In five minutes' time the Achates had ported her helm and was on her new course; the news had flown round the bridge, been bellowed down below to the guns' crews, and shouted down the voice-pipes to the engine-room.
"We're off to Malta!—the Dardanelles!" and everyone who passed the good news added, "Finish North Sea. Thank God!"
The sober, obsolete old Achates seemed to know where she was bound. On her new course she once more faced the gale and the seas, diving and pitching, shaking and trembling, throwing the wild spray crashing against the weather screens, flying over the bridge and pattering against the funnels.
What cared she, or anyone aboard her, however wildly the gale blew!
CHAPTER IV
The Bombardment of Smyrna Forts
The Achates arrived at Gibraltar on the fourth morning out from Spithead, and went alongside the South Mole to coal, just as the warm Mediterranean sun rose above the top of the grand old rock.
The gun-room officers—-everybody, in fact—were in the highest spirits. It was grand to have left behind the dreary, cold English winter, and it was grander still to be on the way to the Dardanelles. Best of all, they could now go to sea without worrying about submarines and mines.
Two days from Gibraltar the daily wireless telegram from England told them that the forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles had been silenced, and that landing-parties were being sent ashore to demolish them.
"Why couldn't they have waited? We shall be too late; we shall miss all the fun," they cried sadly, down in the gun-room; "just come in for the tail end of everything; they'll be up at Constantinople by the time we get there; what sickening rot!"