The green slopes were brown with a maze and network of trenches, rifle-pits, and shell craters; and beyond these the Lancashire Fusiliers still advanced towards the lighthouse--pressing forward by rushes of little groups; men running a few yards, throwing themselves down among the bushes, and firing; springing up and advancing again. When Bubbles saw a man fall, he could not know whether he was hit--so naturally did he fall--unless the line of scattered khaki figures went on and left him lying there. The _Swiftsure's_ shells screeching over the trench in which Bubbles knelt, burst continually just in front of them. Firing was very brisk at this time, both on the ridge to his left and also from the sky-line near the lighthouse, and the crackling of musketry and the angry swish of bullets over the trench were almost continuous--minor noises among the deep, thundering bellow of the ships' guns and the rush of their shells. The Pink Rat came along the trench, stooping well down.
"What's going on? What are we supposed to be doing?" Bubbles asked as he stopped for a moment.
"Doing support to the firing-line," he squeaked, and hurried along with a message for the "Ansons".
Left to himself again, Bubbles looked out across the blue waters of the Straits to the Asiatic shore and its high mountains fading away in the distance. The reddish ridge showing on the Asiatic shore was Kum Kali fort, and under it the French fleet was hammering away at the shore, the most conspicuous ships being the _Jeanne d'Arc_, with her six funnels, and the curiously shaped _Henri IV_. Not far from them was the lighter grey of the Russian _Askold_ and her five tall, thin funnels, lighted by continuous flashes from her guns--the "Packet of Woodbines" the sailors called her. Farther away lay the big Messageries Maritimes transports, the huge _La Provence_, and rows of boats being towed inshore. Destroyers and French torpedo-boats dashed about; the whole surface of the sea was a mass of ships--one solitary white-painted hospital ship among them; and away beyond the lighthouse on Cape Helles--far up the Straits--Bubbles could hear the heavy guns of the _Lord Nelson_ and _Agamemnon_, and the 6-inch salvoes of the _Queen Elizabeth_. He could not see these ships because the cliffs hid them from sight.