As he lay, undecided as to whether or no he should get up and see what was happening, the intensity of the firing grew, until it reached such a pitch of frenzy that he felt certain that this must be the prelude to hand-to-hand fighting. He could not help but feel nervous. He was not blessed with a dull imagination, and he could not prevent himself picturing what was happening beyond the ridge, and what _would_ happen if the Turks drove in our thin lines and forced them back to the sea below. He worked himself into such a state of nerves that at last, when the French "75's" broke into rapid firing--one continuous screech--he could stand it no longer, pulled on his boots, and went outside the marquee. Out over the Straits the sea was all a glitter of transports' lights as usual, and the row of "flares" along the beach lighted up the beach parties unloading boats, and the working parties wearily carrying stores towards the two flares which marked the depots on the slopes of the gully--all went on just as usual. But horse teams with their limbers were coming down from the ridge, past him, towards the ammunition depots, at the bottom of the gully--coming down at an unaccustomed speed; and he heard their drivers shouting impatiently for their limbers to be filled.
He ran to one of these, who had swung round his limber and was now trying to calm the big horse he was sitting--the "near leader" of the team.
"They've broken through the 86th," the man told him; "came on without firing a shot--the beggars!" But the midshipman could get nothing more out of him.
"I don't know nothing more. Curse this darned horse! Keep still, can't you? My job's to get more of the stuff up to the guns. I don't know nothink. Chuck it, yer blighted fools! Ain't yer been long enough together? Cawn't yer smell who you've got next yer?"
The two horses were nosing each other, one trying to bite, and both fretting.
"They ain't worked together afore," he said, as the Lamp-post, who loved horses, separated their heads and rubbed their noses soothingly. "I 'ad to get a fresh 'off leader' this morning; the other was killed just t'other side of that 'ere ridge--shrapnel summat cruel there, all day--cawn't move a team but bang bursts a shrapnel--and they've been bursting shrapnel now, all along the road we've just come and have to go back by--curse them! This darned fool brute--chuck it, you blighter!"--as the horse he was sitting slyly bit the neck of the new "off leader", who sidled and trembled--"'e cawn't abide a stranger. 'Ere, stop that kicking! 'Old yer 'eads up, cawn't yer?"