"Nothing the matter with him! Of course not," would snap Dr. O'Neill. "It's yourself, you fool; your silly noddle's so stuffed with wretched gunnery, you haven't room for a joke. He was pulling your leg."
"But where's the joke about 'white with blue spots'—I've never seen one like that?" and the Gunnery-Lieutenant would scratch his head.
"Oh! get out of it; you're hopeless!" Dr. O'Neill would growl.
Presently the signal would come that the proposed bombarding had been approved by the Admiral, who would make arrangements for a "spotting" aeroplane at ten o'clock.
Thus were details fixed for another attempt to destroy "Bill".
In the morning the Gunnery-Lieutenant waited to see how the current, or the breeze, or both together, made the ship swing. Perhaps that especial morning she swung with her stern inshore, so that "X" group of 6-inch guns—the group on the starboard side, aft—bore most easily. So, after breakfast, the Gunnery-Lieutenant sent for the War Baby—in charge of these guns—and showed him the exact spot on the map and, taking him up into the main-top, the special tree close to which "Bill" had last been seen—the tree on which he had to train his guns.
The aeroplane with its pilot, the "observer" and his wireless apparatus, started away from the "advanced" aerodrome near Helles lighthouse, commenced to climb up into the "blue", and, when ready, signalled "Ready to Commence".
By this time the Gunnery-Lieutenant in the fore-top, the Captain on the bridge, the War Baby in the sighting hood of X1, and the guns' crews in X1 and X2 beneath it, just abaft the gun-room, were all ready and waiting. "Ranging shot at eight—five—o—o, common shell," the Gunnery-Lieutenant sang down through his voice-pipe; and watched, as X1 fired, away along to the right of Krithia, between the last of the windmills and that single tree, where he hoped that the aeroplane could see "Bill", although he could not do so himself. Up went the cloud-burst, and in perhaps fifty seconds the voice-pipe from the "wireless" room called "Short 200"—the signal that had just come from the aeroplane.
Frequently, on these occasions, the enemy "wireless" stations would "block" the "wireless" signals from the aeroplane, or make "spotting" signals of their own, to confuse the annoyed Gunnery-Lieutenant. Always if the aeroplane ventured too near "Bill", the Turks burst shrapnel round her.
Sights were corrected, and another shot fired; out of the "blue" came the signal "Right, one hundred and fifty yards". That meant altering the training or, if the gun was kept on that single tree all the time, altering the deflection scale on the sight.