During those three days the troops at Suvla experienced the climax of hardship and exposure. The Turks suffered even more than our own people; and when daylight broke after the worst night, they were left exposed in the open with their trenches swept away, and our men—those whose hands were not too numbed to fire a rifle—shot them down like rabbits. Afterwards, a gentle breeze sprang up from the south-west, and, almost as if in pity, a warm sun shone down on those much-tried armies.
On the Tuesday the ships trailed back to Kephalo again, getting a glimpse of Samothrace with its snow-clad peak glittering in the sun—a most gorgeous, exquisite spectacle.
They found that the centre one of those three breakwater ships had disappeared entirely, and the head of the harbour behind them, close to the piers, was absolutely littered with wreckage. This centre ship had broken in half on the Sunday night, and the seas sweeping through the gap had hurled all the picket-boats and lighters sheltering behind her on to the shore, in one jumbled, tumbled mass.
They presented a most extraordinary sight piled on top of each other, and half buried in a huge mass of seaweed swept in with them. A big distilling steamer, with her rudder gone and her rudder-post smashed, had been driven ashore farther along the bay; beyond her lay a "water-beetle" high and dry, and, still farther along the shore, one of those small provisioning "coaster" steamers which ran between Kephalo and the Peninsula.
Salvage work commenced immediately. The Lamp-post and Rawlins took fifty men ashore, and worked, day after day, digging away the seaweed which blocked the little piers, and trying to refloat the least damaged of the steamboats; the Sub, with a number of men, had to rig shears to lift out the engines and boilers of those which were hopelessly smashed—all very unpleasant work, because that seaweed decomposed quickly under a hot sun and gave out the most unpleasant odour.
A more pleasing job had Bubbles and the Orphan. With a large working party they commenced to dig a channel through the sand—good, honest, clean sand—in order to refloat a stranded "water-beetle". They paddled about all day and had a huge lark.
On the second morning, as they prepared to go ashore, Uncle Podger, on his way to his bath, sang out: "Take your little buckets and spades and go down to the beach, dears, but promise Mummy not to get wet."
"We'll promise Uncle a jolly 'thick ear' when we do come back," they laughed. "Come along by the seven-bell boat, bring a basket and some tea 'grub', and we'll have a picnic there."
"Cuthbert" came over from Maidos once or twice, just to make "kind enquiries", find out how the salvage operations progressed, and see whether three or four bombs would be of any assistance. They were not; none of them dropped near enough to help, and all much too far away to do any damage.
The weather became simply perfect, and after a week's hard work the Swiftsure had hauled off the distilling ship and one of the "water-beetles", the Achates had towed off that small steam "coaster", and Bubbles and the Orphan had dug a channel sufficiently deep for a tug to come along and tow off their stranded motor-lighter.