"How very disappointing!" said the Lamp-post one day. "Just fancy having brought along those bombs, to drop 'em harmlessly, and then have to fly back, all that way, without having done any damage."
He was quite serious about it, and, as a matter of fact, one could not but feel sorry for the poor chap, up there in his Taube, who, having expended all his four bombs uselessly, found he had to fly back some sixty miles to wind'ard, before he could go and "turn in" and try to forget about it.
Then, one day, they heard that their old friend the torpedo-boat, down at Smyrna, had come out to sea and fired three torpedoes at a crowded transport without hitting her; and by nightfall came the news that she had been chased, driven ashore, and destroyed by gun-fire. That was very good "business".
Next came the order that steel plates were to be built round the steering-wheels of the steam pinnace and the picket-boat, to protect the midshipmen and coxswains from rifle-fire. Almost at the same time the Orphan and the Hun (who was in charge of the steam pinnace) had been ordered to provide themselves with khaki, and told that their boats would be required to tow the soldiers to the beaches, on the day of the grand attack.
It was a great moment for both of them; and what a mess they made of their hands and clothes with Condy's fluid, and what prize burglars they looked when at last they showed themselves arrayed for war!
Every ship had to supply one or more steamboats, and each ship devised its own rifle protection. The _Achates'_ boats had a steel plate about five feet high bolted to the deck, in front of their steering-wheels, with a narrow, horizontal slit just below the upper edge, so that when those behind it stooped down under cover they could steer through this. The ends of the plates curved back a couple of feet, so as to give side protection.
Some ships built regular steel boxes with "all round" protection, others carried the side plates so far aft that they protected men standing in the stern-sheets; and the snotties in the boats with the least protection made great fun of those who had more. Probably, among the hundred thousand men in that harbour, during the days prior to the landing, the twenty or thirty snotties in charge of these steamboats were the most supremely happy of all.