ed to visit him,
and when the Doc. next went forward he found him swabbing the patient's
brow with icy cold water to bring him to! The Doc. was rather peevish
about it.

But to get on with the story of what happened. The trawler was
sinking, but not quite fast enough, so we finished her off with a
couple of lyddite shell on the waterline. In the meanwhile, as you
probably know, for it was officially announced at the time, two
destroyers had been in collision. The rammer crumpled her bows up a
bit, but could still steam, but the ship rammed was rather badly
damaged, and had to be taken in tow. It was in the middle of this
operation that many hostile seaplanes, stirred up like a wasps' nest by
our 'planes earlier in the morning, came out and started dropping
bombs. None of them came very close to us,--the bombs, I mean,--but we
saw a string of five fall and explode practically alongside one
destroyer, and heard afterwards that there had been a free fight on her
upper deck to secure as trophies the splinters which dropped on board.
We were all using our A.-A. guns, and though we did not actually hit
any of them so far as we could see, we made them keep up to a height
from which accurate bomb-dropping was an impossibility, so nobody was
hit. But nevertheless it was unpleasant, for no sooner had they let go
one consignment than they went home again, filled up afresh, and came
back for another go. They were bombing us off and on for four or five
hours, so far as I can remember, and we counted seven or eight of the
blighters in sight at once, so it was "embarras de richesse" so far as
targets went.

We weren't going very fast, for the damaged destroyer could not be
towed at a respectable speed on account of her injuries, and at about
five o'clock in the afternoon the glass had gone down a lot, and the
wind and sea started to get up from the westward. The prospect was not
altogether joyful. We had heard the two trawlers shouting for help by
wireless before we sank them, and knew that the German seaplanes had
probably seen and reported an injured ship being taken in tow. (This
afterwards turned out to be the case, though, according to their
communique, the seaplanes claimed to have bagged her with a bomb, which
was not so.) Moreover, Heligoland was a bare sixty miles away under
our lee, so the chances were L100 to 1/2d. that the Huns would come out
during the night and try to scupper the lot of us. It was with som