No one who looked into those transports' boats as they were towed alongside the trawlers will ever forget what he saw: men dead, dying, and wounded, all huddled and jumbled together on the thwarts of the boats and on the bottom boards, with legs and arms twisted strangely; wounded unable to free themselves from the weight of dead bodies on top of them—those grey, placid faces and sightless eyes which, ten minutes before, had glowed with excitement as they turned them to the sun; the blood-stained, torn khaki; the blood-stained water lapping round them, and the one, two, and in some boats three bluejackets, in their Condy's-fluid-dyed jumpers, sitting among them, flopping, exhausted, over their oars.
In one boat there was a Scotsman, in gold spectacles—not unlike Fletcher the stoker—a St. John's Ambulance man, and now a Territorial ambulance orderly. He had already dressed all the wounded in his boat, and now stepped into another, working away quietly, as if he was doing it in the accident-room of a hospital.
"We must get a doctor," he told the Sub; and as the trawlers had not one, the boats requiring most urgent assistance were towed across to the Newmarket anchored near. Here the wounded—most of them—received further treatment.
There was no time for sentiment. The boats were all urgently required to take more men ashore; three of them, those with the most dead and wounded, were told off to take on board the wounded from the others; bluejackets were told off to take the places of those of the crews who had been killed and wounded; and then the beach parties, Bubbles, the Pink Rat, and the Lamp-post, tumbled down into them. Bullets began flying round them and the Newmarket, but no one was hit. "Shove off!" was shouted; "land them under the rocks to the left of the beach;" and the Sub and the Orphan towed them inshore.
There was much less rifle-firing now, but many bullets came over and splashed round the picket-boat. The mist and smoke had cleared away, and the Swiftsure was still firing very rapidly at the Turks' trenches on the edge of the cliff, to the right of the beach, the Achates assisting with her small guns. Their shells burst along it one after the other, all along the dark line which marked the trenches, and scarcely a Turk dare expose himself to fire down at the beach.
The Sub, as he approached, saw through his glasses two Turks close together, leaning over and pointing their rifles down at the beach, and saw spurts of sand fly up where the bullets struck among a line of men lying prone, half in and half out of the water, in front of lines of barbed wire. One of the shells from the Achates burst close to them, and when the smoke had drifted away the two Turks were still there—motionless—in exactly the same attitude, but their rifles were sliding down the rocks. He cast off the boats with the beach parties, and waved to them as they pulled past him inshore. The three snotties crowded in the stern, and looking up at the cliffs with eyes wide open, were, however, too excited to take any notice of the Orphan's shout of "Good luck, you chaps!"
Back he went to the Newmarket, meeting steamboats towing in boats packed with more troops. Another trip ashore with sappers and "details", and then he towed those three boats with the wounded to the Achates, where they were taken on board.
It was exactly half-past seven when he got alongside her, busy firing her small guns in the port battery, and her for'ard 9.2 turret-gun.
The Captain wanted to see the Sub, so he climbed up and went for'ard to the bridge.
The Orphan, left to himself, was sent off to a transport to tow more soldiers ashore; and on the way to her he saw, over against the Asiatic shore and the fort of Kum Kali, the French fleet, the Jeanne d'Arc with her six quaint, squat funnels, and the Russian Askold with her five thin, tall ones, and two battleships, all firing very rapidly.