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The "Achates" is Shelled

Next morning, the 6th March—a glorious sunny morning it was—the three ships and the trawlers again moved in towards battered Yeni Kali. The trawlers went ahead to sweep through the mine-field under the protection of the Triumph, whilst the Achates and Swiftsure followed astern.

Breakfast was at seven o'clock—a hurried meal—and everyone bolted down his food in order to get on deck quickly and see the fun.

"Rotten bad form of 'em not to fire at us yesterday," Uncle Podger remarked, emptying half the sugar basin on his porridge. "In all the wars I've been in, we've fired first, then the enemy fired back; we spotted their guns and knocked them out."

"And landed for a picnic afterwards," suggested his neighbour, skilfully bagging the sugar basin.

"Generally," replied the Clerk.

"In the last war I was in," began the China Doll, "we generally asked the enemy to lunch. The Captain said that made them so happy."

"If we're to have breakfast at this silly time," Bubbles chuckled, "I call it a rotten war."

They heard shouts on deck. The half-deck sweeper put his head in to tell them that the Turks were firing, and they all stampeded on deck.

Right ahead, the little trawlers could be seen, in pairs, close in to the old fort and the low-lying land to the right of it. Right on top of the mine-field they were, and spurts of water were splashing up, every other second, among them. Flashes twinkled out from the scrub on the low-lying ground, three, four, five at a time, and the splashes of their shells sprang up, one after the other, between the trawlers.

Everyone held his breath and expected to see a trawler hit, directly.

There was a shout of "The Triumph's started!" A yellowish cloud shot out from her, then another; they shot out all along her broadside, and, right in among the scrub, where the Turkish guns had been firing, burst her 7.5 lyddite shells.

Then splashes began falling close to the Triumph herself—short—short—far over her—right under her stern. "Hit under the fore bridge!" someone shouted. The "Action" bugle blared out in the Achates; officers and men rushed to their stations; and the last thing Uncle Podger and the Lamp-post saw was the trawlers turning round and scuttling back, followed by columns of water leaping up close to them.

Uncle Podger, sedately excited, and the long, thin Lamp-post made their way along the mess deck, pushing through the crowds of men scurrying to and fro; guns' crews squeezing into the casemates and closing the armoured doors behind them; the stoker fire-parties bustling along with their hoses, and the lamp trimmers coming round and lighting the candle lanterns in case the electric light failed.

To get to the "transmitting-room", which was their station, they had to go down the ammunition hoist of "B2" casemate—the for'ard one on the port side of the main deck,—and so many men of the ammunition supply parties had to go down it that there was a squash of men squeezing through the casemate door.

"Early doors, sixpence extra," Uncle Podger grinned, as they waited whilst man after man climbed down the rope-ladder in the hoist. This hoist was simply a steel tube some fifteen feet long, big enough for a broad-shouldered man to crawl through, and the rope ladder dangled down inside it. When the bottom rung of the ladder was reached, there was a jump down of some five feet or so into the "fore cross passage"—a broad space, from side to side across the ship, under the dome of the armoured deck. The magazines were below this fore cross passage, and men standing in them handed up the six-inch cordite charges through open hatches.

Into this space ran the ammunition passages, running aft along each side under the slope of the armoured deck, with the boiler-room bulkheads on the inner sides, and the bulkheads of the lower wing bunkers on the outer. When, as was now the case, the shells in their red canvas bags hung in rows along both these bulkheads, there was precious little room for two people to pass side by side.

The ammunition hoists from all the 6-inch guns, farther aft, opened into these passages, and under each hoist an electric motor and winding drum was placed to run the charges and shells up to the casemate which it "fed". All these spaces and passages were very dimly lighted by electric lights and candle lanterns.

As Uncle Podger and the Lamp-post crawled down the tube and dropped into the "fore cross passage", they were hustled by men dashing out of the ammunition passages, seizing charges and shells from the men standing in the magazine hatches, and dashing back again to their own hoists. These were the "powder-monkeys" of the old days, most of them, now, big bearded men; one, the biggest down there, a man nearly fifty years of age, had been earning five pounds a week, as a diver, before the outbreak of war brought him back to the Navy. And no one was more cheery than he, as he dashed backwards and forwards from his hoist to the magazine, laughing and joking, and wiping the sweat off his face. It was very warm down there, and the smell of sweating men soon made the air heavy.

A bearded ship's corporal came down with the key of the transmitting-room, opened the thick padded wooden door in the bulkhead, and went in. The Fleet-Paymaster and the tall, depressed Fleet-Surgeon followed him down the tube. They scuttled out of the way of the trampling men.

"A nice little place for you to work in, P.M.O.," chuckled the Pay as they wormed themselves into a corner.

"Rats in a trap!" grunted the P.M.O., and drew in his feet and cursed as a seaman trod on them.

The chief sick-berth steward and his assistants had already come down, but vainly looked for a place to stow their surgical dressings. They had to hang them from hooks in the bulkheads.

Uncle Podger and the Lamp-post stood waiting for the Chaplain, the Rev. Horace Gibbons; and when they saw his shoes and scarlet socks dangling from the lower end of the ammunition hoist from "B2" casemate in a helpless, pathetic way, they dashed to his assistance; each seized a foot and guided it to safety on top of a convenient motor-hoist, and as the Padre let go the ladder and jumped feebly, they softened his fall. This was always their first job, for he hated that rope-ladder and that hoist with a deadly hatred, and, most of all, hated falling those last few feet, suddenly dropping, as it were, from heaven, and appearing in an undignified manner among all the men there.

The Lamp-post and Uncle Podger dusted down the little pasty-faced Padre and put his hat on straight.

"Thank you so much! I'm afraid I've broken my pipe in that hoist."

"Hallo, Angel Gabriel!" grinned the Pay, as the three of them passed into the transmitting-room. "Paying a call in the infernal region?"

As they shut the felted door they shut out all the noise.

This transmitting-room was a tiny little place, perhaps fifteen feet long and five wide, with four camp-stools, and rows of telephones and brass indicator boxes with their little red and white figures showing through the slits in them. Voice-pipes, too, everywhere, and in one corner, over a camp-stool—Uncle Podger's camp-stool—projected an enormous brass voice-pipe with a gramophone-shaped end.

Every instrument had its label above it: Conning-tower—After Turret—Starboard 6-inch—Y group—X group—scores of them; and in front of the Padre's camp-stool was a little table, like a school table, with paper lying on it and a pencil chained to it.

"Nothing happened yet, sir," the ship's corporal sang out, as they closed the door and seated themselves on their camp-stools with their backs against the after bulkhead and the door.

Uncle Podger, sitting with his head in his gramophone trumpet, could hear people talking in the conning-tower. "Signal to the Swiftsure to stop engines"—that was Captain Macfarlane's clear, incisive voice; then the Navigator's infectious laugh, "The trawlers are safe, sir; out of range, sir. They've had the fright of their lives, sir."—"Port it is, sir," came the gruff voice of the quartermaster at the wheel. "Steady it is, sir."

He rang up the fore-control top, where the China Doll was perched, and a bell at his side tinkled. "What's going on, China Doll?" he called into his loud-speaking navyphone, giving the mouthpiece a shake.

"Stop that confounded ringing!" it bleated out, in the peculiar nasal tone these navyphones always have. That was the Gunnery-Lieutenant's irritated voice, so Uncle Podger kept silent.

Then he heard, loud and clear through the trumpet mouth: "Transmitting-room! Transmitting-room! Tell the Major and Mr. Meiklejohn" (one of the Lieutenants) "that the port 6-inch will fire first."

"Aye, aye, sir! Port guns will fire first."

He passed on the message to the Lamp-post, and the Lamp-post, who was in charge of the port broadside gun instruments, commenced telephoning to the Major, aft, and Mr. Meiklejohn, up in B1 casemate, above them.

Then more orders came down, rapidly, one after the other; ranges, worked from the foretop, ticked themselves off in the slits of the little brass boxes, were verified, and passed on to the port guns and the turrets.

"Commence with common shell," sounded the trumpet mouth. Uncle Podger repeated it.

"It's showing all right on my dial," the Lamp-post said, a little bothered with so many telephones asking him questions.

"All right, Lampy. Don't lose your wool. Pass it on to the guns."

"What range is showing?" called the trumpet.

"One—two—nine—five—o." "One—two—nine—five—o." "One—two—nine—five—o," the Lamp-post, the Padre, and the ship's corporal told Uncle Podger.

"One—two—nine—five—o," he spoke into his navyphone.

"What range are the guns showing?" asked the trumpet. It was the Gunnery-Lieutenant, anxious to know, at the last moment, whether all the instruments were recording properly.

This meant ringing up each gun, and took time. Presently all the replies were received.

"Y3 shows One—two—nine—o—o, sir," Uncle Podger telephoned. "The others are correct."

"Confound Y3!" he heard the Gunnery-Lieutenant say angrily.

Then the figures in the slits in the brass boxes began to move—the "five" gave way to "o", the "nine" disappeared and "eight" took its place; the range was decreasing. The little labels bearing the types of shell to be used—armour-piercing, common, lyddite—revolved, and came to a standstill with "common" showing.

All these changes down in the transmitting-room repeated themselves in similar instruments at the different guns, but to make doubly sure that they were correctly known there, the order "Common shell" was also passed by telephone. "Tell B1 to stand by to fire," bawled the big trumpet, and the Lamp-post calmly passed on the order.

"Fire!" yelled the trumpet mouth. The Lamp-post pressed the key which rang the fire-gong in B1 casemate. There was a dull thud from above, and B1 had fired.

Then orders came down one after the other; the whole battery began firing. The two turrets started, the fore-turret gun making the transmitting-room rattle, whilst the after 9.2 only made it wriggle.

The Padre was busy jotting down times and ranges, the ship's corporal was helping the Lamp-post with his instruments, and Uncle Podger was taking in and passing orders to them all. They had no time to think of what was going on elsewhere.

Outside, in the "fore cross passage", the noise of the for'ard guns, B1 and B2, coming straight down their hoists was very loud. The breeze, too, blew the cordite smoke down the hoists when the breeches of the guns were opened to reload, and made the air and stench more disagreeable than ever. The ammunition supply parties were busy; empty red shell-bags were brought back and flung into the magazines; filled ones were handed up, and the men ran away with them.

The Fleet-Surgeon and the Fleet-Paymaster flattened themselves out of the way.

"Cheer up, P.M.O.! We'll all be dead soon," the Pay chuckled.

"Indeed and we shall," snarled the P.M.O. "Listen to those beastly engines—they've been going ahead for the last hour—we'll be hitting the mines in a minute."

"Well, we shan't know much about that, old chap; we're right on top of the magazines. You'd be an angel before you could say 'knife'."

"Rats in a trap! Dry up!" growled the P.M.O. "Rats in a trap! That's what we are."

"A-climbing up de golden stairs," hummed the Pay, pointing to the end of the rope-ladder dangling from the hoist above them. "Hullo! That's something new," the Paymaster broke in cheerfully, as there was a noise just behind them—on the outer side of the coal bunker—a different noise to any they had heard before.

"Do you hear the coal jumping about?"

"That's summat 'it the harmour," men shouted gleefully.

"Two more!" Called out a gunner's mate as two more crashes came, a little farther aft, and the coal jumped and rattled behind the bulkhead.

A cloud of black smoke poured down one of the hoists. "Black powder," said the men, sniffing, as it drifted along the passage and made them cough. "A shell's burst somewhere."

A man from B3 slid down the rope of his hoist, and sang out that one had just burst against the side of the gun port. "No one hurt," he added, with a little tinge of regret.

A few seconds later a very cheery voice bawled down one of the starboard hoists to say that shells had come into the mess deck and burst there.

The men were genuinely pleased that their old ship had at last been hit.

"Anyone killed?" they shouted up.

"Don't know yet. The whole blooming place is on fire; port side, half a dozen knocked out. Old Cooky got one in his leg. No one badly hurt."

Rumours flew up and down these hoists. No one knew what had actually happened. A lot more smoke came down the hoists. The Fleet-Surgeon fidgeted lest he ought to go up, but he had to wait for orders, and stay there until he was sent for.

"They're giving it 'em back, a fair treat," the men sang out, as the guns up above fired very rapidly and the whole ship shook.

The engines had stopped their rumbling during this time, but now they started again. No more crashes came against the armoured side, the guns ceased firing, and presently a message came down: "The Captain wants the Fleet-Surgeon."

"Now for it," growled the Fleet-Surgeon, and swung himself awkwardly up the dangling ladder through the hoist up into the casemate, and so out to the wrecked mess deck.

Two shells—5.9-inch shells—had come in through the ship's side and made a terrible mess of things. The first one had burst in the stokers' mess deck, smashing mess tables and stools and setting fire to them. Flying fragments had wounded the chief cook, who, against all orders, was in the galley, and five men belonging to the "fire" and "repair" parties. The rest had dashed along with their hoses, and, whilst they were putting out this fire, the second shell had burst in the next mess aft on the other side of a bulkhead, and without fuss or worry they had dragged their hoses along and put this out too.

Both messes were now ankle-deep in black water, the blackened and smashed wooden tables and benches lying higgledy-piggledy all over the deck; pipes and stanchions were torn and twisted; the iron cap and ditty-box racks hung down fantastically from the blackened beams and plates overhead, and the whole place was littered with the men's crockery smashed into the tiniest pieces.

"I'll give you an hour and a half for the wounded, and then we're going in again," the Fleet-Surgeon was told, when he found the Captain and Commander wading about among the wreckage.

Off went the Fleet-Surgeon to find his wounded; they had already been dragged into cosy corners and roughly bandaged.

Dr. Gordon came along, from his station aft, to help him.

By this time all the ships had withdrawn out of range. The "Secure" and the "Disperse" were sounded, and everyone hurriedly dashed down to see the damage and hunt for bits of shell.

"And there's another on the boat deck," the Pimple, absolutely off his head with excitement, screamed to the Lamp-post and Uncle Podger as they came out of B2 casemate, up the hoist of which they had just climbed.

He dragged them up to see the damage done, and even Uncle Podger went into raptures when he saw the beautiful hole in the wooden deck, and the fifty or more small holes which fragments of shell had made in the engine-room uptakes and in one of the funnels.

"It doesn't matter if the Bacchante does find out about the sea-gulls, now," he said, and gloated at the lovely sight.

The Orphan came up, anxious lest any of the flying pieces had hit his beloved picket boat; Bubbles came along, chuckling and laughing, and they all craned their necks over the side to see the holes where two shells had come in, and where those that had struck the armour had knocked off the wood sheathing and the paint.

"Come along or we'll miss lunch," Bubbles gurgled; and they romped aft, passing old Fletcher, the stoker, coming up, grimy and unwashed, from his watch below.

"I've just brought 'Kaiser Bill' up for an airing, sir," he said, as the Orphan stopped to speak to him. "I took him down out of mischief," and he carefully placed the idiotic tortoise down on the iron plates, and tried to tempt him with a piece of cabbage leaf to put out his ugly head.

Lunch in the gun-room was a very rowdy meal. If the Sub hadn't been pretty severe, precious little more crockery would have been left there than in those two stokers' mess decks.

"Just fancy! Six times hit—no, eight times—I counted them—all right, eight times—so much the better—and six wounded. Fancy old Cooky being knocked out—jolly hard luck; he oughtn't to have been there. You should have been in B3 when the shell hit the gun port, it did make a noise. They did make a funny noise all round (this from the China Doll). I had my cap blown off—one went between my turret and the shelter deck (this from Rawlinson).

"We're going back again," the Pimple, who had had to go back to the bridge and now came down, shouted. "I've just heard the Skipper tell the Navigator. Give me some soup, Barnes, quick—I say, you chaps, leave me a bit of pudding. We did get it hot. You should have been on the bridge."

"Bet you were safe and sound in the conning-tower," the others cried.

"I was only there part of the time. They kicked me out—it was too crowded. When that shell burst on the boat deck, bits came right over me. A bit hit a signal locker and dropped quite close to me. I've got it here," and the Pimple produced a bit of scrap iron out of his pocket and held it up.

"That isn't a bit of shell," they laughed, as they handed it round; "it's a bit of a deck plate."

"Well, it was jolly hot when I picked it up," said the Pimple, rather distressed. "I say, Barnes, do hurry up with some grub."

"Oh, you chaps, did you hear?" and the Pimple brightened again. "That shell which hit the Triumph killed a snotty."

At first they thought, and rather hoped, he might be someone they knew; but the Pimple, who got all his news from the talkative Navigator, told them he was an R.N.R. midshipman, so they were a little disappointed, because they could not possibly have known him.

That afternoon the ships again steamed in almost to the edge of the mine-field, and all of them opened a very heavy fire on the Turkish guns; but these were so widely dispersed, and so cleverly hidden in the scrub of the low-lying ground, that hitting them was a matter of pure luck.

Two trawlers also made another plucky attempt to sweep through the mine-field, but had to retire when more guns fired at them—guns which it was impossible to locate from the ship.

It was evidently hopeless to clear the mine-field during daylight, so ships and trawlers retired again.

A small steamer—the Aennie Rickmers—(she had been captured from the Germans) met them outside. She carried some scouting hydroplanes, and as she turned out suitable to accommodate the wounded, these were sent across to her.

On the Sunday and Monday the ships bombarded Yeni Kali and also a battery on a ridge, without doing much damage. The hydroplanes went up on both these days, and circled over the low ground where the batteries lay hidden, and also over the bay inside. No one in the Achates had as yet seen air-craft reconnoitring an enemy position, so everybody came up to have a look when the first one left the water with its pilot and observer and commenced to climb higher and higher in huge spirals.

When it had risen sufficiently high, it flew away towards Yeni Kali with its hydroplane floats beneath it, looking, for all the world, like a big bluebottle which had stuck its feet in something sticky and could not fly well for the weight of it.

As they eagerly watched it, suddenly a puff-ball of white smoke showed against the blue sky—below it—then another nearer, two more a long way behind; field-guns were firing shrapnel at it.

Not a soul on board had seen anything like this; everyone simply stood and held his breath, and watched the hydroplane and the white puff-balls following it.

"Gosh! I'd like to be those chaps, young Orphan," the Sub roared. "My jumping Jimmy! There's excitement for you! Ten minutes of it worth a life-time. Eh, you jam-stuffing sybarite?"

"Very pretty to watch, but give me dry land," Uncle Podger declared solemnly.

The little Padre, sucking a big pipe, his face twitching with excitement, muttered "bother"—a fearful swear-word for him—and spat out the end of his mouthpiece. He had bitten it off in his agitation.

The China Doll stood with his pink-and-white face gazing upwards, his mouth wide open, and his big eyes opening and shutting.

"My jumping Jimmy! Life! Life! We're seeing life, my jumping Doll," and the Sub lifted the Assistant Clerk off the deck and dropped him again.

"Do you want to go back to the North Sea patrol—my young Blot on the Landscape?"

"No, sir;" and the China Doll curtseyed disrespectfully, and bolted behind the stolid figure of Uncle Podger.

"By the King's Regulations and Gun-room instructions, disrespect to superior officers is punishable by death or such other punishment as is hereinafter—" began the Clerk, but was interrupted by a shout of "Look! She's coming down now!"

The hydroplane was coming back, the puff-balls had ceased, and with long spiral swoops she slid down on the water and spun along the surface to the Aennie Rickmers.

"Old Yellow Beard wants you, sir," a young A.B.—it was Plunky Bill—interrupted, saluting the Sub.

"What! Who?" roared the Sub, glaring at him.

"Beg pardon, sir; I forgot myself, sir. I means the Captain, sir. Wants you in his cabin, he does."

The Sub, with a glare which froze poor Plunky Bill, stalked aft.

Some half-hour later, the half-deck sentry put his head into the gun-room: "The Sub-lootenant wants Mr. Orphan—in his cabin."

That young gentleman had wagered that he could drink a bottle of soda water more quickly than Bubbles could, and happened to be employed in the process of deciding this. The first trial had resulted in a dead heat, but the second had ended rather disastrously for both; and though the others patted him on the back with any heavy, unsuitable article they could find, he had not quite recovered himself when he burst into the Sub's cabin.

The Sub was excited again. When he was excited his eyes burnt like coals and his mouth was a slit, tightly shut—shut like a rat-trap.

"Orphan! my jumping Orphan! we've got it—you and I and your rotten old picket-boat. Guess what we've got to do, my 'JJ.'! It's simply too grand!"

He lighted his pipe. The cabin was already so full of smoke that the Orphan was coughing.

"What is it?" he gasped—the soda water inside him still busy.

"Have a cigarette?" the Sub said, shoving a box towards him.

"I'm not eighteen yet!" the Orphan said, thinking that the Sub perhaps had forgotten and might beat him afterwards.

"You'll have to be twenty-eight to-night, my jumping Son—thirty-eight; you've got the chance of a lifetime. Squat down on the wash-stand."

"Jumping Moses!—you and I have to go in to-night and stick a light on a mark-buoy—a Turkish mark-buoy they've fixed in the wrong place, close inshore it is, under the old fort. What do you think of that?"

"What mark-buoy?" asked the Orphan. "How ripping!"

The Sub drew a few rough outlines on a piece of paper. "There's the fort, and that's the line of the low bit of land sweeping away to the right. It sticks out a bit farther along, and just off the 'stick out' place the mark-buoy should mark a shoal, but the Turks have shifted it farther in—just about there"—and he marked a cross on the paper—"to bother us. And we've got to find it to-night, and stick a red light on it. How's that for 'good'?"

"They'll see us, won't they?" the Orphan said, catching his breath again, for he knew that at least three search-lights swept the approach and the minefield—a big one on Yeni Kali itself, "Glaring Gertrude", and two this side of the mine-field, from somewhere down by the water's edge—"Peeping Tom" and "Squinting Susan"; two much less powerful lights these were.

"I bet they'll see us. If they don't before, they will after we've fixed up that red light. The trawlers are going to sweep through behind us, and that light's to guide 'em," and the Sub smote the table with his great clenched fist. "What price that for a good night's work? Better than boarding ships in the North Sea, eh?"

"Right in under the fort we'll have to go?" asked the Orphan, his breath still rather short; "and right in under all those guns along the beach?"

"Right in, my jumping Orphan! Rifle range! pistol range! biscuit range! The Swiftsure's coming in to have a bang at "Peeping Tom" and his pal. My jumping O.! what a job!"

"When d'we shove off?" asked the Orphan, his eyes blazing.

"Seven o'clock—seven sharp. You bring the grub—shark sandwiches—and a couple bottles of beer. You're not rattled, my young Orphan?" he said, springing up and clutching the midshipman's shoulders.

As a matter of fact the Orphan was rather taken aback, and though he did his best to look frightfully happy, it was not an absolute success.

The Sub altered his voice. "Look here. Those confounded trawler fellows have done their job two days running, under heavy shell-fire, whilst we've been behind armour. It's time we showed them the way—understand? It's our turn to-night, yours and mine."

"I'm all right," the Orphan said. "It was rather a startler, that's all. I'd been getting up a sing-song, and we were going to court martial the China Doll."

"Warn your boat's crew," the Sub continued, perfectly satisfied and absolutely happy. "Tell 'em to take some grub."

"How about old Fletcher?" the Orphan asked. "He's rather old for the job."

"You know him best. Sound him. Off you go!"

So Fletcher was sent for and told all that was going to happen.

"If you'd rather a younger man——" the Orphan began, not knowing how to best say what he meant.

"Me, sir! Don't leave me behind. I'm as strong as a horse," the old stoker broke in.

"Right oh! The boat will be 'turned out' about six-thirty. Don't forget to bring some grub."

"I won't, sir, thank you," and Fletcher went for'ard.

"I don't think we'll court-martial the China Doll after all," the Orphan said when he went back to the gun-room.

"Oh! Rather! What rot! Of course we will! Mustn't we, China Doll?" the others cried.

"Well, I'm not going to be there, anyway. You'll have to find someone else for prisoner's friend."

"What's up?" they asked. "Got the blight?"

"Oh, I've got a bit of a job on this evening, you chaps!" And the Orphan did his best to look unconcerned, but they saw that he was bubbling over with excitement, and dragged the news out of him.

"He might be captured, if they don't kill the poor little chap first," Bubbles gurgled. "Fancy the Orphan being a prisoner," the others shouted. "Poor old Turks—hard luck on them—you'll have to wear a fez—and be able to smoke all day—a nubbly-bubbly—won't that be nice?—and have a dozen wives—and get sixpence a day to keep them" (this was from Uncle Podger).

And when it was time for him to prepare the picket-boat, they called after him: "If you don't come back we'll finish your ginger nuts—oh, you pig, you're taking them with you—that's not playing the game—we'll write such a nice letter home—how we all loved you—with all our names to it—p'raps your daddy will send us a present—wouldn't a barrel of beer be nice—good-bye, Orphan, we'll never forget you—if he does send us one—not till it's finished."

Then they settled down to revise the list of officials at the China Doll's coming court martial. Bubbles would have to do prisoner's friend, although he was not much good at it, because when he did think of something funny to say, he couldn't say it for laughing at what somebody else had just said.