Our monitors crept close to the sandy shore, and poured out a deadly brood of Death.
The crack and crash was deafening, and it literally shook the air... it quivered like a jelly after each shot.
The fighting got more and more inland, and the rattle and crackle fainter and farther away. But we still watched, fascinated.
The little groups of men lay in exactly the same positions on the beach. That platoon by the side of Lala Baba lay in a black bunch—stone dead. We could see our artillery teams galloping along like a team of performing fleas, taking up new positions behind Lala Baba. So this is war? Well, it's pretty awful! Wholesale murder... what's it all for? Wonder how long we shall last alive before Mechanical Death blows our brains out, or a leg off...
Queer thing, war! Didn't think it was quite like this! So mechanical and senseless.
And now came the time for us to land. A lighter came alongside, with a little red-bearded man in command—
“Remind you of any one?” I said to Hawk.
“Cap'n Kettle!”
“Yes!”
He was exactly like Cutcliffe Hyne's famous “Kettle,” except that he smoked a pipe. We huddled into the lighter, and hauled our stores down below. Some of us were “green about the gills,” and some were trying to pretend we didn't care.