"I haven't a doubt of it.... Why, bless my soul! water there, some one."
Frank had collapsed in his arms.
CHAPTER XX
FISHING
With the morning light the men were set to consolidate the position. Frank's barricade was strengthened; the gully was parapeted and wired; everything possible was done to improve the defensive capacity of the natural trench which marked the summit of the Australian advance, and which its occupants were to hold for a month without being able to push farther.
On the day after the fight, Frank was sent down to the beach by the major to report himself to the colonel, who at once employed him in his proper duties of interpreting for the Turkish prisoners.
"You'd rather be doing something else, I dare say, after that brilliant little defence of yours," said the colonel; "but interpreters are scarce, and you can't be spared."
During the next few days Frank learnt by degrees many details of the wonderful feat accomplished by the allied army. In the first place he discovered that the landing-place of the Australians, a little north of Gaba Tepe, was almost immediately below his old haunt on Sari Bair, and the guns he had heard firing above during that unforgettable day were evidently the battery which he had seen hauled up the hill. He heard too how at Beach Y, to the south, the King's Own Scottish Borderers and part of the Naval Division had gained the top of the cliffs with ease, covered by the guns of three cruisers in the bay; and how, still farther southward, the Royal Fusiliers, landing from the Implacable, had made good their footing without a single casualty. On the broader sands at Beach W the Lancashire Fusiliers had at first failed against the wire entanglements almost at the water's edge, and the innumerable snipers and machine guns concealed in the hollow between the cliffs. At Beach V, the Dublin Fusiliers, almost annihilated as they attempted to force three lines of wire and a labyrinth of trenches, had taken cover under a high sandbank that stretched along the shore, where they were joined by such of the Munster Fusiliers and the Hampshires as survived the terrible fire which burst on them when they rowed in from the collier in whose side a door had been cut for their exit. At Beach S the South Wales Borderers had scaled the cliffs without much difficulty; and the French had successfully effected their diversion on the opposite shore of the channel at Kum Kale.
These were the doings of the memorable Sunday. On Monday the Australians, supported by the guns of the fleet, withstood a violent counter-attack that lasted two hours, and finally drove off the Turks at the point of the bayonet. Elsewhere along the shore, except at Beach Y, which had been abandoned, the invaders held their own, and during the following days the work of consolidation made rapid progress. The sappers threw out piers on which stores and ammunition were unloaded from lighters under incessant shrapnel fire. Engineers cut roads up the cliffs to facilitate the transport and the passage of the ambulance parties that were continually going up and down. The wounded were conveyed to the ships as rapidly as possible. Day and night the work went on, amid the deafening roar of big guns and the unceasing rain of bullets.
During the month of May little further progress was made. The way was blocked by the hill of Achi Baba, crowned by a strong redoubt, and seamed with trenches extending on all sides in terraces one above another. Against these strong fortifications no general advance was possible.