New or old, the enemy had done her best. She had completely demolished
Eblis's bridge and searchlight platform, brought down the mast and the
fore-funnel, ruined the whaler and the dinghy, split the foc'sle open
above water from the stem to the galley which is abaft the bridge, and
below water had opened it up from the stem to the second bulkhead. She
had further ripped off Eblis's skin-plating for an 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 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.]