"My aunt! Look, Lampy!" sang out the Orphan, who reached it first. "Jolly lucky that we didn't stay!"
They had a difficulty in crawling in, because two of the balks of timber had been blown down at one end. All those stones and sand-bags they had replaced twenty minutes ago lay scattered on the ground—some outside among the bushes, others inside. In one torn and half-emptied sand-bag they found the fuse of the shell which had apparently done the damage. It was still warm.
"Oh, look! there's your stick! You must have left it. Look! That will be a bit of a curio, won't it?"
"It isn't mine; it's the Pink Rat's," the Lamp-post grinned, as he picked up the two pieces. "I wish it had been mine."
They took the broken pieces and went back to the Commander. "They've knocked it about no end, sir. It's lucky we didn't stay there. You'll have to give it up, won't you, sir?"
"Oh no! rather not. I shall use it again to-morrow; but I shan't touch it—leave it just as it is. Probably I'll put some sand-bags here, where they can see them, and let them pot at this place instead. Come along, we'll give you a drop of tea, down in my 'dug-out'. The Swiftsure has finished firing."
"Did she hit either of them?" they asked.
"Went jolly close," he said. "I rather fancy she did hit one, but it's very difficult to say for certain."
The Commander's "dug-out" was some fifty yards below the crest of the ridge, and out of sight of Suvla Bay and the plain of Anafarta. From it the Lamp-post looked over the Gulf of Zeros, the Bulgarian and Turkish coast-lines, and, on the left, the lofty island of Samothrace, rearing its crest above the clouds. Down in the sea at his feet—some five hundred feet below him—the Grampus, destroyer, steamed slowly along to protect the extreme left flank of the army, which extended from behind Jephson's Post to the actual beach. Beyond her, either the Grafton or the Theseus came slowly along towards Suvla Point, pushing through the glittering water. Trawlers and drifters, with their reddish-brown mizzen-sails giving a peaceful and home-like appearance to the beautiful view, patrolled very, very slowly the stretches of the Gulf between Samothrace and the Peninsula.
From this "dug-out" the ground sloped very abruptly to the sea, its surface composed of scattered rocks interspersed with coarse bushes. The bivouacs of the brigade in reserve were here, and hundreds of men lay about smoking, talking, and mending their clothes, or fast asleep. Bathing parties went down to the sea, chattering noisily, or scrambled back, half naked, to dry themselves in the sun.