Frank Forester: A Story of the Dardanelles

by Herbert Strang

  CHAPTER XV

  OUT OF ACTION

  Frank's first proceeding when he awoke next morning was to startmunching one of his loaves; his next, to read the despatch which chancehad thrust upon him. It was addressed to the Anatolian captain. Abattery of heavy guns was to be emplaced on Sari Bair. The convoy,coming by way of Kumkeni and Boghali, might be expected at Kojadere onthe following morning. The captain was to abandon for the time thepursuit of the Englishman and to place himself at the disposition of theofficer commanding the battery, to assist in transporting the guns upthe hill.

  Frank did not know Kojadere by name, but he knew Boghali, andconjectured that Kojadere must be the village at the south-east foot ofthe hill. It was visible from a spur about half a mile from hishiding-place. A rough path left the main track between Boghali andKojadere at about the same distance from the latter place, and joined asimilar path running direct from Kojadere up the hill. These factsFrank had learnt in the course of his wanderings, and he determined,simply from motives of curiosity, to make his way to a spot where hecould see a sight new to him, the placing of a battery of guns. Abdihad gone, no doubt, to Chanak; the others would not for the presentconcern themselves with their elusive quarry; for he assumed that thecontents of the despatch were known to the carrier; so it was with aneasy mind that he betook himself to the elevated spot from which hecould view the Boghali road.

  It was chilly in the morning air. The valleys and the lower ground wereblanketed in mist. The heights were clear, and Frank smiled as he sawin his mind's eye the scene of his night's adventure, invisible to hisbodily eye, over the brow of the hill.

  A light breeze was sweeping up through the hills from the sea, causingthe mist to gyrate in swirling eddies, and here and there cutting a paththrough it. Gradually more and more of the Boghali road was exposed tohis view. There was nothing moving upon it. He looked up in thedirection of Biyuk Anafarta, towards the quarter in which the Anatoliansshould presently appear, in pursuance of their instructions. There wasno sign of them yet; it was possible that the contents of the despatchwere unknown to them after all.

  After a time he caught sight of figures beyond Boghali where the roadwound round a low hill to the north of that place. Ere long he was ableto recognise the artillery train--long teams, whether of horses, oxen,or mules he could not tell even through his field-glasses, draggingheavy guns and ammunition wagons. The escort numbered, at a guess, somethree hundred men. The train passed through Boghali, and took theright-hand road towards Sari Bair. A bridge spanned a stream fed by anumber of rivulets rising on the eastern slope of the hill. Here thetrain came to a halt. There was a long delay; probably the bridge wasnot constructed for heavy traffic. Then one of the guns appeared on thewestern side; the others slowly followed.

  By this time Frank felt pretty sure that the Anatolians were ignorant ofthe orders given in the despatch, otherwise they should long ago havereached Boghali by the direct road from Biyuk Anafarta. If they hadresumed their hunt for him, it behoved him to be cautious. From thetroops below he had little to fear. They were not looking for him, andin all likelihood were unaware of his existence. Keeping a carefullook-out above, therefore, he stole down under cover of the scrub, whichwas very dense on this side of the hill, to take a nearer view of thework of the artillerymen.

  Several mounted officers had pushed ahead to survey the ground andchoose the easiest route for the guns. Some had taken the first trackon the right of the road, others were riding quickly forward to Kojadereto examine the track from there. The two parties met at the junction,and from subsequent operations it appeared that the longer but easiergradient from Kojadere had been decided upon. Up this track, then, theofficers despatched strong working parties, to clear away obstacles, andcut down the scrub which here and there encroached at the sides. Twoofficers, mounted on mules, slowly rode up to the summit, to select anemplacement for their battery.

  Frank watched all this from a sheltered spot at some distance from thetrack. These troops were not looking for him, it was true; but in theircourse they must work round his position, and he was careful not toexpose himself.

  The way having been prepared, the men in charge of the first gun whippedup their team, which hauled the heavy weapon about a third of thedistance up the track. Then there was a check. The slope was veryirregular. For some yards its angle was low; then it would suddenlymake a sharp rise. It was at one of these abrupt acclivities that thegun had now arrived. The ascent seemed an impossible one, and thetrack, with on one side the rocky hill and on the other a steep incline,hazardous in the extreme. The team attached to the second gun wasunhitched and brought up to assist the first. Urged by vociferousshouts and much cracking of whips, the united teams, straining andhauling, managed to draw the gun up a few feet at a time, large blocksof wood being placed behind the wheels at each stoppage to prevent itfrom slipping back.

  Frank looked on at all this with interest, and a certain sympathy forman and beast, which was increased when one of the officers, a German,rode down the hill and vented his irritation at the delays in foul abuseand violent threats. "They are working jolly hard," was his inwardprotest. The gun moved on again, and a turn in the track hid it fromhis view. He looked around to make sure that he was in no danger ofbeing seen from the rear, then crept up through the scrub to reach aspot where he could again follow the operations.

  "I wonder what they are going to all this trouble for?" he thought."Those guns aren't a match for our naval guns, and in any case they areno good here as a defence of the forts."

  A little way further up the hill he came upon a gully scarcely threefeet wide, much overgrown with bushes. It appeared to lead down towardsthe track, on which, to judge by the renewed shouts of the men and thecessation of the rumbling of the wheels, the gun had again been broughtto a halt. Frank crept down this gully stealthily foot by foot, andpresently discovered the cause of this new check. The gully intersectedthe track and fell down the slope beyond. Though it was now dry, atsome time it had evidently been a watercourse, and the water had scoreda deep channel across the track, an effectual obstacle to heavy traffic.At this moment the men were toiling with pick and spade to fill up thechannel, a task that would clearly occupy some time.

  Frank looked on for a few minutes. Then his eyes strayed down thetrack. The mules were stationary in a long line, quite unattended. Theteam hauling the second gun lower down was out of sight. "Pity I can'tspike the gun," Frank thought, "though to be sure spiking is impossiblein these days. But a slip would send it crashing down the track, or overthe slope. I wish----" And then an idea flashed into his mind. Thegun was hauled, not by leather traces, but by heavy chains. Quicklyraising his field-glasses, he levelled them at the attachments of thechains to the gun-carriage. Each one ended in a massive iron ring,which was looped over a long hook. Now that the gun was halted, and thewheels stopped by blocks of wood, the chains were hanging slack.

  Replacing his glasses, he crept down under cover of the scrub until hecame opposite the gun. All the men were still engaged above. He lookedup, down, around. No one was in sight, except the men working withtheir backs towards him a hundred yards up the hill. Inch by inch hestole nearer to the track; paused a moment to collect himself; thendarted rapidly from cover, lifted the ring from the hook on the sidenearest him, hitched the chain so that it appeared to be in place, andslipped back breathlessly into the scrub. It had taken him no more thana quarter of a minute.

  "Will it work?" he asked himself as he lurked in his hiding-place a fewyards above the track. All depended on whether the drivers examined theattachments before they moved on again. There seemed no reason why theyshould do so; hitherto the drivers had walked at the head of theirteams; but there was a chance that when they came down to lift theblocks of wood one of them might happen to notice that something waswrong.

  He waited in feverish impatience. How slowly the men were working!
What a bully that German officer was! If the trick succeeded, thesepatient long-suffering Turks would have had their labour for nothing:the German would make them pay for it. Well, they must pay for allowingthemselves to be fooled by the Germans.

  At last came the word of command. The drivers hastened to the heads ofthe mules; two men hurried down to lift the blocks of wood when the gunhad started. There were loud shouts and cracking of whips; the mulesstrained at their collars; the heavy gun lurched forward. And thenFrank thrilled with delight. Secured only on one side, the gun skewedround with a jerk. For a brief moment it hung over the edge of theslope. The mules slipped backward; the sudden slackening of the chainsreleased the second ring from its hook; and to the sound of startledyells and frantic invocations of Allah the gun hurtled down the slopeand crashed into a ravine two or three hundred feet below.