vagely through
the funnel. The motion of the ship was different now; the front part
seemed almost still, but the behind part rose and fell jerkily.

I busied myself with the men, bullying them into silence, for I
judged it most important to be able to hear the first order that
Ranjoor Singh might give; but he gave none just yet, although I
heard a lot of talking on the bridge.

"Is this Gallipoli?" the men kept asking me in whispers.

"If it were," said I, "we should have been blown to little pieces by
the guns of both sides before now!" If I had been offered all the
world for a reward I could not have guessed our whereabouts, nor
what we were likely to do next, but I was very sure we had not
reached Gallipoli.

Presently the Turkish seamen began lowering the boats. There were
but four boats, and they made clumsy work of it, but at last all
four boats were in the water; and then Ranjoor Singh began at last
to give his orders, in a voice and with an air that brought
reassurance. No man could command, as he did who had the least
little doubt in his heart of eventual success. There is even more
conviction in a true man's voice than in his eye.

He ordered us overside eight at a time, and me in the first boat
with the first eight.

"Fall them in along the first flat place you find on shore, and wait
there for me!" said he. And I said, "Ha, sahib!" wondering as I
swung myself down a swaying rope whether my feet could ever find the
boat. But the sailors pulled the rope's lower end, and I found
myself in a moment wedged into a space into which not one more man
could have been crowded.

The waves broke over us, and there was a very evil surf, but the
distance to the shore was short and the sailors proved skilful. We
landed safely on a gravelly beach, not so very much wetter than we
had been, except for our legs (for we waded the last few yards), and
I hunted at once for a piece of level ground. Just thereabouts it
was all nearly level, so I fell my eight men in within twenty yards
of the surf, and waited. I felt tempted to throw out pickets yet
afraid not to obey implicitly. Ranjoor Singh given no order about
pickets.

I judge it took more than an hour, and it may have been two hours,
to bring all the men and the twenty boxes of cartridges ashore. At
last in three boats came the captain of the ship, and the mate, and
the engineer, and nearly all the crew. Then I grew suddenly afraid
and hot sweat burst out all over