"He's going back now," the Orphan whispered.
"That's rummy; so he is! and there are a lot more other chaps—a whole mass of them—coming towards him."
As he spoke a tremendous fusillade broke out on shore, above where the dark line of pontoons ended and these dark figures were moving, and the air over their heads seemed to be filled with whistling bullets. Bullets rattled up against the bows of the ship and smacked into the sand-bags, one or two pinged against the plates in front of the other two maxims; rifles began firing from the other side of the ship, from the lower sea walls. An answering crackle of musketry broke out along the shore to the left; and as the Orphan ducked his head below the sand-bags, his friend the officer, not waiting for any further orders, opened fire with all three maxims, and two more, down on the port side of the fo'c'sle well deck, joined in as well.
It was the most furious firing the Orphan had heard since he came aboard the River Clyde. He pushed his hand and arm between the sand-bags, and tried to look through the gap. Rifles began firing below him, close to him, and towards him; the men firing them must be on the pontoons themselves. The Sub-lieutenant saw them; jumped to the gun, yelling, "Depress! depress! fire on the last two pontoons." A sand-bag was pulled away to allow the maxim to depress, and it spurted fire and bullets; left off to correct the depression, and started again. The Orphan thought he heard shrieks (afterwards he swore he did); those rifles on the pontoons dropped from twenty or more to three—then to one—then to none; but the firing behind, up above the bank, went on more furiously than ever, and the bigger flashes of the English rifles, along the beach to the left, seemed to be blazing all the time. Two maxims among them made spouts of flame quite three feet long.
The din was so terrific that the Orphan could only just hear what his friend yelled in his ears: "Pretty to watch, sonny; but you'd better scoot back aft—they may come on again, and that doctor of yours may want you. Keep your head down, well down, as you go."
The Orphan, who had entirely forgotten Dr. O'Neill, and would have given his soul to stay and see the end of this, found himself stumbling down the ladder from. the fo'c'sle, up again and along the superstructure, down and along the line of stretchers; bumped into the donkeys at the top of the hatch, crawled over the coaming, and very gently went down the ladder, hoping that Dr. O'Neill had not missed him and would not see him coming back.
He need not have bothered himself about that. There was a great deal of confusion down there; orders were being yelled out, men were gathering at each side of the gangway port, rifle-butts were banging on the deck, and bayonets snapping on the muzzles. He was pushed out of the way, and found himself next to Dr. O'Neill and the chief sick-berth steward. He expected to get a "wigging", but Dr. O'Neill only snarled: "They've started a silly yarn that the Turks are trying to board along the platforms—all this silly, stupid fuss—it's confounded nonsense. You've slept through the last two hours, you lucky little devil!"
The Orphan was just going to say that it wasn't nonsense, that he had seen the Turks trying to get across the pontoons to the platform, but he thought it wiser to keep quiet. He asked the chief sick-berth steward where Dr. Gordon was.
"Gone back, sir, an hour ago; a steamboat came along, and the Fleet-Surgeon sent him back to the ship. I wish he'd sent me. I'd be just as happy there, sir."
That snotty—Piggy Carter—was still sitting with his back to the stanchion, at the foot of the ladder, his chin on his chest, and snoring. The Orphan thinking that he would love to know that the Turks were trying to board through the gangway port (about twenty feet away from him), shook him till he woke, asking: "What's the matter?"