of the engines
and the churning of the screws, I had no doubt they were from gun-fire,
and reported them at once by voice-pipe to the Officer of the Watch--it
was Gunner T., if I remember right--on the bridge. The captain was
called, and must have concluded the same, for he at once ordered her put
about and sounded 'Action Stations.' That took me to the foremost
torpedo tubes, where my station was on the seat between the tubes, with
the voice-pipe gear fitted to my ears. Most of what followed I saw from
there.

"In some of the published accounts of the action it was stated that the
captain of the _Mary Rose_ thought that the flashes he saw were from
the gun of a submarine shelling the convoy, so that when he turned back
it was with the expectation of meeting a U-boat rather than powerful
raiding cruisers. I don't know anything definite on this score, of
course, as I only heard the captain speak once or twice (and then to
give orders) before he went down with his ship, but I don't think it
could possibly have been true. There is a sort of fluttering ripple to
the flash of a salvo that you can't possibly mistake for that of the
discharge of a single gun, and the flashes which we continued to see for
some time were plainly those of salvo answering salvo. The flashes from
the mingled salvoes of the heavy guns of the Hun raiders could not have
been confused with those from the few light guns of the _Strongbow_ any
more than these could have been taken to come from the single gun of a
U-boat. Everything pointed to just what we learned had taken place--a
cruiser raid on the convoy. There was nothing in the flashes to suggest
a submarine was firing, and I can't see how the captain could have had
any such impression. It was enough for him--yes, and for all of us--to
know that our consort was in trouble, and I shall always think that he
turned back to help the _Strongbow_ with the full knowledge that he
would have to face hopeless odds. He was a proper gentleman, was Captain
Fox, and so there was nothing else that he _could_ have done; and,
what's more, there's nothing else that we men in the _Mary Rose_--or
any other British sailors, for that matter--would have had him do. It
would have been against all the traditions of the Navy to have done
anything else but stick by a consort to the last."

Able Seaman Bailey smote resoundingly the hollow palm of his left hand
with the fist of his right as he spoke those last words, and the