Читать книгу By-ways on Service: Notes from an Australian Journal онлайн

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Our moving-in orders came at three on an afternoon. This was the heart-shaking move; for we were to sail up, beyond the mouth, to an anchorage off the Anzac position. We were to see in detail everything that we had, for the last three days, seen as an indistinct whole. We were to pass immediately behind the firing-line, to test the speculations we had been making day and night upon what was in progress, upon the geography of the fighting zone, upon the operations within the mouth. Every yard was a step farther in our voyage of discovery.

The demolitions became plain. The ports on the water's edge had toppled over "in a confused welter of ruin." Such wall as still stood gaped with ghastly vents. These had been the first to come under fire, and the cruisers had done their work with a thoroughness that agreed well with the traditional deliberation of the British Navy. And thorough work was in progress.

Far up the straits' entrance lay the black lines of gunboats. We moved up the coast past an ill-starred village: the guns were at her from the open sea. By sundown we had passed from this scene of action to another, at —— Beach, where the Australians had landed. The heights above —— Beach were the scene of an engagement far more fierce than any we had seen below. The Turks were strongly posted in the shrubs of the Crest. Our batteries were hardly advanced beyond the beach, and were getting it hot. Night was coming on. A biting wind was blowing off the land, bringing down a bitter rain from the hills of the interior. It was almost too cold to stand in our bows and watch: what for those poor devils juggling shell at the batteries and falling under the rain of fire? After dark there was an hour's lull. At nine o'clock began a two hours' engagement hot enough to make any fighter on shore oblivious of the temperature. Towards midnight the firing ceased and the rain and the wind abated.