The China Doll would also recount days of unaccustomed toil, when he was attached to one of the Naval Transport Officers as Clerk, and had to copy out sailing orders and check lists of arrivals and sailings of ships; work which frequently interfered with his great delight of climbing to the main-top, and looking through the range-finder there (against all orders, it may be said) at the shells bursting on the slopes of Achi Baba and among the windmills and houses of the village of Krithia. For the first few days he had felt very proud of his new job, carried a big correspondence book about with him, and felt himself as important as those very important young officers, the Admiral's Assistant Clerks; but as the days wore on, it became monotonous and irksome. The Captain whom he thus "assisted" was none too gentle with his mistakes--which were many--and he wished that the old days would return, when he had nothing to do but sit on the office stool in front of a ship's ledger, and kick his feet against the bulkhead until Uncle Podger told him to clear out of it. If only he kicked that bulkhead hard enough and often enough, Uncle Podger would never keep him long. It had been such a pleasant kind of a life, and in those days he had only to run into the gun-room and make some cheeky remark, to be rolled on the deck and be ragged; but even that was finished; the gun-room was no longer like home nowadays, for the snotties were mostly strangers, who took no notice of him if they were awake; and even if the Orphan, Rawlins, or the Hun happened to be there, they were much too tired to skylark. With the Pimple, who was more often available, he did not like skylarking, for the Pimple generally hurt him--intentionally.
So, what with one thing and another, the China Doll was not entirely happy whilst he copied out these "silly" orders, and guns thudded from the ships all round him--guns whose shells he could not always run up on deck to see burst.
There was so much to see, and it was so irritating to come out all this way to the Dardanelles, and then to find that he had to stick in a stupid office just when some of the most exciting things were going on. However, he could always make sure of watching a duel between the howitzers on the Asiatic shore--somewhere behind Kum Kali fort--and the ship told off to keep them quiet--the _Prince George_ or the _Albion_, sometimes the _Agamemnon_. At almost any hour of the day he went on deck, he could make certain of soon seeing a splash leap up, close to whichever ship was on duty, and then see her fire her 12-inch guns, and watch till the brownish-red or black clouds flew up behind Kum Kali ridge as the shells burst, hoping intensely that bits of "Asiatic Annie" were flying up in it, and wondering what the spotting aeroplane, circling high above in the blue sky like a hawk, had seen and signalled.