It was "Cuthbert", the aeroplane, coming along for his evening visit; but this time he was not bothering his head about the ships at Suvla, but flew past at a great height, evidently off to Kephalo, in Imbros Island, twelve miles across the water, to try and drop a bomb on the aerodromes there, or on the General Headquarters Camp.
"We aren't going away until nearly midnight," the Sub said, as they watched "Cuthbert" growing smaller and smaller. Suddenly there was a shout of "Hello! One of ours is after him! Look! He's heading him off!"
Sure enough, they saw another dot against the blue sky rapidly closing "Cuthbert", who had evidently seen him and swerved to the right.
As far as they could see, the English aeroplane was the higher of the two, though a long distance separated them.
"Hello! Look there! He's coming back! Look! He's dropped his bombs" (two spouts of water flew up on the sea). "He'll get away now!"
With the weight of the bombs "off" him, "Cuthbert" came back very fast, and presently the English machine gave up the long, stern chase and turned back to Kephalo.
"Well, they stopped him dropping bombs there," the Orphan grinned.
Just before midnight—pitch-dark it was—the Sub, the Orphan, and Bowditch, the gunner's mate, climbed down into the picket-boat and pushed off. They steamed outside, turned to the right, and, half an hour later, met the Grampus destroyer—the left-flank-guard destroyer—who piloted them along the coast-line for some seven miles. Then she stopped. Her skipper shouted across, through a megaphone: "We're right opposite it now. Off you go. I'll wait for you."
In they went—very slowly, to prevent making a noise, and so as not to bump anything in the dark—eventually finding themselves in a bay, with high cliffs all round it. Here the darkness was more intense than ever, and all was absolutely silent. They "felt" round the cliffs at one side, going dead slow, but not a trace of Fritz could they find. Then they pushed across to the opposite cliff, where there was a lighter patch—probably a break in the cliffs—and just as they had searched this other side, a most startling crackling of musketry burst out from the direction of that lighter patch, and bullets fairly hummed round their ears. The coxswain put his helm hard over as the Sub roared for the engines to go full speed ahead, and the picket-boat naturally began turning a circle, and would have headed for the foot of the cliffs in a moment or two, had not the Orphan swung the helm back again. The Sub, coming back from the bows, where he and Bowditch had been "standing by" the 3-pounder and looking for Fritz, took the wheel from him, and steered out into the open.
"My! but that was warm," the Sub said, drawing a deep breath. "That was the hottest bit of fire I've had yet; it beats Ajano. I've never heard so many bullets at the same time. Phew! One lucky shot, and the boat might have been disabled."