewhere above the castle doorway flamed out—the firing rang along the length of the beach, was taken on up above the cliffs; hundreds, thousands of shots were fired, and bullets whizzed over the fo’c’sle of the River Clyde, one or two thudding against the sand-bags.
“All right; let ’em go to sleep again,” the Sub-lieutenant laughed, as the Orphan’s tired thumbs and wrists refused to press the button any longer and the maxim stopped. In two minutes there was absolute silence.
“Well! Enjoy your battle?”
“Thank you very much!” the Orphan answered, tremendously pleased, and picking up a couple of the cartridge-cases he had fired, to keep as curios.
“What did happen?” he asked as he stood up again.
“A strong attack on the River Clyde was beaten off with heavy loss, thanks to the brilliant handling of the maxims under the charge of—what did you say your name is?”
“Orpen of the Achates.”
“——under the charge of Midshipman Orpen of H.M.S. Achates.”
“But there wasn’t any attack, was there, sir?”
“Not as I know of; but it sounds better, and we’ll leave it at that,” laughed the Sub-lieutenant.
He kept on peering into the darkness; he seemed a little anxious, taking advantage of the frequent glares from the field-guns to look very closely through his glasses.
“There’s something going on down there—I’m blest if I know what! You have a look,” and he handed the glasses to the midshipman. The Orphan peered through them, waited for the sudden coming of a glare, thought he saw figures moving, and said so.
“So do I; but I can’t make out whether they are our fellows or not.”
“Where are our men?” the Orphan asked.
“More to the left, along the beach—there’s no cover just in front of the bows down there. You see those dark shadows under the bows; they’re the lighters your chaps fixed up. The Turks have some maxims in one of the bastions of that old castle; they’re the guns which did all the mischief this morning. We’ve been trying to knock ’em out all day, but can’t seem to get hold of ’em.”
“Was it very bad this morning?”
“Bad! My God! it was awful. You see those pontoons or lighters—wait for a flash from the field-guns. Ah! now you see them! By half-past eight this morning they were actually heaped with our men—dead and wounded. If a wounded man moved a finger, they filled him with bullets. Not one man out of three got ashore. They’re still lying on them; thank God, the night hides them! Keep your eyes skinned; I’m certain there’s something going on down there,” he added sharply.
A messenger came from the bridge, climbing the fo’c’sle ladder, and calling out: “The officer! Where’s the machine-guns officer?”
“Here I am.”
“The Colonel thinks the Turks are going to try and rush the pontoons. He wants you to ‘stand by’ with your maxims.”
“All right; let ’em try,” and he calmly filled his pipe, struck a match, the flare of which seemed to the excited Orphan to illuminate the whole fo’c’sle, and proceeded very slowly to light it; whilst the Orphan hardly knew whether he was standing on his head or his heels for excitement.
“Tell those two guns in the ‘boxes’ to train on the shore, near the pontoons, and ‘stand by’ to fire,” the Sub-lieutenant said, casually giving the order, and sucking at his pipe as though he was thoroughly enjoying it.
“I’m certain there are some chaps down there, but we’ve landed nearly twelve hundred more since dark, and those may be some of them. I’m hanged if I know!”
“Ah, look!” he said quietly, as a glare from the field-guns showed, unmistakably, a figure approaching the end of the pontoons. “What kind of a cap has he? The Turks wear a shapeless thing, almost like one of our Balaclava helmets.”
The Orphan, hugely excited, had caught a glimpse of him, but could not see the shape of his cap. He was scrambling from one pontoon to the next, moving about and then disappearing in a particularly dark shadow. It struck him that the man seemed to be putting his feet down very cautiously, almost as if he were looking for something and was afraid of treading on it.
“He has to move carefully, there are so many dead lying there,” his friend explained.
“He’s going back now,” the Orphan whispered.
“That’s rummy; so he is! and there are a lot more other chaps—a whole mass of them—coming towards him.”
As he spoke a tremendous fusillade broke out on shore, above where the dark line of pontoons ended and these dark figures were moving, and the air over their heads seemed to be filled with whistling bullets. Bullets rattled up against the bows of the ship and smacked into the sand-bags, one or two pinged against the plates in front of the other two maxims; rifles began firing from the other side of the ship, from the lower sea walls. An answering crackle of musketry broke out along the shore to the left; and as the Orphan ducked his head below the sand-bags, his friend the officer, not waiting for any further orders, opened fire with all three maxims, and two more, down on the port side of the fo’c’sle well deck, joined in as well.
It was the most furious firing the Orphan had heard since he came aboard the River Clyde. He pushed his hand and arm between the sand-bags, and tried to look through the gap. Rifles began firing below him, close to him, and towards him; the men firing them must be on the pontoons themselves. The Sub-lieutenant saw them; jumped to the gun, yelling, “Depress! depress! fire on the last two pontoons.” A sand-bag was pulled away to allow the maxim to depress, and it spurted fire and bullets; left off to correct the depression, and started again. The Orphan thought he heard shrieks (afterwards he swore he did); those rifles on the pontoons dropped from twenty or more to three—then to one—then to none; but the firing behind, up above the bank, went on more furiously than ever, and the bigger flashes of the English rifles, along the beach to the left, seemed to be blazing all the time. Two maxims among them made spouts of flame quite three feet long.
The din was so terrific that the Orphan could only just hear what his friend yelled in his ears: “Pretty to watch, sonny; but you’d better scoot back aft—they may come on again, and that doctor of yours may want you. Keep your head down, well down, as you go.”
The Orphan, who had entirely forgotten Dr. O’Neill, and would have given his soul to stay and see the end of this, found himself stumbling down the ladder from. the fo’c’sle, up again and along the superstructure, down and along the line of stretchers; bumped into the donkeys at the top of the hatch, crawled over the coaming, and very gently went down the ladder, hoping that Dr. O’Neill had not missed him and would not see him coming back.
He need not have bothered himself about that. There was a great deal of confusion down there; orders were being yelled out, men were gathering at each side of the gangway port, rifle-butts were banging on the deck, and bayonets snapping on the muzzles. He was pushed out of the way, and found himself next to Dr. O’Neill and the chief sick-berth steward. He expected to get a “wigging”, but Dr. O’Neill only snarled: “They’ve started a silly yarn that the Turks are trying to board along the platforms—all this silly, stupid fuss—it’s confounded nonsense. You’ve slept through the last two hours, you lucky little devil!”
The Orphan was just going to say that it wasn’t nonsense, that he had seen the Turks trying to get across the pontoons to the platform, but he thought it wiser to keep quiet. He asked the chief sick-berth steward where Dr. Gordon was.
“Gone back, sir, an hour ago; a steamboat came along, and the Fleet-Surgeon sent him back to the ship. I wish he’d sent me. I’d be just as happy there, sir.”
That snotty—Piggy Carter—was still sitting with his back to the stanchion, at the foot of the ladder, his chin on his chest, and snoring. The Orphan thinking that he would love to know that the Turks were trying to board through the gangway port (about twenty feet away from him), shook him till he woke, asking: “What’s the matter?”
The Orphan told him excitedly.
“Oh, bother the Turks! I don’t care a tuppenny curse for them; what d’you want to wake me for?” and promptly went to sleep again.
For a few minutes everyone was in a state of nerves, expecting at any moment to see the heads of Turks appearing at that big opening in the ship’s side; the noise of firing, on the other side of the ship, rose to a perfect frenzy.
Although the Orphan had seen the first attempt crumpled up, he could not know what would happen to a second, and felt very jumpy, too; but presently the firing gradually subsided, and word was passed down that all the soldiers there were to go ashore. These men unfixed bayonets, strapped on their packs, and went on deck, knocking against the sleeping midshipman, who cursed them in his juvenile voice. That was about three o’clock, and for some time afterwards things were very quiet. The Fleet-Surgeon, the Orphan, the chief sick-berth steward, and Piggy Carter snoring against his stanchion, were alone, as far as they could see although from the dark recesses of the space round them they heard a great multitude of snores of every variety. The Orphan’s launch’s crew had not been seen since they had come inboard, and no doubt four of those snores belonged to them.
The Orphan himself dozed off once or twice, but kept on being awakened by bursts of firing. He did not want to go to sleep, for fear of missing any of the excitement, so went and leant up against the edge of the gangway port, only putting his nose out, because bullets were still coming along from those snipers on the low sea walls which jutted into the sea on this side. A cool breeze blew in through the port and made a pleasant “popple” against his launch, which was bumping gently against the side of the River Clyde. It was raining a little, and the cool drops on his forehead were jolly refreshing.
Even standing there he could not keep awake; his brain began to lull itself with the burbling noise of the sea and the boat, until suddenly the most appalling, panic-stricken shrieks came from overhead, and the noise of heavy boots trampling along the deck.
The Orphan, with his heart in his mouth, dashed to the foot of the ladder, just in time to see a half-naked figure, his chest and neck swathed in blood-stained bandages, throw himself over the coaming of the hatchway above him; dragging a blanket after him he came scrambling down the ladder, yelling that the Turks had boarded the ship and were bayoneting everyone on deck. There happened to be the sound of many feet running about overhead at the time, and for a moment the Orphan was entirely terror-struck—his heart really seemed to stop beating; but the Fleet-Surgeon, jumping to his feet, seized the man, who was still yelling, “Save me! save me! the Turks will get me; they’re bayoneting everyone!” cursed him, and told him to lie down in a corner and cover himself with his blanket.
With another yell the man tore himself away, shrieked out that “it wasn’t safe anywhere in the ship”; and before the Orphan could stop him, he dashed to the big gangway port and half-fell, half-slid down the ladder into the launch. There, in the stern-sheets, he coiled himself up, covered himself with his blanket, and appeared to go to sleep.
“Nightmare, that’s what’s the matter with him,” the Fleet-Surgeon said, a little shakily. “If he prefers to lie there in the rain and the sniping, he can. Phew! it gave me a bit of a fright.”
Piggy Carter snored peacefully—even through this incident.
After it, nothing exciting happened for a long time. Occasionally a few solitary rifle-shots rang out, and sometimes there were rapid bursts of heavy musketry and volleys. Those two field-guns kept on, at intervals, all through the night, but by now they were accustomed to them. Dr. O’Neill, who was trying to sleep, would curse whenever he heard three or four sniping shots, and then perhaps a volley in reply. “Curse those snipers!” he would growl; “they’ll start the whole lot of them off again, and I can’t sleep.”
Eventually the Orphan must have fallen asleep, for the next time he remembered anything it was growing dimly light. He looked out of that big opening in the side, away over the grey water—absolutely still now—and made out the obscure shape of a battleship, the Albion, he knew. To the left he saw, gradually becoming distinct, the lower walls and fantastically crumbled ruins of the Sedd-el-Bahr castle stretching out into the Straits. Putting his head out and looking for’ard, along the side of the River Clyde—rather nervously, because he did not know that the snipers behind those projecting ruins had been withdrawn—he saw two great round bastions and a huge curtain-wall with its battlemented parapet—the main “keep” of the old castle. Down at his feet the “nightmare” man lay in the launch’s stern-sheets fast asleep.
Inside the River Clyde there was now sufficient light to see that they had spent the night in a big cargo space, littered with boxes of stores and ammunition, and quite a hundred men lay there soundly sleeping. By the Red Cross badges and by the Red Cross marks on the panniers and store boxes among them, he knew that they were R.A.M.C. orderlies. Two men with blood-stained bandages lay on stretchers—also asleep—and near them his launch’s crew. On the opposite side of the ship he saw the planks which filled in the opposite gangway, and close to it a heap of “something” covered with a tarpaulin.
Piggy Carter had gone, and so had Dr. O’Neill and the chief sick-berth steward.
Everything seemed quiet and peaceful, except for some solitary rifle-shots which came, every now and again, from the direction of the cliffs.
A man walked down the ladder smoking a pipe, and winding a woollen scarf round his head in turban fashion. The Orphan recognized him as his R.N.D. friend of the maxims.
“Hullo, youngster! want a smoke? Try one of my ‘gaspers’.”
The Orphan, who was dying for a cigarette, took one and lighted it. “Did the Turks try again?” he asked.
The Sub-lieutenant shook his head. “Come over here,” he said, and showed him the holes made by three 8-inch shells in the deck above, and in the side of the ship where they had gone out.
“That was when we were coming along here. Lucky they didn’t burst, for our chaps were packed as thick as thieves. One had his head taken clean off—nothing left of it; two others were killed—we stuck ’em down there in the hold.”
The Orphan, looking down through the hatch, was glad he couldn’t see them.
“There are a lot more ‘deaders’ under that tarpaulin. Come on deck—your Doctor is ’nosing round’ there.”
When they went up the ladder, the Orphan concealed his cigarette in his hand. But Dr. O’Neill was not worrying about a midshipman, under eighteen years of age, smoking; he was examining the wounded on the stretchers lying under the bulwarks, and looked very old and haggard in the dim light of the dawn.
The two donkeys seemed horribly miserable, nosing wearily at some dirty straw and cabbage-leaves on the deck. “Poor little blighters!” said the Sub-lieutenant. “They’ve not been really happy since one of those shells went through the deck between them—look at the hole it made. We’ve brought them along with us, from Port Said, to carry ammunition—poor little chaps!” and he fondled them as they put up their noses to be petted.
He was a very restless individual, and seemed not in the least affected by the strain of the last twenty-four hours. He pointed out the grey cliffs of Cape Helles. They seemed uncomfortably close, and looked right down upon the deck.
“That’s where those snipers are—they’re there still—I thought so—d’you hear that?” (a bullet pinged past); “you needn’t worry—they can’t shoot for toffee. If we move about and show ourselves, some more of them will start potting at us. Let’s try!”
The Orphan found himself crouching behind one of the donkeys, but stood up again as his extremely cool friend laughed at him.
Dr. O’Neill now sent him to collect a dozen of those sleeping orderlies and start handing the wounded men, in their stretchers, down the ladder from the upper deck, and then down into the launch. They were very sleepy, and not too inclined to stir themselves; but he found a weather-beaten R.A.M.C. sergeant—a regular “terror”—who soon began “rousting them up”. For the next hour this job kept him busy, his maxim-gun friend sitting all the time on top of the hatchway, smoking his pipe contentedly and warning him whenever the snipers from the cliff became too busy. “Better keep under cover for a bit, sonny,” he would sing out; “your chaps are getting on their nerves.” He never shifted his own position, although he was entirely in view; and after a few minutes, would call down: “All right; you can carry on!”, and the Orphan and the orderlies would rush up, and start moving more men down. It was quite safe moving them along, under the bulwarks; but what the Orphan did not like was taking them across the deck, and lifting them over the coaming, with the delay there, whilst men standing on the steps of the ladder took charge of the stretcher. Those cliffs seemed so horribly near.
At last they had all been struck down below, and the Orphan was listening to a very humorous dissertation from his loquacious friend, on the merits of different kinds of rifles (they were both standing at the foot of the ladder, and it was broad daylight), when suddenly there was a roaring noise, followed immediately afterwards by a most terrific explosion, which made them both quail, and made the River Clyde tremble as though a mine had exploded under her bows. The youthful orderlies handing the stretchers down into the launch dashed for cover, their nerves much “rattled”; but the Orphan and his friend, recovering themselves, jumped across to the gangway port to see what had happened. As they did so, the Albion—perhaps a thousand yards away—fired one of the 12-inch guns in her fore turret, and another terrific thunder-clap crashed out as a lyddite shell burst against one of the big bastions of the castle. When the smoke cleared away, they saw that the top half of it had been almost destroyed.
The R.N.D. Sub-lieutenant grinned. “‘Finished’ that battery of maxims they had up there all day yesterday; we couldn’t turn them out.” The Albion continued to fire her big shells, and the bursting of the high explosive against the solid masonry of the castle, not more than 250 yards from the River Clyde, made the most overwhelming and overpowering noise inside the poor old ship. Some of those youthful orderlies were very nerve-shaken indeed.
A steamboat came alongside soon afterwards, and Dr. O’Neill, singing out that he would borrow her to tow away the wounded, went up on deck.
The Orphan, very anxious to have another look round, followed him to the superstructure deck, and there he left him talking to a white-haired naval Captain in khaki—the Beach-master of “V” beach—and a big, burly, red-faced man, in very much stained khaki, with Commander’s shoulder-straps. This was Commander Unwin, who had won the Victoria Cross the day before.
The midshipman went for’ard to where some army officers and signalmen were standing watching the shore. From there he saw the foc’s’le, the maxims, and the sand-bags behind which he had crouched. He could not see the lighters and pontoons because they were hidden by the fo’c’sle, but right in front of him was the great mediæval castle of Sedd-el-Bahr, with its bastion towers—one of which he had just seen demolished—its curtain-walls, and arched gateway at which he had fired that maxim. Farther to the right, the height of the walls decreased as they jutted out into the Straits; they were much battered about, and, in several places, huge breaches had been blown in them by the ships’ guns. Fallen masonry sloped down from these breaches into the sea itself. Scrambling along the rocks below the walls, and wading through the shallow water round the masses of fallen masonry, he saw many of our soldiers. Officers were evidently forming them up below the breaches; men were crawling up these slopes and kneeling down in front of barbed-wire entanglements, which he could plainly see across the top of one breach; somewhere close by a maxim spluttered, and a few single shots—whether English or Turkish he did not know—rang out. The Albion’s shells were now bursting some way in rear of these breaches.
Close to the water’s edge, sheltered by some rocks, a dark-blue army signal-flag began waving to and fro. The Orphan could “take in” Morse, and spelt out “R-E-A-D-Y T-O A-D-V-A-N-C-E”. He heard one of the signallers standing behind him repeat this, and a tired, weary voice called out: “Signal to the Albion to cease fire.” He heard the rustle of the Morse flag signalling to the ship; a minute later the signaller called out: “They’ve taken it in, sir.”
The weary voice sang out again, in the most matter-of-fact way: “Tell Colonel Doughty-Wylie to carry on the advance—as arranged;” and, fearfully excited, he heard the blue flag behind him whipping backwards and forwards, and saw the blue flag on shore answering.
Then men seemed to appear in hundreds; they swarmed at the feet of those breaches, and began dodging and climbing up them. Rifle-fire burst out, maxims rattled, and the Orphan held his breath to watch what was happening; but then he was pulled away, and Dr. O’Neill, savage with rage, ordered him back to the boat. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere; now’s our chance to get away to the hospital ship.” So, very reluctantly, he went back to the launch.
As he and Dr. O’Neill were going down the ladder, at the foot of which they had spent most of such an exciting night, a big man, his face wrapped in bandages, rushed down after them, and wanted to know if it was necessary for him to go off to a hospital ship. His tunic was soaked in blood.
“I feel all right; I don’t want to go,” he said.
“Take off those bandages,” Dr. O’Neill snapped, and he rapidly unwound them.
Dr. O’Neill sniffed.
“It’s my nose, I think, sir.”
“Hang it, man! you’ve not got a wound anywhere. Who was the fool who wrapped you up like that and sent you back?”
“One of the ambulance men. Can I go back?”
“Of course you can. Get out of it!” and, intensely relieved, the man, a magnificently built sapper of the West Riding Field Company, darted up the ladder on his way ashore.
“That comes of having half-trained idiots,” Dr. O’Neill snapped, as he went down into the launch. “A stone thrown up by a bullet must have hit his nose and made it bleed. He looked confoundedly pleased to get another chance of being killed—the fool. Shove off? Of course you can! D’you think I want to stay here all day? Tell the steamboat to take us to the hospital ship.”
So off they went with their wounded, and as the boats cleared the stern of the River Clyde, and the high cliffs came into view, a sniper up there sent a last bullet pinging over them. He did not fire again, and in a couple of minutes or so they were out of range, and being towed towards the crowds of ships of all sorts which were lying off the end of the Peninsula; the noise of the rifle-firing gradually fading away as they left it behind.
It was a perfectly glorious morning—about six o’clock—and the Orphan was fearfully hungry—too excited still to feel sleepy. As they were towed across the bows of the Cornwallis, she saw the wounded lying in the launch, and waited for them to pass before firing her fore turret again—she was shelling Achi Baba. In twenty minutes the steamboat towed the launch alongside the hospital ship Sicilia, and left her there.
Dr. O’Neill scrambled up the ladder, and told the Orphan he could come too. “We may get a cup of coffee,” he said, less harshly than usual.
After the scenes they had just left, the Sicilia was so quiet and peaceful that when they were taken into her saloon, trod on the thick carpet, and sank on soft, plush-covered settees, the Orphan fell asleep, even before his cup of coffee was brought.
It was after half-past eight when the launch, now emptied, reached the Achates. The Sub was on watch. “You won’t be wanted until the afternoon; go and have a bath, something to eat, and turn into my bunk,” he said.
Down in the gun-room Uncle Podger, the Pimple, Rawlinson, and the China Doll were just finishing breakfast. They all shouted questions at him, and he was also talking and answering them when the Sub came down and cleared them all out.
“Leave him alone!” he roared angrily. “Let him have his food in peace and turn in; he hasn’t had any sleep for forty-eight hours.”
“I had a bit last night,” the Orphan expostulated; he rather wanted to tell them about firing the maxim.
“Do as I tell you.”
“Are things going on all right?” he ventured to ask.
“I don’t know,” growled the Sub. “Go on with your breakfast.”