A most brilliant spectacle this firing made. Many young officers in the trenches, on both sides, kindly contributed hundreds of pretty star shells; the Turks burst a very large number of shrapnel most picturesquely; the destroyer _Grampus_, out beyond the bay, lighted up the ridge near the Bench Mark with her search-light; the army field-guns did what they could to aid the display, and the _Swiftsure_ obliged with four rounds of 7.5-inch shrapnel to give _éclat_ to the occasion.
From a pyrotechnic point of view the scene from the quarter-deck of the _Achates_ could not have been improved, nor could the orchestra of rifles, field-guns, maxims, and trench bombs.
But the attack evidently lacked backbone. Rifle-firing raged up and down the lines, but it never reached the pitch of inarticulate firing and determination which marked those night attacks at Helles. As a matter of fact, the Turks never left their trenches; and even before the laconic signal came from shore: "Situation well in hand", that well-known military expert, the China Doll, not seeing in the dark that Captain Macfarlane happened to be standing next to him, lisped out: "That's nothing; it's nothing like those other shows at "W" beach; they don't mean anything; I'm going down to finish dinner." Captain Macfarlane thanked him very gravely: "I am much obliged to you, Mr. Stokes" (which perhaps you remember was the China Doll's name), "you have relieved my anxieties immensely." The wretched China Doll disappeared down the hatchway like a shot rabbit.
Now there was a cocksure young subaltern of the New Army at Suvla to whom the whole art of warfare had become an open book. He claimed relationship with the Lamp-post, and, on the strength of that, came off at times to get a decent meal and a bath. There was also a certain 5.9-inch gun hidden away somewhere near Anafarta which enjoyed throwing high-explosive shells into the "so-called" "Rest Camp", and this young officer had suffered frequent annoyance from them. He became a little peevish, and made sarcastic remarks about naval gunnery not much to the liking of the Honourable Mess, especially one day when the _Swiftsure_ had nearly broken her Gunnery-Lieutenant's susceptible heart by not knocking out this particular gun after some fifteen rounds. They explained gently to him that the gun could not be seen from the ships, and that, at five and a half miles, firing at "where-it-was-thought-to-be" did not give much chance of hitting it.