“No skylarking and silence all!” said the infant “vet.” The men were pretty well on edge by this time. And, as the world generally knows, the Australian does not put much store in military discipline. But these men obeyed the little boy on the instant--all save one who though as quick as the others in resuming his proper place in the boat, disobeyed sufficiently to remark in a whisper, good-natured and admiring: “Who’d ’a’ thought we had admirals so blarsted young!” And by this time we were within two hundred yards of the shore. A man near me voiced the impression we all were getting. “Shouldn’t wonder,” he said, “if we’re to surprise them after all.” Then suddenly out of that weird darkness, that curious silence that had been disturbed only by the rapid, half-choked panting of the steam tugs, the surge of the water against the sides of the barges, the whispers, the occasional smothered laughs--all soft sounds--there came hell--veritable hell if ever hell comes to men on earth! And it came with a tremendous roar! CHAPTER IV THE GHASTLY LANDING There was a swift, sharp lightening of the sky back of the gaunt, black cliffs and our boats seemed thrown out of the water, thrown up into the air by the rocking thunder of the heavy guns of the Turkish batteries behind those cliffs. The water that had been so smooth an instant before, that was, in fact, so treacherously smooth, as had been the silence, was stabbed and chopped and sent into wild spume by a great rain of shells. Blinding blasts flared as suddenly as here and there a boat with its living load was struck and shattered. Screams and hoarse, impulsive cries began to mingle with the explosions. Then the cliffs and the sand dunes spat deadly fire at us. In the darkness I could not, of course, see it all. But it would seem from what afterward I was able to learn that not one of the pilots of the steam tugs thought of turning back. I could not see it all and had no time to think of much other than myself and my platoon, a very few seconds after the bombardment from the big guns of the forts began dropping their big shells and the hail of the machine guns sang among us. Surprise? They had our range as surely as if we stood ten feet away from them. The water was cluttered with the accurate assemblage of their shots. Our battleships had begun an angry, heavy retort but whether their great guns were finding the marks, of course, we couldn’t know. It would have been a mighty comfort to us then to feel that these shots were smashing the Turks.