and had fired a couple of large-calibre shells into
Eblis at point-blank range, narrowly missing her vitals.
Even so, Eblis is as impartial as a prize-court.
She reports that the second shot, a trifle of eight
inches, “may have been fired at a different
time or just after colliding.” But the night
was yet young, and “just after getting clear
of this cruiser an enemy battle-cruiser grazed past
our stern at high speed” and again the judgmatic
mind—“I think she must have intended
to ram us.” She was a large three-funnelled
thing, her centre funnel shot away and “lights
were flickering under her foc’sle as if she
was on fire forward.” Fancy the vision
of her, hurtling out of the dark, red-lighted from
within, and fleeing on like a man with his throat
cut!
[As an interlude, all enemy cruisers that night were
not keen on ramming. They wanted to get home.
A man I know who was on another part of the drive
saw a covey bolt through our destroyers; and had just
settled himself for a shot at one of them when the
night threw up a second bird coming down full speed
on his other beam. He had bare time to jink between
the two as they whizzed past. One switched on
her searchlight and fired a whole salvo at him point
blank. The heavy stuff went between his funnels.
She must have sighted along her own beam of light,
which was about a thousand yards.
“How did you feel?” I asked.
“I was rather sick. It was my best chance
all that night, and I had to miss it or be cut in
two.”
“What happened to the cruisers?”
“Oh, they went on, and I heard ’em being
attended to by some of our fellows. They didn’t
know what they were doing, or they couldn’t have
missed me sitting, the way they did.]
After all that Eblis picked herself up, and discovered
that she was still alive, with a dog’s chance
of getting to port. But she did not bank on it.
That grand slam had wrecked the bridge, pinning the
commander under the wreckage. By the time he had
extricated himself he “considered it advisable
to throw overboard the steel chest and dispatch-box
of confidential and secret books.” These
are never allowed to fall into strange hands, and
their proper disposal is the last step but one in
the ritual of the burial service of His Majesty’s
ships at sea. Gehenna, afire and sinking, out
somewhere in the dark, was going through it on her
own account. This is her Acting Sub-Lieutenant’s
report: “The confidential books were got
up. The First Lieutenant gave the order:
‘Every man aft,’ and the confidential
books were thrown overboard. The ship soon afterwards
heeled over to starboard and the bows went under.
The First Lieutenant gave the order: ‘Everybody
for themselves.’ The ship sank in about
a minute, the stern going straight up into the air.”
