I hopped through the nearest hole in the
"Clyde". It was now 4 o'clock, and I shivered with cold. I had been
soaked over the head, and lying four hours in the open boat in a cold
night it was impossible to keep warm. A big, black cloud had floated
up over the moon, and we had a fairly sharp but short shower of rain.
By this time the moon was nearing the horizon, and it was when another
cloud came over her face that I succeeded in reaching the ship.

I found they had had a fairly trying time here too, although the
ship's plates were thick enough to resist bullets. The noise of
100,000 bullets showering on the sides of the "Clyde" had caused a
deafening din, and many had the wind up badly, not knowing what was
going on outside.

The behaviour of the "River Clyde" had been a great puzzle to the
Turks. She was not long aground when the guns on Kum Kale, across the
Dardanelles, opened on us, and this fire was kept up the whole day--on
us and us only as far as I could make out. It took them some time to
get our range, and for a considerable time we were not hit, all the
shells being shorts or overs. At last they got us, the first shell
that hit going through our hold at an angle of 45 degrees, coming
through the deck over our heads, and going out at the junction of the
floor and side wall. In its course it struck a man on the head, this
being splashed all through the hold. Another man squatting on the
floor was hit about the middle of both thighs, one leg being
completely severed, while the other hung by a tiny shred of skin only.
He fell back with a howl with both stumps in the air.

In five minutes a second shell entered our hold, wounding two or three
where we were, mostly by the buckling of the floor plates, then
passing down below to the lowest hold where many men were sheltering
under the water line. Here six or seven were laid out.

After this we had many narrow escapes, but I believe only two other
shells actually struck the ship that day. By good luck none exploded
in their passage through, otherwise the casualty list would have been
very heavy. Many had been hit and killed on deck by machine-gun
bullets, and many bullets had found their way through the small
openings cut for working the twelve machine-guns that were placed
there.

(I have the kind permission of the author, a scholarly and
much-respected member of our Corps, to insert the following poem which
appeared in "The British Weekly" and one of the Abe