again, till it was lost
in the rising smoke of the explosion.

"The fire of the Huns began to be divided more equally among the four
surviving battle cruisers now, and the _Nairobi_ was led a lively dance
dodging about among the 'overs.' It was the big fire raging amidships
that turned my eyes to the _Lion_ again. One of the guns of the
'midships turret had a sickly droop to it, 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
which he was, but everyone in sight looked no more concerned than if
they had been steaming out for target practice. I didn't have time to
think of it then, but every time since that I've felt surer and surer
that no man since the world began ever showed more real guts than Beatty
in that part of the Jutland show."

Prince stood up, and put a forty-five degree kink in his poker by
slamming it over the steel rail of the ladder to emphasise his words,
and then stopped talking for a minute or two while he worried it
straight with a hammer.

"It was just about this time," he resumed, squinting approvingly down
the straightened bar, "that the _Nectar_ hoisted the signal, 'Second
Division prepare for torpedo 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 also have some memory of
seeing the ----th flotilla, smoking like young factory chimneys, coming
out astern of the line, but I had no chance to see what became of them.

"The range between us and the Huns had been decreasing for some time,
and the battle cruisers at the head of the line loomed up pretty big and
awful as we started to close them. I've never made quite sure yet
whether we were sent out to repel an attack of the Hun destroyers, or
whether they were sent out to repel our attack. Anyhow, there they were,
filtering out through their battle cruisers just as we had filtered
through ours. We met and turned them back something more than half-way
between the lines, but before we got to that point we had to pass, first
through the fire of the Hun heavies, and then through a still hotter
zone where their secondaries were slapping down a barrage that took some
fancy side-steppi