to a ship of being struck by a shell of even large
calibre is nothing to compare with that from almost any one of these
seas that are crashing over us now. But it is the noise of the
explosion, the rending of metal, and the bang of flying fragments and
falling gear that makes a heavy shelling so staggering, to mind if not
to body. Of course everyone on the forebridge was knocked flat by the
explosion of the shell which hit it, and the worst of it was that the
most of us didn't get up again. The sub and the middy who were acting as
Control Officers were blown off their platform and so badly knocked up
that they were unable to carry on. One signalman and one voice-pipe man
were killed outright.

"The rest of us were only shaken up or no more than slightly wounded by
this particular shell, but the one which brought down the mast added not
a little both to casualties and material damage. The radio aerials came
down with the mast, of course, and it was some of the wreckage from one
or the other that fell on the captain, wounding him severely in both
arms. Dazed and shaken, he still gamely stuck to the wreck of the
bridge, but the active command now fell to me.

"This damage, serious as it was, was by no means the extent of that
inflicted by this unlucky salvo. A third shell, as I shortly learned,
had passed through the fore shell-room and into the fore magazine. In
which it exploded I could not quite make sure, but both were set on
fire. This fire got to some of the cordite before it was possible to get
it away, and the ensuing explosion killed or wounded most of the supply
parties and the crews of the twelve-pounders. It was brave beyond all
words, the fight those men made to save the ship down in that
unspeakable hell-hole, and it was due wholly to their courage and
devotion that the explosion was no worse than it was. This trouble,
luckily, was hardly more than local, but a number of good lives was the
price of keeping it so.

"There was one other consequence of that salvo, and though it sounds
funny to tell about it now, it might well have made all the difference
in the world to us. In the bad smashing-up of the bridge of any ship by
shell-fire the means of communication with the rest of her--the
voice-pipes, telephones, telegraphs, etc.--are among the first things to
be knocked out. This means, if there are no alternatives left, that
directions have to be relayed around by shouting from one to another
until the orde