They ducked and went down below, but not before another drawn-out wail ended in a "flomp" a hundred yards short of the ship. "Action Stations" sounded, and everyone cleared away to their quarters; the China Doll, very pale, and not enjoying himself at all, having to climb up the rigging to the fore-control top. He heard a shell coming, caught his breath, clung to the ratlines, and knew it would hit him. He heard it "flomp" into the sea behind him; and the irritated Gunnery-Lieutenant, coming up after him, hurried him up the rigging with angry oaths. "Get that range-finder uncovered. What's the range of that village? Quick! Quick! Quick! I've got nothing to fire at. There are no orders yet."
Down on the foc's'le the Commander, the Bos'n, and a few men were getting up the anchor as fast as possible, and in five minutes off went the Achates.
Directly these four ships began moving about, the Turks left off firing at them and threw shells at the transports lying farther out; but these lay at the extreme range of their guns, and that afternoon, at any rate, they made no hits. After a while they ceased firing, and the ships came back and anchored. The Hun, who had been away all this time in his steamboat, came down into the gun-room in a great state of excitement, as a shell had fallen within ten feet of his boat. The Swiftsure presently signalled that she had five men killed and fourteen wounded. News came from the Grafton, out beyond Suvla, round the northern corner, that she too had been shelled, and had lost nine men killed and twenty wounded—all these casualties caused by one small shell which came down a hatchway and burst among a crowd of men gathered there.
"What a change, after six weeks of peace at Ieros!" Bubbles gurgled. "I don't think much of this war. I call it rotten."
"Jolly uncivil of them—and our first day, too!" Uncle Podger said.
"Whatever rhymes with Achates?" asked Rawlins, whose poetical genius had once more been roused. "'Not afraid is,' would do, but I can't fit it in; or 'What a day 'tis'—that's jolly difficult to fit in too."
The rest of the afternoon passed quietly, and that evening the reconnoitring aeroplane which flew over from the island of Imbros—from the aerodrome at Kephalo—reported that she had seen the Turks digging emplacements for four big guns on the top of the ridge.
"Well, that's not very cheering," Uncle Podger grimaced as he smoked a pipe in the Sub's cabin after dinner. "If they can make us shift about and keep under way with those small things, as they did this afternoon, they'll drive us out altogether with their big guns—and submarines will be waiting for us there."
"We shall have to knock 'em out," the Sub said; "that's all."
"We couldn't do it at Helles; I don't see how we are going to do it here," Uncle Podger said. "Did anyone see the guns that were firing at us?"