They all improvised like the masters of craft they were. The chief
engine-room artificer, after he had helped to put out fires,
improvised stops to the gaps which were left by the carrying 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 you are in trouble, he "improvised
pumping and drainage arrangements, thus allowing the ship to steam at
a good speed on the whole." There could not have been more than 40
feet of hole.
The surgeon--a probationer--performed an amputation single-handed in
the wreckage by the bridge, and by his "wonderful skill, resource, and
unceasing care and devotion undoubtedly saved the lives of the many
seriously wounded men." That no horror might be lacking, there was "a
short circuit among the bridge wreckage for a considerable time." The
searchlight and wireless were tangled up together, and the electricity
leaked into everything.
There were also three wise men who saved the ship whose names must not
be forgotten. They were Chief Engine-room Artificer Lee, Stoker Petty
Officer Gardiner, 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 fans going till all fumes,
etc., were cleared away." To each man, you will observe, his own
particular Hell which he entered of his own particular initiative.
Lastly, there were the two remaining Quartermasters--mutinous dogs,
both of 'em--one wounded in the right hand and the other in the left,
who took the wheel between them all the way home, thus improvising one
complete 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 wounded man, and in spite of the rough weather of June
1st they all remained cheery." They had one Hun cruiser, torpedoed, to
their credit, and strong evidence abroad that they had knocked the end
out of another.
But Gehenna went down, and those of her crew who remained hung on to
the rafts that destroyers carry till they were picked up about the
dawn by Shaitan, third in the line, who, at that hour, was in no shape
to give much help. Here is Shaitan's tale. 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, as we know, Eblis after firing her
torpedoes had hauled off to reload. When the enemy switched his
searchlights off Shaitan hauled out too. It is not wholesome for
destroyers to keep on the same course within a thousand yards of big
enemy cruisers.
She picked up a destroyer of another division, Goblin, who for the
moment had not been caught by the enemy's searchlights and had
profited by this decent obscurity to fire a torpedo at the hindmost of
the cruisers. Almost as Shaitan took station behind Goblin the latter
was lighted up by a large ship and heavily fired at. The enemy fled,
but she left Goblin out of control, with a grisly list of casualties,
and her helm jammed. Goblin swerved, returned, and swerved again;
Shaitan astern tried to clear her, and the two fell aboard each other,
Goblin's bows deep in Shaitan's fore-bridge. While they hung thus,
locked, an unknown destroyer rammed Shaitan aft, cutting off several
feet of her stern and leaving 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 the
survivors from Gehenna clinging to their raft, and took them aboard.
Then some of our destroyers--they were thick on the sea that
night--tried to tow her stern-first, for Goblin had cut her up badly
forward. But, since Shaitan lacked any stern, and her rudder was
jammed hard across where the stern should have been, the hawsers
parted, and, after leave asked of lawful authority, across all that
waste of waters, they sank Shaitan by gun-fire, having first taken all
the proper steps about the confidential books. Yet Shaitan had had her
little crumb of comfort ere the end. While she lay crippled she saw
quite close to her a German cruiser that was trailing homeward in the
dawn gradually heel over and sink.
This completes my version of the various accounts of the four
destroyers directly concerned for a few hours, on one minute section
of one wing of our battle. Other ships witnessed other 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 that Eblis torpedoed was a German
battleship of a certain class. So Gehenna did not die in vain, and we
may take it that the discovery did not unduly depress Eblis's wounded
in hospital.