Then the after turret of the Achates opened fire, and with her second round landed a lyddite shell square on one corner of the fort—brick dust and masonry going sky-high.
The Turks did not return the fire.
When, eventually, the bugle sounded the "secure", the China Doll could hardly believe that he had been there for two and a half hours, and at the order to "pack up" he climbed down below, and ran to the gun-room, where Barnes, the big marine, in his shirt-sleeves, was already laying the table for afternoon tea.
The snotties and Uncle Podger came trooping in, jabbering like magpies; the Pink Rat, who was in the after turret, and Rawlinson, who had the foremost one, each claiming that his own gun had made most hits. They both were getting angry—the Pink Rat cool and cynical, Rawlinson's temper getting the better of him.
They seized the China Doll. "You saw; which gun did best?" but the Assistant Clerk was much too wily to take sides, and wriggled away.
They pounced on the Pimple, who had been on the bridge all the time. He, flattered to have his opinion asked, thought that Rawlinson's gun had made more hits.
"That rotten, worn-out pipe of a gun of yours," the Pink Rat sneered, "couldn't hit a haystack at a mile; yours were dropping short all the time!"
"Yours may be the slightly better gun" (it was more modern), "but if you had anything to do with it, it wouldn't hit the Crystal Palace, a hundred yards away," Rawlinson snorted, getting red in the face. "Ours didn't go short."
"Contradiction is no argument," the Pink Rat said loftily; and Rawlinson, who was half as big again as the senior snotty (that was why the Pimple had backed him), would have given him a hiding, had not the Sub come in and stopped them.
"What the dickens does it matter? We've given old Yeni Kali a fair 'beano'; its own mother wouldn't know it. Hurry up with the tea booze; I've to go on watch; out, both of you, if you can't keep quiet!"