Behind them lay big transports, and dozens of boats loaded with dark-coated infantry on their way ashore.
He reached the transport, got his orders, and steamed back to "W" beach with a long string of crowded boats behind him.
It was then, whilst he waited for them to be emptied, that he had the first clear view of "W" beach and the broad gully leading up to the green ridge above it.
No bullets—or only very few—came near him, and he could look on undisturbed. On the right, where the barbed wire was thickest, a row of dead Lancashire Fusiliers lay as if they had all been swept by the same torrent of maxim bullets. He knew that they were dead, because other men, springing into the water and wading ashore, stepped over them, looked down at them, and left them.
Higher up the beach, men were hanging on the barbed wire itself. At first he thought it was only clothes hanging there; then he saw that they had been men. Fresh troops were scaling the cliffs; soldiers advanced up the green slope above, singly and in little groups. Away to the left, under the rocks, more men clustered; and as some of them limped along to the boats, some with bandages, some without, he knew that these were wounded waiting to be dressed. They crowded into the boats he had just brought ashore, and many were carried down—among these being a wounded Brigadier shot through the leg. He saw nothing of Bubbles, the Pink Rat, or the tall, lanky Lamp-post; but he did feel certain that the landing had been made good.
Trawlers, loaded with stores, approached as close inshore as they could get; boats of every description were flocking in, and already the sappers were lashing pontoons together on the left, under the rocks, to make a temporary pier.
Then the boats he had towed in came out to him, and he towed them and their wounded back to the Achates. For the remainder of that morning the Orphan was employed taking Staff Officers backwards and forwards between the ship and "W" beach.
The beach parties had laid down six buoys at about ten yards apart and some fifty yards from the beach, and had led ropes from these to the same number of stakes driven into the beach opposite to them. The intervals between these ropes made waterways into which the big lighters could haul themselves ashore without colliding with each other. But there was a certain amount of jostling just beyond the buoys, and the Orphan had his work cut out, whenever he went near the beach, to prevent his boat being damaged by the crowds of steamboats "mothering" the big lighters into position. She had a big rope fender projecting across her bows, another lashed across her stern, and two lengths of six-inch "grass" hawser secured all round her side to protect her from bumps; but, in spite of these, she soon had one corner of her stern crushed, and her steering gear was jammed. The Orphan managed to take her back to the Achates safely, and, very sad about it, reported the damage to the Commander.
The Commander, at his wits' end for boats, was very angry.
"I'll take you out of her, Mr. Orpen, if you can't manage her," he said angrily, but then sent him away to get his boat coaled and watered whilst the repairs were being made. "You and your crew can come in-board and get some food," he called after the miserable Orphan.