The thudding of heavy guns broke the stillness, and splashes of flames lighted up the greyness of the daybreak.
"Hullo! they've started!" said the Commander. "They're three minutes late by my watch. I expect the blessed thing is losing again. I'm hanged if I know what's wrong with it."
The Great Adventure[#] had commenced.
[#] The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps had already effected a landing beyond Gaba Tepe, 15 miles to the north-east.
CHAPTER VIII
The Landing on Gallipoli
For half an hour there was one constant rumbling of guns fired by the Swiftsure, Cornwallis, Albion, Prince George, Lord Nelson, and Agamemnon; and shells from the first two of these, bursting in scores on the last half-mile of the Peninsula, hid it almost continuously under a cloud of lyddite smoke.
The six picket-boats steamed in steadily towards this smoke cloud with the Lancashire Fusiliers behind them, not advancing very rapidly because the current, flowing out of the Dardanelles, was against them, and the transports' boats were so heavily laden.
The crews of these boats had already tossed their oars—four in each boat—in readiness to pull in to the land when the steamboats should cast them off.
The Orphan steered his picket-boat—the fifth boat from the left—with one hand; in the other he held a half-eaten sandwich. Jarvis stood one side of him, the Sub the other, all three behind the bullet-proof protecting shield. Jarvis had slept a little through the night; the other two had not.