In half an hour the very graceful outlines of these two battleships could be seen without glasses—easily distinguished from any other ship in the Navy by their hydraulic cranes for hoisting boats in and out.
The Orphan looked at them with all the more interest, because he knew that they had just come from the Dardanelles, and he peered at them through his glasses to try and discover any shell-marks. They looked as if they had just come out of dockyard hands, and he felt disappointed.
The trawlers followed, like ducklings out for a morning paddle with their father and mother. Very homely they looked.
Signal hoists fluttered and were hauled down, and soon the three big ships, with the little trawlers clustered at a respectful distance, lay with engines stopped.
The Captains of the battleships came across to the Achates, and an R.N.R. Lieutenant—in charge of the trawlers—bobbed alongside in a trawler's dinghy and scrambled on board. All three went below to the Captain's cabin.
It was a perfect morning, the breeze a little chilly, the sea calm, and just beginning to catch the light of the sun as it rose behind the misty, grey mountains of Asia Minor.
The two spotless gigs and the disreputable dinghy lay alongside, and their crews were soon busy answering questions, as the quarter-deck men left off their scrubbing decks and bawled down to know the news, and how things were going, and what was to be done here. "Have you been hit?" was the chief question.
"We got an 8-inch in the quarter-deck," the Swiftsure's boat's crew called up. "Knocked the ward-room about cruel;" and the Triumphs, jealous, told them: "It ain't nothin' compared to Kiao Chau—we got our foretop knocked out bombarding the forts there; a 12-inch shell what did that. It's not near so bad here as what it was out there."
In the hubbub of voices the Commander, splashing out of the battery in his sea-boots, sent the men back to their holystones and squeegees.
The Captains and the R.N.R. Lieutenant went back to their ships and trawlers, and then the three big ships commenced steaming in line ahead up the Gulf of Smyrna, the Achates leading, the Swiftsure astern of her, and the Triumph astern of the Swiftsure. The little trawlers were left behind.