They headed right over the sea, first of all towards Helles; passed it, swept round, and the Orphan clutched at the sides of the "body" as the aeroplane altered course, for he thought she was slipping sideways. Not a sign of Fritz did he see, but below him lay the end of the Peninsula, its white tents, "W" beach, the hull of the poor old Majestic showing clearly under the sea, Achi Baba and the streaks which represented the Turkish trenches. In another ten minutes he looked down on Gaba Tepe, at one of the "Edgar" class firing shells which he could see bursting among the streaks on top of the hills there. Up the coast the aeroplane sped, passed Suvla with its black submarine-net buoys—he counted one hundred and fifty-two of them; the two battleships inside them looked tiny, so did the tents on shore. Then, with another wide sweep over the sea, and bending to the right, he was carried along the left-flank coast till he could see the little gap of Ejelmar Bay, where he and the Sub had tried, that night three months ago, to find Fritz; and beyond it, with some humpy hills between, the sun glittered on a broad sheet of water and a silver streak which came in sight, in and out beyond the hills—the Sea of Marmora and The Narrows.
Round swept the aeroplane; he clutched the sides; she steadied and flew back towards Helles again, but not a sign of a submarine could he see; and in fifty-five minutes from the time he had started, he was landed with a gentle bump outside the aerodrome, and found Bubbles waiting for him.
"You are a lucky chap," he bubbled. "Did you see Fritz?"
The Orphan shook his head. "But I saw The Narrows and old Marmora; wasn't that splendid?"
"Anybody fire at you?" Bubbles asked.
"Oh no!" explained the Flying Officer; "there was a bit of a haze over the sea, so I could not go very high—shouldn't have seen Fritz if I had—so it was dangerous to go too near land. We never climbed above 2500 feet."
They only just had time to catch the evening boat off to the Achates, so they had to wish their new friend good-bye and hurry back along the beach, the Orphan talking thirteen to the dozen.
Pride filled the bosom of this young officer, for he was the only one in the ship who had seen either The Narrows or the Sea of Marmora. "It looks so near to The Narrows!" he said to the Sub that night. "It doesn't look more than an hour's walk. Things have turned out rottenly, haven't they?"
"It is rather tragic—really," the Sub said.
The first job the Achates had, after arriving at Kephalo, was to send working parties across to Anzac to help salve some lighters, a tug, and two picket-boats, driven ashore by the first of those gales from the south-west. The first of the fierce gales from the north-east followed, after two days of calm, and drove such heavy seas into Kephalo harbour that the ship had to put to sea, and anchor round the corner of the island, behind another row of submarine nets, in Aliki Bay. She came back as soon as that gale had blown itself out; but on the 27th of November another north-easterly gale commenced, and next day she again had to shift round to Aliki Bay. Here she and all the other ships that had come round for shelter rode out that three days of blizzard which caused such horrible suffering to the troops at Suvla—to British and Turk alike. The temperature on board ship never fell below 30 degrees, but at Suvla it fell to something like 15 or 18, even lower. First of all, before the gale it rained in torrents, and as the water collected and flowed down from the hills behind Anafarta into the valley, it washed over the Turkish trenches, levelling them, and carrying drowned Turks, drowned mules, barbed wire and their posts right over a long section of the British lines, drowning a large number of the British, flooding their trenches, and carrying everything before it till the Salt Lake was reached. When the rain ceased the bitter north-east gale flung itself down from the hills, bringing at first heavy snow; then the terrible cold froze the water in the trenches, and hundreds of our men, up to their middles in it, died of exposure, and very many hundreds suffered from frost-bite.