Chapter VIII The Landing on Gallipoli
For half an hour there was one constant rumbling of guns fired by the Swiftsure, Cornwallis, Albion, Prince George, Lord Nelson, and Agamemnon; and shells from the first two of these, bursting in scores on the last half-mile of the Peninsula, hid it almost continuously under a cloud of lyddite smoke.
The six picket-boats steamed in steadily towards this smoke cloud with the Lancashire Fusiliers behind them, not advancing very rapidly because the current, flowing out of the Dardanelles, was against them, and the transports’ boats were so heavily laden.
The crews of these boats had already tossed their oars—four in each boat—in readiness to pull in to the land when the steamboats should cast them off.
The Orphan steered his picket-boat—the fifth boat from the left—with one hand; in the other he held a half-eaten sandwich. Jarvis stood one side of him, the Sub the other, all three behind the bullet-proof protecting shield. Jarvis had slept a little through the night; the other two had not.
“Practise stooping and steering through the slit,” the Sub ordered. “If you keep standing up and looking over the top, you’ll get a bullet in your head when the time comes.”
“But there can’t possibly be anyone left alive there,” the Orphan protested, as he watched the shells bursting.
“Just wait! You’ll soon find out!” the Sub answered grimly, and noticing that the picket-boat was forging ahead of the line, sung out to the stoker petty officer to “ease her”. This man was looking out of the engine-room hatch, just in front of the bullet-proof screen, and popped his head down to give another twist to the steam-valve. Old Fletcher, peering out of the stokehold hatch, farther for’ard, thought he, too, had been told to do so, and also bobbed his head down.
“Has the tortoise come along with us this time?” the Sub asked. The Orphan did not know; but Jarvis snorted: “Yes, ‘Kaiser Bill’s’ ’ere all right; the old ’umbug!”—though whether he meant the tortoise was a humbug, or the old stoker, he didn’t say.
The picket-boat fell back into line, and the Hun, standing behind his bullet-proof screen in the pinnace on the right, waved cheerfully across to the Orphan.
It was now clear daylight—about a quarter-past five.
The battleships still pounded the end of the Peninsula, and the six steamboats drew ahead of the Achates, which had now stopped engines. Behind them followed the trawlers, and the Newmarket, fleet sweeper, with the Pink Rat, Bubbles, the Lamp-post, and their beach parties, and behind her—far behind—came many transports.
“There’s the River Clyde,” called the Orphan, pointing away over the starboard quarter to where she was coming along, very slowly, towing the hopper and lighters which were presently to bridge the gap between her bows and the shore. After her, and with difficulty keeping pace with her, more ships’ steamboats towed half a battalion of the Dublin Fusiliers.
“That’s Cape Tekke—that high end bit, and that’s Cape Helles—the higher cliff to the right, with the white lighthouse ‘affair’ on top,” the Sub explained. “We’ve to land in between them. There’s a bay there—‘W’ beach—underneath that smoke.”
The sun itself had not yet been visible, but now it shot up from behind a distant ridge, humped like the back of a huge pig, and blazed straight in their faces.
“Old Achi Baba,” said the Sub, shielding his eyes. “If they get as far as that to-night, they’ll be able to look down on the Narrows and on the forts there.”
“The Navigator told the Pimple that the soldiers expect to have dinner at Achi Baba,” the Orphan said. “I jolly well hope they will. Isn’t this sun beastly? I can’t see where I’m going.”
“Well, don’t get too far ahead, and don’t look into it,” the Sub growled. “This isn’t a race; ease down and give the pinnace a chance.”
They were now about a thousand yards off the smoke cloud which concealed “W” beach, and the incessant crash of high-explosive shells bursting there, and on the high ground above it, made the most infernal din. At this point the two left-hand steamboats diverged from the other four and steamed towards the rocks under the actual end of the Peninsula; the Sub, with the remainder, maintained the original course. But “W” beach, and the scooped-out gully which led upwards to the high ground, and the cliffs at each side of it were hidden in dense clouds of lyddite smoke and by a thick morning haze which lay on the water. Unfortunately the sun, shining over Achi Baba, shone full on this smoke and mist, and lighted it up to such a dazzling extent that from the boats one could see nothing whatever of the shore, and judging distances was impossible.
The boats were now drawing very near their destination, and the Sub had all the responsibility on his shoulders of judging the moment when to slip them. A blast from his steam-whistle was to be the signal for all to be cast off, and Jarvis picked up the whistle lanyard and only waited the order to tug it. Plunky Bill, in the bows, kept a sharp look-out for’ard, and every now and then dipped the boat-hook in the water to find its depth.
The Sub, his face set and anxious, seized a megaphone and shouted: “Out oars!”
The transports’ boats’ crews immediately dropped their tossed oars into the rowlocks, and the soldiers in these boats turned round to have a look where they were going. They had, until then, been sitting stolidly in the boats with only their packs and the backs of their caps visible, and this sudden swinging round of heads as the oars dropped, and the almost simultaneous appearance of five hundred faces, made an unforgettable sight. Nothing could be seen through the dazzling smoke and mist.
“It’s twenty to six,” the Sub jerked out, looking at his wrist watch. “We’re a few minutes late. We ought to be right there now.”
Not a shot had been fired from shore, and the ship’s shells were still bursting—very close the explosions seemed to be. “They must be able to see us,” the Orphan whispered, nervously peering through the steering slit.
Then there was a yell from Plunky Bill: “Stakes right ahead, sir! Only four foot of water, sir!” Others took up the cry—the crew of the Hun’s steam pinnace had seen them and were shouting and pointing.
The Sub looked under the bows and saw them himself.
“We’re there!” he roared. “Pull, Jarvis; one long blast! Let go aft! Full speed astern! Hard a-starboard!”
The steam spluttered out for a moment—the Orphan thought the whistle would never clear itself—then it shrieked—the echo came back from the shore almost immediately, proving how close they must be—splash went the tow-rope into the water—the other steamboats slipped their tow-ropes—the stern of the picket-boat swerved to port and trembled as the screw went full speed astern, and the oars of the transports’ boats splashed madly in the water.
Not a rifle-shot came from the shore.
As the picket-boat gathered stern-way, the crowded transports’ boats splashed past on either side; their coxswains, perched in the sterns, yelling: “Go it: give way! Pull hard! Shove your backs into it!”
“Good luck to you all!” the picket-boat’s crew shouted.
The soldiers turned round with grim, set faces, their hands on the gunwales gripping very tightly, ready for the moment when they would have to jump out. The leading boat wavered; she had come up against the stakes and the barbed-wire netting stretched between them. These checked her for a moment, but her weight carried her through, and she almost disappeared in the very thick and dazzling haze. The other boats dashed after her.
In the bows of one—with his machine-gun—was a very cheery subaltern who had dined in the gun-room the night before, and also his equally cheery chum the subaltern of Royal Horse Artillery—the brigade signaller. The latter, as he passed, called out: “Tell your China Doll I won’t forget his rifle.” “Good luck!” shouted the Sub, “I’ll tell the little beggar.”
“Turn her round! Take her out to the trawlers!” he roared to the Orphan. Round the picket-boat swung, and just as she commenced to steam out there was a shout of “The first one’s beached herself, sir! The soldiers are scrambling out, sir!” And then from behind the haze and smoke clouds, from both sides and above, there burst out the most terrific rattle of maxims, and rifles and the bark of something heavier than either.2
The picket-boat steamed out at full speed, whilst stray bullets hit the water near her and others pinged overhead. The Orphan and the Sub looked back. They could only see indistinctly through the haze with the sun on it; they could not see what was happening, but neither of them—down inside them—could imagine that any men in those crowded boats could pass through that fire and live. The Orphan held his breath and gripped the steering-wheel. His heart seemed to stop beating: the Sub’s face was set, and he had bitten his lip. “They’re getting it in the neck—my God, they are!” Jarvis said, as the awful rattling and banging went on without a moment’s pause.
The steamboats reached the trawlers, a thousand yards or more from that glare of mist and smoke which hid “W” beach and its tragedy, and there they waited until, suddenly, first one and then another, then half a dozen—a dozen transports’ boats, some with three oars working, others with only two, one with only one, scarcely any had all four, came into view, emerging from the mist, and bullet splashes leapt up in hundreds around and among them.
For one horrible second they thought that the boats had been beaten off, but then they saw that they had no soldiers in them, and knew that, at any rate, the soldiers had managed to land; the haze still made it impossible to see what had happened to them.
Breathlessly the crews of the steamboats, clustering round the two trawlers, watched these boats struggling off. The boat with only one oar working, and no coxswain, was turning circles, but drifting slowly out with the current. The man himself was evidently sitting on the bottom boards, because only his hands appeared above the gunwales, and he kept changing the oar from side to side.
Another boat near this one had two oars working, and they watched the coxswain in the stern crouching down and trying with his free hand to make these two keep time.
Just picture to yourself a stream with a tin floating some ten yards from the bank, and half a dozen boys, with their caps full of stones, throwing stones at it as fast as they can. Picture to yourself that tin with the splashes round it, and you will be able to realize something of what the Sub and the Orphan saw; only, instead of one tin, there were sixteen crippled boats—some of them already half filled with dead and wounded—and the bullet splashes leapt six feet and more out of the water.
Then imagine that, instead of a tin, it was a struggling cat the boys were trying to drown with their stones, and that you were making up your mind to slip off your clothes, swim in, and rescue it, knowing that the boys on the banks would throw stones faster than ever, and bigger ones too, which would really hurt.
Well, at this moment the Sub decided to steam into the hail of bullets and rescue those boats.
He roared out: “We can’t sit here doing nothing. Go in and help them!”
The Orphan, pale and staring, rang “full speed ahead”, turned the picket-boat’s bows round, and dashed back towards the boats. The Hun, yelling and half mad with excitement, followed in the pinnace, and so did some of the other steamboats. The Orphan hardly knew what happened. Bullets hit the protecting screen, a chip of wood from the gunwale hit his cap; splashes leapt up all round him; his ears hummed with the whistling noise. He remembered hearing the Sub roar: “Go for those two over there!” and feeling him grip his hand on the steering-wheel to turn towards the two most crippled boats. He got alongside one—saw Plunky Bill and another hand get hold of her—had a picture of grey faces looking up at him from the bottom of her, and a muddle of khaki lying there across her thwarts; towed her across to the boat with only one man; saw the Sub get hold of her painter, and then found himself, dazed and horribly shaky and sick, back again at the trawler. Plunky Bill came aft, grinning: “There’s a ’ole in the funnel, sir, slap-bang through!” and proudly showed a bullet which he had found lying on the deck.
No one who looked into those transports’ boats as they were towed alongside the trawlers will ever forget what he saw: men dead, dying, and wounded, all huddled and jumbled together on the thwarts of the boats and on the bottom boards, with legs and arms twisted strangely; wounded unable to free themselves from the weight of dead bodies on top of them—those grey, placid faces and sightless eyes which, ten minutes before, had glowed with excitement as they turned them to the sun; the blood-stained, torn khaki; the blood-stained water lapping round them, and the one, two, and in some boats three bluejackets, in their Condy’s-fluid-dyed jumpers, sitting among them, flopping, exhausted, over their oars.
In one boat there was a Scotsman, in gold spectacles—not unlike Fletcher the stoker—a St. John’s Ambulance man, and now a Territorial ambulance orderly. He had already dressed all the wounded in his boat, and now stepped into another, working away quietly, as if he was doing it in the accident-room of a hospital.
“We must get a doctor,” he told the Sub; and as the trawlers had not one, the boats requiring most urgent assistance were towed across to the Newmarket anchored near. Here the wounded—most of them—received further treatment.
There was no time for sentiment. The boats were all urgently required to take more men ashore; three of them, those with the most dead and wounded, were told off to take on board the wounded from the others; bluejackets were told off to take the places of those of the crews who had been killed and wounded; and then the beach parties, Bubbles, the Pink Rat, and the Lamp-post, tumbled down into them. Bullets began flying round them and the Newmarket, but no one was hit. “Shove off!” was shouted; “land them under the rocks to the left of the beach;” and the Sub and the Orphan towed them inshore.
There was much less rifle-firing now, but many bullets came over and splashed round the picket-boat. The mist and smoke had cleared away, and the Swiftsure was still firing very rapidly at the Turks’ trenches on the edge of the cliff, to the right of the beach, the Achates assisting with her small guns. Their shells burst along it one after the other, all along the dark line which marked the trenches, and scarcely a Turk dare expose himself to fire down at the beach.
The Sub, as he approached, saw through his glasses two Turks close together, leaning over and pointing their rifles down at the beach, and saw spurts of sand fly up where the bullets struck among a line of men lying prone, half in and half out of the water, in front of lines of barbed wire. One of the shells from the Achates burst close to them, and when the smoke had drifted away the two Turks were still there—motionless—in exactly the same attitude, but their rifles were sliding down the rocks. He cast off the boats with the beach parties, and waved to them as they pulled past him inshore. The three snotties crowded in the stern, and looking up at the cliffs with eyes wide open, were, however, too excited to take any notice of the Orphan’s shout of “Good luck, you chaps!”
Back he went to the Newmarket, meeting steamboats towing in boats packed with more troops. Another trip ashore with sappers and “details”, and then he towed those three boats with the wounded to the Achates, where they were taken on board.
It was exactly half-past seven when he got alongside her, busy firing her small guns in the port battery, and her for’ard 9.2 turret-gun.
The Captain wanted to see the Sub, so he climbed up and went for’ard to the bridge.
The Orphan, left to himself, was sent off to a transport to tow more soldiers ashore; and on the way to her he saw, over against the Asiatic shore and the fort of Kum Kali, the French fleet, the Jeanne d’Arc with her six quaint, squat funnels, and the Russian Askold with her five thin, tall ones, and two battleships, all firing very rapidly.
Behind them lay big transports, and dozens of boats loaded with dark-coated infantry on their way ashore.
He reached the transport, got his orders, and steamed back to “W” beach with a long string of crowded boats behind him.
It was then, whilst he waited for them to be emptied, that he had the first clear view of “W” beach and the broad gully leading up to the green ridge above it.
No bullets—or only very few—came near him, and he could look on undisturbed. On the right, where the barbed wire was thickest, a row of dead Lancashire Fusiliers lay as if they had all been swept by the same torrent of maxim bullets. He knew that they were dead, because other men, springing into the water and wading ashore, stepped over them, looked down at them, and left them.
Higher up the beach, men were hanging on the barbed wire itself. At first he thought it was only clothes hanging there; then he saw that they had been men. Fresh troops were scaling the cliffs; soldiers advanced up the green slope above, singly and in little groups. Away to the left, under the rocks, more men clustered; and as some of them limped along to the boats, some with bandages, some without, he knew that these were wounded waiting to be dressed. They crowded into the boats he had just brought ashore, and many were carried down—among these being a wounded Brigadier shot through the leg. He saw nothing of Bubbles, the Pink Rat, or the tall, lanky Lamp-post; but he did feel certain that the landing had been made good.
Trawlers, loaded with stores, approached as close inshore as they could get; boats of every description were flocking in, and already the sappers were lashing pontoons together on the left, under the rocks, to make a temporary pier.
Then the boats he had towed in came out to him, and he towed them and their wounded back to the Achates. For the remainder of that morning the Orphan was employed taking Staff Officers backwards and forwards between the ship and “W” beach.
The beach parties had laid down six buoys at about ten yards apart and some fifty yards from the beach, and had led ropes from these to the same number of stakes driven into the beach opposite to them. The intervals between these ropes made waterways into which the big lighters could haul themselves ashore without colliding with each other. But there was a certain amount of jostling just beyond the buoys, and the Orphan had his work cut out, whenever he went near the beach, to prevent his boat being damaged by the crowds of steamboats “mothering” the big lighters into position. She had a big rope fender projecting across her bows, another lashed across her stern, and two lengths of six-inch “grass” hawser secured all round her side to protect her from bumps; but, in spite of these, she soon had one corner of her stern crushed, and her steering gear was jammed. The Orphan managed to take her back to the Achates safely, and, very sad about it, reported the damage to the Commander.
The Commander, at his wits’ end for boats, was very angry.
“I’ll take you out of her, Mr. Orpen, if you can’t manage her,” he said angrily, but then sent him away to get his boat coaled and watered whilst the repairs were being made. “You and your crew can come in-board and get some food,” he called after the miserable Orphan.
So presently he was able to dash down to the gun-room, where Barnes had some cold meat and pickles waiting for him. He had had nothing to eat, except a couple of sandwiches, since the previous night, and the sight of food made him realize that he was ravenously hungry. It was now half-past one. The China Doll—the only one there—lay fast asleep on one of the cushioned benches; and he ate his food in peace, with the burly Barnes waiting on him. He was nearly as hungry for news as he was for food; but the old marine would not talk or tell him anything. “Just you go on with your food; there ain’t no time for talking,” and he gave him a cup of strong coffee afterwards. “That’ll keep you awake,” he said, as he cleared away.
The Orphan looked at the China Doll and longed to throw himself down on a cushion and sleep; but heavy firing broke out again, and, too excited to think of doing so, he went up on the quarter-deck to see what was going on.
“Your boat will be ready in half an hour,” the officer of the watch told him.
The Cornwallis, Swiftsure, and Albion were now firing at a small knoll which showed up above Cape Helles, the big cliff half-way between “W” beach and Sedd-el-Bahr. This knoll was known as Hill 138, and barbed-wire entanglements round its slopes were plainly visible through the Orphan’s telescope.
He asked the Fleet-Paymaster and the Navigator, standing on the quarter-deck and looking through their glasses, what was happening.
“The Turks still hold it,” the Navigator said. “Our chaps are preparing to rush it when the ships have finished their bit of work.”
“How are they going on down in the River Clyde?” he asked.
“Badly; they’ve been terribly cut up; haven’t landed a man since nine this morning; something went wrong when they tried to get the lighters in position under her bows. Look through your glass! You see those chaps there under the little bank on top of the beach, this side of her; those are all who are left of some six or seven hundred who tried to get ashore early this morning. They can’t budge; they have been there all the time. And those are their dead, those brownish lumps scattered along the beach. Those two transports’ boats, stranded under Cape Helles, drifted there. Every man aboard them was killed before they got near the shore. They’ve been drifting about all the morning, and fetched up on the rocks. Look at that splash jumping up close to the River Clyde—that’s another 8-inch shell from the Asiatic shore. They hit her three times before she took the ground, but have missed her ever since. Ah! There goes a salvo from the Prince George—she’s looking after the Asiatic guns—that’ll quiet ’em.”
“Any news from the Australians, sir?” the Orphan asked, feeling horribly miserable.
“They and the New Zealanders have done grandly,” the Fleet-Paymaster answered cheerily. “Pushed inland a devil of a way. They’ll be across the Peninsula in no time—with luck.”
No news had come from the French on the Asiatic side. “They seem to be doing all right,” the Navigator said; “but it’s precious difficult to make out what’s happening there.”
Some men came through the battery door carrying a stretcher with a man on it, his face covered with a cloth. They bore it right aft on the quarter-deck, lifted back a tarpaulin, which the Orphan then noticed for the first time, laid the body on the deck, drew the tarpaulin over it, and went for’ard.
“That’s the seventeenth,” the Navigator told him; “most of them soldiers.”
Dr. O’Neill, capless and haggard, came up the after hatchway. “By the powers that be, but the General has a bad leg!” he said as he hurried past them on his way to the sick-bay.
“That’s the General you brought off this morning,” the Fleet-Paymaster explained.
The Sub and the China Doll came up from below, the China Doll just wakened by the heavy firing.
“That R.H.A. chap promised to send you off your rifle, China Doll; he called out to us just before he landed,” the Orphan said; but the Assistant Clerk shook his head sorrowfully. “No, he’s dead; he died as they brought him on board; he and that chum of his are both there,” and he pointed to the tarpaulin.
“Someone told me,” said the Sub, “that the R.H.A. chap got ashore all right, fixed up his signal things, and sent off one or two messages before he was knocked over. He was more lucky than a good many of those there; they never got out of the boats.”
“Why did the Captain want you?” asked the Orphan.
The Sub took him aside, his eyes very bright. “He’d forgotten why he sent for me, but then wanted to know if we’d had orders to go after those crippled boats that time. I told him that we hadn’t, but that I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. I thought he was angry; he said that if the steamboats had been disabled it would have meant a serious delay. I told him we’d only had a bullet through the funnel and a bit chipped out of the gunwale. He looked me up and down, tugged at his beard, and I saw that he was smiling. So that’s all right, my jumping Orphan!”
“Did he know that the Hun went in too?”
“I told him.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh, you know that funny, slow way he has of talking when he’s trying to be humorous. He just tugged his beard and said: ‘I thought I noticed that young officer’s boat’. Gosh! what a morning it’s been!”
The picket-boat’s steering gear having been reported repaired, the Orphan was sent away again, and kept busy until nightfall, backwards and forwards between “W” beach and the ships. Once he took Captain Macfarlane on board the Queen Elisabeth, now anchored off the River Clyde, and waited for him whilst the big ship fired salvoes of 6-inch shell into Sedd-el-Bahr village and the earthwork on Hill 141 above it. Another time he went alongside the sappers’ pontoons, and Bubbles dashed down to speak to him. “My dear chap, it’s a great game; we’re having a ripping time!” he gurgled and snorted, looking a terrible brigand in his clothes—already very dirty. “Oh, that’s nothing!” he laughed, as he saw the Orphan smile. “We lay in the old Turks’ trenches for two blessed hours this morning. It was a great time. If you get a chance, bring us in some butter and some sausages—and, my hat! old chap, I’m dry—dry as a lime-kiln, and my water-bottle’s been empty for the last three hours.”
The Orphan had some water in the boat and gave it to him. The next time he went back to the ship he got a barricoe filled and took it inshore; but there was too much of a crush for him to go alongside, so the Lamp-post waded in up to his waist and fetched it. “We’ve almost run out of it; all our people gave their water to the wounded, and there are any amount more coming down now. We’ve just heard that the Worcesters have rushed Hill 138, and they and the Lancashires are going to try and take Hill 141. Yes, there they come,” and he pointed up the gully, down which many stretchers were being carried. He shouted to a couple of the beach party, and seizing the barricoe of water, they ran it up the beach towards a little tent under the rocks to the left, with a Red Cross flag flying near it, and crowds of men in every attitude of weariness gathered round it. These were all wounded men.
At this time, about a quarter to five, there was a period of comparative quiet. The Worcesters had cleared the Turks out of Hill 138, so that “W” beach was practically free from rifle-fire; and now they and the Lancashire Fusiliers were forming up to attack the earthwork on Hill 141. This dominated both Hill 138 and “V” beach, where the River Clyde lay, so that, until it was captured, it was impossible to join hands with the remnants of the Dublins on “V” beach. A very brave attempt was made about half-past five to take this earthwork; but the two gallant regiments were almost exhausted after their hard day’s fighting under a hot sun, and they met more wire entanglements, so thickly laid, and commanded by such a heavy fire, that they were unable to advance farther. At nightfall the Turks still held Hill 141, and separated the troops who had landed on “W” beach from those who had landed on “V” beach.
These poor chaps had suffered terribly all day, and still remained crouched under the low cliff or bank there, unable to move.
During the fighting for this last hill, the Orphan towed in two horse-boats with two field-guns and their limbers. They were covered up with tarpaulins, and he was not certain whether they were English 18-pounders or French 75’s. At any rate, the beach parties soon got hold of them with hook-ropes and drag-ropes, hauled them ashore, and “man-handled” them up the gully. The Orphan knew, in a general sort of way, that things were not “going” as well as had been hoped, but he was kept so busy, and was so fatigued, that by sunset he could hardly keep his eyes open. Several times he had to hand over the wheel to Jarvis; but at last, after having spent nearly an hour hunting in the dark for an important transport which had anchored in the wrong place, he found himself at nine o’clock back again alongside the Achates.
The Sub, on watch, told him that he would not be wanted for some time. “Go and get something to eat, and a rest,” he said; “you’ve had a pretty hard day of it.”
He stumbled down into the gun-room, where he found the Hun fast asleep with his head on the table. Barnes brought him a glass of beer, and he swallowed it in one draught. “Give me a biscuit—anything—I’m too sleepy to eat.”
But Barnes had some sandwiches ready. “Plenty of mustard on ’em—made ’em myself—mustard’ll ginger you up. Just you lie down on the cushions, and I’ll stick the plate alongside you.”
The Pimple found him, and wanted to tell him the latest news. The Orphan told him to “chuck it”. The China Doll came in and would have asked him questions, but the Orphan pretended to be asleep, so he tiptoed out again like a mouse. Uncle Podger strolled in, smoking his pipe, and began to play patience. He watched him shuffling and dealing the cards, and then fell asleep.
He woke. The corporal of the gangway was shaking him.
“The Commander wants you, sir.”
He dragged himself up. The gun-room was empty. The alarum-clock on the notice-board showed a quarter to eleven, and he went up to the dark quarter-deck, where he found the Commander and reported himself.
“Oh! there you are, are you? I’ve been sending all over the ship for you. The ’wounded’ launch is going down to the River Clyde; I’ve no one else to send with her; Rawlinson has gone away in a cutter and I can’t trust anyone else; the steam pinnace will tow you down, and the doctors are going with you. I’ve sent four hands into the launch already, and she’s at the starboard boom; drop her astern and alongside the port gangway. Hurry up!”
Still half asleep, the Orphan found this big pulling boat (fitted to transport wounded, she had been), dropped into her, and five minutes later brought her alongside.
The Hun, in the pinnace, came along out of the dark, bumped into her, and got her painter made fast to the towing-cleat. “They’re having a jolly lively time down at the River Clyde!” the Hun called across.
The Orphan, turning his sleepy head in that direction, listened, and heard a good deal of rifle-firing, and occasionally the spluttering of a maxim.
“Right into it,” he thought, and forgot his tiredness.
Dr. O’Neill and Dr. Gordon scrambled down the ship’s side into the launch; the big chief sick-berth steward came down after them. Bags of dressings were passed down; and Dr. O’Neill cursed irritably when a bag, fumbled owing to the darkness, slipped through the hands of the people on the gangway above, fell into the boat, and only just missed falling overboard.
The Commander called down to the Doctor: “Keep the steam pinnace if you want her.” The Sub roared out orders to the Hun, and he started his engines and towed the launch away from the ship’s dark side.
Six bells struck on board her—it was just eleven o’clock.
Notes
2 One-inch Nordenfeldts.