By such devoted efforts, a reserve lighter was brought into position, and the pontoon again completed. A third company of the Munster Fusiliers dashed along it, with similar heroism, towards the shore, suffering terrible loss from accurate and low-firing shrapnel, now added to the other missiles of death. The survivors joined the survivors under shelter of the low bank of sand. There was a brief pause in the attempt to land, but when it began again, the pontoon was again carried adrift by the current, bearing upon it a number of Hampshire men, together with Brigadier-General Napier, commanding the 88th Brigade, and his Brigade-Major, Captain Costeker. They lay down flat upon the lighters, but nearly all were killed as they lay, including these two officers of distinguished military name. Connection with the shore was thus severed. Nearly all the boats in the tows had been destroyed, and some were idly drifting, manned only by the dead. The dead lay upon the lighters, and below the water, and awash upon the edge of the beach. The ripple of the tormented sea broke red against the sand. One of the tows had taken half a company of the Dublin Fusiliers to a point called the “Camber Beach,” just north-east of the Seddel Bahr castle. Perhaps they were intended to threaten the enemy’s position from his left flank by creeping round the castle and attacking the village streets. This they proceeded to do, and, as the Turks had not entrenched this position, the Irishmen with great skill crawled from cover to cover till they reached the village windmills and the entrance to the houses. There they were overwhelmed by the crowd of snipers. Many were killed, some cut off, only twenty-five returned. The wounded had to be left. One who afterwards saw the dead in a room said the bodies were charred, and the base of a 6-in. shell lay there. Probably hence arose reports of mutilation.[87] [Sidenote: THE NIGHT ON V BEACH]