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.]

THE CONFIDENTIAL BOOKS

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.”