have to be picked up, even if, as happened in one case, there are twenty of them and one of them is a German bank manager taking a quantity of money to the Chanak Bank.  Hospital ships are carefully looked over as they come and go, and are left to their own devices; but they are rather a nuisance because they force E14 and others to dive for them when engaged in stalking warrantable game.  There were a good many hospital ships, and as far as we can make out they all played fair.  E11 boarded one and “reported everything satisfactory.”

STRANGE MESSMATES

A layman cannot tell from the reports which of the duties demanded the most work—­whether the continuous clearing out of transports, dhows, and sailing ships, generally found close to the well-gunned and attentive beach, or the equally continuous attacks on armed vessels of every kind.  Whatever else might be going on, there was always the problem how to arrange for the crews of sunk ships.  If a dhow has no small boats, and you cannot find one handy, you have to take the crew aboard, where they are horribly in the way, and add to the oppressiveness of the atmosphere—­like “the nine people, including two very old men,” whom E14 made honorary members of her mess for several hours till she could put them ashore after dark.  Oddly enough she “could not get anything out of them.”  Imagine nine bewildered Moslems suddenly decanted into the reeking clamorous bowels of a fabric obviously built by Shaitan himself, and surrounded by—­but our people are people of the Book and not dog-eating Kaffirs, and I will wager a great deal that that little company went ashore in better heart and stomach than when they were passed down the conning-tower hatch.

Then there were queer amphibious battles with troops who had to be shelled as they marched towards Gallipoli along the coast roads.  E14 went out with E11 on this job, early one morning, each boat taking her chosen section of landscape.  Thrice E14 rose to fire, thinking she saw the dust of feet, but “each time it turned out to be bullocks.”  When the shelling was ended “I think the troops marching along that road must have been delayed and a good many killed.”  The Turks got up a field-gun in the course of the afternoon—­your true believer never hurries—­which out-ranged both boats, and they left accordingly.

The next day she changed billets with E11, who had the luck to pick up and put down a battleship close to Gallipoli.  It turned out to be the Barbarossa.  Meantime E14 got a 5000-ton supply ship, and later had to burn a sailing ship loaded with 200 bales of leaf and cut tobacco—­Turkish tobacco!  Small wonder that E11 “came alongside that afternoon and remained for an hour”—­probably making cigarettes.

REFITTING UNDER DIFFICULTIES