The China Doll, at the first rumour of "sharks and onions", had dashed down from the quarter-deck, entirely forgetting that his swimming-collar was still round his neck; and they made him keep it there—blown up, too—so that he had the very greatest difficulty to swallow his fair share of the food—as for his glass of beer, Rawlinson drank half that—before the Commander sent the sentry to tell the Pink Rat to "'out lights' in the gun-room and stop that confounded noise!"
Then they crept noisily to their hammocks in the half-deck, and, marvellous to relate, slept like tops.
This finally concluded the operations off Smyrna—they were only intended temporarily to divert the Turks' attention—and a few days later the Swiftsure and Triumph, with the trawlers, were recalled to the Dardanelles, and the Achates ordered to Port Said to repair her small damages, leaving "Peeping Tom" and "Squinting Susan" to play "I spy you" by themselves, and "Glaring Gertrude" to go on counting her salt-heaps on the opposite shore or not, just as she pleased.
CHAPTER VII
Off to the Dardanelles
The Achates arrived at Port Said on the 18th March and made fast, head and stern, to the Senior Naval Officer's buoys, off Navy House.
It was on this date that the combined French and British fleet made the attack on The Narrows—the attack which ended so disastrously with the loss of the Ocean, Irresistible, and Bouvet, and the crippling of the Inflexible and Gaulois.
A very bad day it was, only relieved by some daring acts of bravery, of which none so roused the admiration of the whole fleet as the courage displayed by those destroyers which went alongside the mortally wounded Ocean and Irresistible, and removed their crews under a concentrated fire from many heavy guns.
It was magnificent.
But the Achates lay comfortably at Port Said all that tragic day, making preparations for repairing the damage caused by the Smyrna shells, and talking by wireless to her chummy ship the Bacchante, anchored off Suez, at the other end of the Canal.