Sea-Hounds

n and the fact that I had been assured that there was still in her an officer who was said to have figured prominently in the splendid account she had given of herself on that occasio

ght cruiser affair had occurred down Heligoland Bight way which called for destroyer work in that direction, and the next two days, with the flotilla creasi

only half gone, but in the hour that elapsed before it was over there was no mention of Jutland, or anything else connected with the war for that matter, though the talk ran the full gamut from cabbages to kings. I mean this quite literally, for he began by telling me of what his mother had raised in her allotment at Ipswich, and was describing how, when he was on a cruise in the Clio ten year

clanging doors. Under ordinary conditions two leisurely moving men do all there is need of doing, and with time to spare, and there are occasions at sea, in the winter months, when the stokehold is a more comfortable refuge than the chill fireless ward ro

e in some time when, while she already plugging away at full speed, the engine-room rings up more steam. That's the time she's just one little bit of hell down here, sir, with the white sizzle of the fires turning the furnace

for observation (through his being on deck standing by in the event of emergency and without active duties to perform) makes him undoubtedly one of the most valuable witnesses of the opening phase of this the greatest of all naval battles. The story which I am setting down connectedly, he told me in the comfortable intervals of his leisur

ough I knew it was blacker'n the pit above; but, in daylight, with everything in full view outside, I'm not sure I wouldn't have gone off my chuck if I'd had to go 'squirrel-caging' on here with one eye on the fires and the other on the Kilroy. But I didn't. It was my luck to be off watch when the ball opened, so that my 'action station' was just loafing round the deck and keeping a stock of leak-stopping gear-mushroom-spreaders and wooden plugs-ready to use as soon as we got

ck in the early part of the afternoon one, and had just gone down to tea before going on for the 'First Dog.' There had been some buzz in the morning about the Huns being out; but that was so old a story that no one paid much attention to it. I was just getting my nose over the edge of a mug of tea when I heard the bos'un growling 'Hands exercise action stations,' and tumbled out on deck to go through the motions of getting ready for a fight that would never come off, or leastways that was how we felt about it. The 'battlers' were speeding up a bit, but there was not even a smudge of smoke on the horizon to hint of Huns. After rigging

r starboard quarter and her port bow. The fact is, having heard no sound of gunfire, I was so surprised that I foolishly asked someone if the Lion hadn't blown out one of her tompions testing a circuit. The spout of foam should have told me better, but it goes to show what crazy things run through a man's mind when he can only see effect without the cause. A few moments later I saw unmistakable gun-flashes blinking along the skyline to south'ard and knew that at last we were under the fire of the Huns. The nex

ncreased till it was a steady unbroken roar. The Hun shells were falling so straight that many of the 'overs' missed by only a few yards. The hits, of which there were quite a number on the leading ships, looked rather awful at the moment of exploding. There would be a wild gush of flame that seemed to be eating up everything it touched, and then, all of a sudden, it was gone, and only a few little fires would be left flicker

e fact that the splashes were higher and heavier than those from the first salvoes seemed to make it likely that some of the Hun battleships had now arrived at the party. As it turned out, this was just what had happened, and, although we cou

down the line and concentrated on the point where that line began to bend. It must have been something like the barrage they make at the Front, for at times the water thrown up by the bursting shell made a solid wall which c

eam. I have no special memory of the noise or shock of the explosion, but the pillar of smoke shot up as sudden and solid as a 'Jack-in-the-box.' It was black underneath, but always with a crown of flame at the top, as though the gases were spouting up inside and taking fire as they met the air. Some of my mates said they saw big pieces of flying wreckage, such as plates from turrets and decks, but I only remember s

ter the Lion and 'P.R.' had passed unhurt. Then the Tiger and New Zealand weathered the turn safely, but the poor old Indefat.-Number three again-got hers. She went up under a rain of shells plumping down on her deck, j

but the other three turrets were blazing away as merry as ever. We were close enough to see men on the bridge with the naked eye, and it suddenly occurred to me that one of the quietly moving figures there must be Admiral Beatty, who I knew hated to be cooped up in a conning tower in action. I could not be sure

it over the steel rail of the ladder to emphasise his words, and then sto

do attack,' and a few minutes later I saw the whole flotilla start streaming out, some ahead of the battle cruiser line, and some through it, toward the Huns. I al

Hun heavies, and then through a still hotter zone where their secondaries were slapping down a barrage that took some fancy side-stepping to avoid coming to grief in. The Onward was the first of our division to fall by the wayside. She stopped a 'leven-inch shell with her engine-room, and got stopped in turn herself. Luckily it didn't explode, or she would have been blown out of the water then and there. I saw her fall out of line and disappear in a cloud of steam, and that was the last peep we had of her for many weeks. When she finally rejoined the flotilla, we learned that she a

for our division-or what remained of it-things were looking too promising just then to turn our backs on. I was standing by the foremost tubes at the time, and all of a sudden the Hun line began to turn away, and I saw that the leading ship wa

hree men were hit by them, though not much hurt. It was this sudden savage shelling that spoiled the only chance we had at the Hun big 'uns. Just as the sights were coming on to the leading ship a salvo came down kerplump right abreast of the foremost tubes, throwing a solid spout of green water all over them. I saw both mouldies start to slide out, but only one struck the water and began to run. A moment later I saw that the other, for some reason we never found out, but probably because it had been knocked sideways by the rush of water or perhaps a fragment of shell, was hang

ugh to get a good look at the Hun, when he wasn't shut off by the spouts from the fall of shot. He was a small three-funnelled light cruiser, and every gun he had looked to be training on us. Another cruiser astern of him was also firing on the Nairobi, while two or three others were concentrating on the Nectar. She was getting it even hotter than we were, and all I could see of her-when one of her zigzags brought her to one side or the other so the bridge didn't cut her off from my view-was some masts and funnels sliding along in the middle of a dancing patch of foam fountains. Both Nectar and Nairobi were

rses, thousand yards range, speed about twenty-five,' I shouted, jumping down again; 'and you'll have to slip her right smart or you'll miss your chance.' Right then the seas flattened down for a few seconds, and the 'T.I.', giving me an ord

us. One of the shells-a five-or six-incher-did not explode, but bounced off the water and came 'skip-jacking' along straight for us. It kicked into the water twice before it reached us, the second time right at the base of the wave that was rolling up and hiding our sunken stern, and that seemed to give it just enough of an up-flip to make it clear the Nairobi's shivering hull. It came so slow that I caught the glint of the copper band rou

or it only brought right abreast the funnels what'd 'a' been a hit somewhere about the bridge. I've got a picture in my mind of what happened that I'm dead certain is as true as a photograph, and the spout of water that went up must have been almost exactly amidships. If the hit had been anywhere for'rard it would never have broken her back the way it did, and she might have got away. The funny part of it was

I turned my head to look at the second Hun he straddled us fair with a full salvo. Most of it went over, but one proj struck right alongside and just about flooded us out. But there was something heavier than water that it sent aboard. I felt a sharp sting across my stomach, as if someone had given me a cut with a whip. As I put my hand down to it the whole front of my overall dropped away where a fragment of shell casing had shot across it. A few threads-I found out later-had been started on my singlet, but my hide was not even scratched. I heard the 'T.I.' give a yell, and when I looked round saw his face covered with blood, and a flap of skin from his forehead hanging down over one eye like a skye terrier's ear. The piece of proj had caught him a nasty side-swipe, though without hurting anything but his looks in the least. And it wasn't that he was

nothing in the look of that spouting volcano of smoke and steam that would help a man to tell whether it was a battleship or a trawler, but I knew that it could be only the Nectar, our Division leader. We never saw her nor a

ft the wreck of her astern than a full salvo of large shells-I think they must have come from one of the battle cruisers, for they were much heavier than anything the light cruisers were firing-struck only thirty or forty yards short of us. The shells were bunched together like a salvo of air-bombs kicked loose all at once. The wall of water they threw up shut everything on that side off from s

plastered a-straddle of us, and I saw a fragment of shell knock the sight-setter of the midships gun out of his seat. He looked a little dazed as he climbed back, but his eye must have been as good as ever, for I

-fire, it must have occurred to the captain that it was time he was rejoining the flotilla. There was only some dark blurs on the north'ard skyline to steer for at first, and the Huns did all they knew to keep us from getting there, too. For a while we were doi

ounding without turning a hair, so far as a man could see, and even when the Warspite had her steering gear knocked out and went steaming in circles it didn't seem to upset the other three very much. We sighted our own

een with us from the first held good. Although we were through the very hottest of the day action, and not the least of the night, the old Nairobi did not receive one direct hit from an enemy shell. She accounted for at least two Hun ships, saw the other three destroyers of her division sunk or put out of action, and returned to base with almost empty oil tanks and perhaps the largest