"Bad! My God! it was awful. You see those pontoons or lighters—wait for a flash from the field-guns. Ah! now you see them! By half-past eight this morning they were actually heaped with our men—dead and wounded. If a wounded man moved a finger, they filled him with bullets. Not one man out of three got ashore. They're still lying on them; thank God, the night hides them! Keep your eyes skinned; I'm certain there's something going on down there," he added sharply.
A messenger came from the bridge, climbing the fo'c'sle ladder, and calling out: "The officer! Where's the machine-guns officer?"
"Here I am."
"The Colonel thinks the Turks are going to try and rush the pontoons. He wants you to 'stand by' with your maxims."
"All right; let 'em try," and he calmly filled his pipe, struck a match, the flare of which seemed to the excited Orphan to illuminate the whole fo'c'sle, and proceeded very slowly to light it; whilst the Orphan hardly knew whether he was standing on his head or his heels for excitement.
"Tell those two guns in the 'boxes' to train on the shore, near the pontoons, and 'stand by' to fire," the Sub-lieutenant said, casually giving the order, and sucking at his pipe as though he was thoroughly enjoying it.
"I'm certain there are some chaps down there, but we've landed nearly twelve hundred more since dark, and those may be some of them. I'm hanged if I know!"
"Ah, look!" he said quietly, as a glare from the field-guns showed, unmistakably, a figure approaching the end of the pontoons. "What kind of a cap has he? The Turks wear a shapeless thing, almost like one of our Balaclava helmets."
The Orphan, hugely excited, had caught a glimpse of him, but could not see the shape of his cap. He was scrambling from one pontoon to the next, moving about and then disappearing in a particularly dark shadow. It struck him that the man seemed to be putting his feet down very cautiously, almost as if he were looking for something and was afraid of treading on it.
"He has to move carefully, there are so many dead lying there," his friend explained.