Sea Warfare

AN ENEMY

hing quite sane and simple which does not inv

or the evolution-in a general sauve qui peut, while the Devil, livelily represented by our destroyers, took the hindmost.

ers, of course, but with the exception of one Goblin they don't come violently into this tale. There had been a good deal of promiscuous firing that evening, and actions were going on all round. Towards midnight our destroyers were overtaken by several three-and four-funnel German ships (cruisers they thought) hurrying home. At this stage of the game an

Eblis had nearly finished reloading when a shot struck the davit that was swinging her last torpedo into the tube and wounded all hands concerned. Thereupon she dropped torpedo work, fired at an enemy searchlight which winked and went out, and was closing in to help Gehenna when she found herself under the noses of a couple of enemy cruisers. "The nearer one," he says, "altered course to ram me apparently." The Senior Service writes in curiously lawyer-like fashion, but there is no denying that they act quite directly. "I therefore put my helm hard aport and the two ships met and rammed each other, port bow to port bow." There could have been no time to think and, for Eblis's commander on the bridge, none to gather information. But he had observant subordinates, and he writes-and I would humbly suggest that the wor

tive o

n amazing number of yards on one side of her, 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 cruis

d 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

you feel?

st chance all that night, and I

ened to th

me of our fellows. They didn't know what they were doing,

fidenti

f 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 c

l, that three boilers were usable in spite of the cruiser's shells. So she "shaped course and speed to make the least water and the most progress towards land." On the way back the wind shifted eight points without warning-it was this shift, if you remember, that so embarrassed Cripple and Paralytic on their homeward crawl-and, what w

, while his commander was being extricated from the bridge wreckage, took charge of affairs and steered the ship first from the engine-room, or what remained of it, and later from aft, and

of Imp

rrying away of the forward funnel and mast. He got and kept up steam "to a much higher point than would have appeared at all possible," and when the sea rose, as it always does if yo

g care and devotion undoubtedly saved the lives of the many seriously wounded men." That no horror might be lacking, there was "a short circuit am

and Stoker Elvins. When the funnel carried away it was touch and go whether the foremost boiler would not explode. These three "put on respirators and kept the

lete Navy-pattern Quartermaster, and "refused to be relieved during the whole thirty-six hours before the ship returned to port." So Eblis passes out of the picture with "never a moan or complaint from a single

le. She saw the unknown cruisers overtake the flotilla, saw their leader switch on searchlights and open fire as she drew abreast of Gehenna, and at once fired a torpedo at the third German ship. Shaitan could not see Eblis, her next ahead, for,

g her rudder jammed hard over. As complete a mess as the Personal Devil himself could have devised, and all due to the merest accident of a few panicky salvoes. Presently the two ships worked clear in a smother of steam and oil, and went their several ways. Quite a while after she had parted from Shaitan, Goblin discovered several of Shaitan's people, some of them wounded, on her own foc'sle, where they had been pitched by the collision. Goblin, working her way homeward on such boilers as remained, carried on a one-gun fight at a few cables' distance with some enemy destroyers, who, not knowing what state she was in, sheered off after a few rounds. Shaitan, holed forward and opened up aft, came across

r aspects of the agony and duly noted them as they went about their business. One of our battleships, for instance, made out by the glare of burning Gehenna that the supposed cruiser t

for T

nest as soon as possible. Half a dozen or so of them ran into four German battleships, which they set about torpedoing at ranges varying from half a mile to a mile and a half. It was asking for trouble and they got it; but they got in return at least one big ship, and the same observant battleship of ours who identified Eblis's bird reported three satisfactory explosions in half an hour, followed by a glare that lit up all the

at parade of commencing action, but soon afterwards "thought better of it, and turned away." So you see, in that flotilla alone there was every variety of fight, from the ordered attacks of squadrons under control, to single ship affairs, every turn of which depended on the second's decision of the men concerned; endurance to the hopeless end; bluff and cunning; reckless advance and red-hot flight

ay, after an unchecked night among the wild life of

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