"Are our fellows playing the game?" the Orphan asked.
"You don't know Bert Smith, he's in my section. Well, he and I was carrying a wounded Turk in our stretcher, he taking the head, and me going along in front with his feet, and I notices that he starts a-jerking his end up and down pretty violent, so I says to him: 'Here, Bert, what are you a-doing of? you'll hurt the poor blighter!' and he up and says: 'Poor blighter be darned; he's only a blooming Turk!'"
"What did you do?" asked the Orphan, smiling at the man's so very transparent earnestness.
"I just told him that, Turk or no Turk, he was a-fighting for his home and country, and it wasn't for us to say he was doing wrong--us who was trying to drive him out of it--and to go a-hurting of him."
"He carried him proper like after that, but of course, sir, you don't know Bert Smith; he's a fair 'card'."
The Orphan, noticing that he had a blood-stained bandage round his neck, asked him what he had been doing aboard the hospital ship.
"They sent me off," the man said indignantly. "Just had a bit of a clip--went in in front--came out at the back--under the skin--nothing. I stayed aboard there a little, and then, when the doctors were too busy to notice, I skipped into the first boat that would take me ashore, and am off back again. I can do all the doctoring I wants, and they're getting pretty short of chaps like me up there," and he jerked his thumb Krithia way.
During these days the Orphan allowed a good many men to scramble down from the hospital ships into his picket-boat--men slightly wounded, and who wanted to go back to their regiments. Many of these were Australians and New Zealanders, a brigade of whom had been brought round from Anzac, and had suffered extremely heavy losses in a most gallant but unsuccessful endeavour to capture Krithia.
He often had to take his picket-boat into "W" beach when shells were dropping on it or into the water close by; and these were times when he had to pull himself together, so that Jarvis and the crew should not know that he hated it; especially did he dislike the buzzing noise which just gave him sufficient warning to make him wonder where _that_ shell was going to hit. He also had an extremely narrow escape one day when he was taking a General and his Staff officers to "V" beach. As he approached the _River Clyde_ he saw that some big shells were dropping close to her, and just before he reached her, swish--sh--sh came along the noise of one and it flopped into the sea just ahead, fortunately without bursting. It heaved the bows of his boat right clear of the water, and the splash that fell over them fell on the deck, the General, and on his Staff officers. The Orphan's breath came very fast then; but he could not help laughing as he saw Plunky Bill, who'd been standing in the bows with his boat-hook all ready for going alongside the _River Clyde_, turn a complete somersault and disappear, head first, down the little hatch there. It was such a relief to have something to laugh at.