At last they had all been struck down below, and the Orphan was listening to a very humorous dissertation from his loquacious friend, on the merits of different kinds of rifles (they were both standing at the foot of the ladder, and it was broad daylight), when suddenly there was a roaring noise, followed immediately afterwards by a most terrific explosion, which made them both quail, and made the _River Clyde_ tremble as though a mine had exploded under her bows. The youthful orderlies handing the stretchers down into the launch dashed for cover, their nerves much "rattled"; but the Orphan and his friend, recovering themselves, jumped across to the gangway port to see what had happened. As they did so, the _Albion_--perhaps a thousand yards away--fired one of the 12-inch guns in her fore turret, and another terrific thunder-clap crashed out as a lyddite shell burst against one of the big bastions of the castle. When the smoke cleared away, they saw that the top half of it had been almost destroyed.
The R.N.D. Sub-lieutenant grinned. "'Finished' that battery of maxims they had up there all day yesterday; we couldn't turn them out." The _Albion_ continued to fire her big shells, and the bursting of the high explosive against the solid masonry of the castle, not more than 250 yards from the _River Clyde_, made the most overwhelming and overpowering noise inside the poor old ship. Some of those youthful orderlies were very nerve-shaken indeed.
A steamboat came alongside soon afterwards, and Dr. O'Neill, singing out that he would borrow her to tow away the wounded, went up on deck.
The Orphan, very anxious to have another look round, followed him to the superstructure deck, and there he left him talking to a white-haired naval Captain in khaki--the Beach-master of "V" beach--and a big, burly, red-faced man, in very much stained khaki, with Commander's shoulder-straps. This was Commander Unwin, who had won the Victoria Cross the day before.
The midshipman went for'ard to where some army officers and signalmen were standing watching the shore. From there he saw the foc's'le, the maxims, and the sand-bags behind which he had crouched. He could not see the lighters and pontoons because they were hidden by the fo'c'sle, but right in front of him was the great mediæval castle of Sedd-el-Bahr, with its bastion towers--one of which he had just seen demolished--its curtain-walls, and arched gateway at which he had fired that maxim. Farther to the right, the height of the walls decreased as they jutted out into the Straits; they were much battered about, and, in several places, huge breaches had been blown in them by the ships' guns. Fallen masonry sloped down from these breaches into the sea itself. Scrambling along the rocks below the walls, and wading through the shallow water round the masses of fallen masonry, he saw many of our soldiers. Officers were evidently forming them up below the breaches; men were crawling up these slopes and kneeling down in front of barbed-wire entanglements, which he could plainly see across the top of one breach; somewhere close by a maxim spluttered, and a few single shots--whether English or Turkish he did not know--rang out. The _Albion's_ shells were now bursting some way in rear of these breaches.