All night long the work went on; more troops (after their nerve-shaking experience of that afternoon's three hours' bombardment) marched down with their baggage and their maxims, filed along No. 1 Pier across the "hulks" into the Ermine and other troop-carriers, and were taken away. Many of the still remaining guns came back and were sent off from No. 4 Pier; very many horses were embarked from No. 3 Pier; and soldiers, like ants, streamed backwards and forwards between the beach and those store depots, bringing down stores and hurrying back for more.
All night long the Orphan listened with tingling ears for the sound of anything more than the customary sniping and passing bursts of nervous rifle-firing. But the Turks had had a sufficiently severe handling in the afternoon; they made no attempt to attack, and the night passed absolutely quietly, daylight on Saturday morning coming with everything going on just as usual. The troop-carriers, horse-transports, and store ships were long since hidden in Kephalo, or below the horizon on their way to Mudros; and though the aeroplane came over to reconnoitre and be driven home again, there was nothing unusual for it to report.
Exactly how many troops remained or how many guns, neither Bubbles nor the Orphan knew; but they did know that the very scantiest number of troops held the first-line trenches, and that the guns could almost be counted on fingers and toes. All these troops had to be got off that night, and almost all the guns.
"Would the weather hold for the last night?" That was what everyone asked himself. The sun rose behind Achi Baba not quite so clearly as it had done throughout the past week, but the breeze still blew gently from the north-east, and hardly a cloud flecked the blue sky.
Captain Macfarlane, tugging at his pointed beard, looked satisfied, and went up to his "dug-out" for breakfast and to turn in, after his all-night's work, and sleep for a few hours.
Bubbles, who had spent the night at "V" beach in his picket-boat, pulled the sleepy Orphan along the path to the Mess. "What d'you think I had last night? A bath—a hot bath—aboard the River Clyde! It was the last drop of hot water she had aboard her, for a shell came in half an hour before and cut a steam-pipe or something. Wasn't I lucky?"
They had this their last breakfast in Gallipoli, and then lay down on their beds and slept.
At midday they were called, turned out—horribly sleepy—and began to roll up their bedding and pack up the rest of their "gear", ready to be taken down to the beach. Most of the officers spent the morning doing the same.
The barometer had now begun to fall—ever so slightly—-and some clouds to gather in the west, low down in the horizon, behind the island of Tenedos.
Everyone felt a little anxious.