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 order reaches the man to carry it out. This would be an awkward enough expedient for a ship that is not under fire and fighting for time and her life. What it is with the enemy’s shell exploding about you, and with your own guns firing, I will leave you to imagine. Well, we had all this going on, and besides that a fire raging below that always had the possibilities of disaster in it until it was extinguished. Also, we were already short-handed from our losses in killed and wounded. There wasn’t anyone to spare to relay orders about in any case. But what capped the climax was this: When the mast was shot down, some of the raffle of rigging or radio fouled the wires leading back to both of the sirens, turning a full pressure of steam into them and starting them blowing continuously. It was almost as though the poor maimed and mangled Flop were wailing aloud in her agony.
“I didn’t think of it that way at the time, though, for I had my hands full wailing loud enough myself to make even the man at the wheel understand what I wanted him to do. Luckily, the engine-room telegraph, though somewhat cranky, was still in action, and orders to other parts of the ship we managed to convey by flash-lamp or messenger. It was ten minutes or more before they contrived to hush the sirens—it was cutting off their steam that did it, I believe—and by then a new and even more serious trouble had developed through the jamming of the helm. It was hard over to starboard at that, so that the Flop simply began turning round and round like a kitten chasing its tail. This involuntary manœuvre had one favourable effect in that it seemed to throw the Austrian gunnery off for a bit, though one shell which penetrated and exploded in the after tiller-flat shortly after she began cutting capers did not make it any easier to coax the jammed helm into doing its bit again.
“Our ‘ring-around-the-roses’ course had resulted in our coming much nearer to the enemy, who, seeing a chance to finish us off, was trying to close the range at high speed. Our rotary course brought them on a continually shifting bearing, and it was while they were coming up on our port bow at a distance of less than a mile that it suddenly became evident that the cruisers were about to present us the finest and easiest kind of a torpedo target. The captain, who, in spite of his wounds,
was still trying to stick the show through, saw the opening as soon as I did, and, because there was no one else free to attempt the trick, tackled it himself. But it was a case of the spirit being willing and the flesh weak. With every ounce of nerve in him he tried to make his almost useless hands work the forebridge firing-gear. The chance passed while he still fumbled frantically but vainly to release the one little messenger—a mouldie—that would have been enough to square accounts, and with some to spare. It was the hardest thing of all—not being able to take advantage of that opening.
“It was twenty minutes before the helm was of any use at all, and the Austrians had only their lack of nerve to thank for not putting us down while they had a chance. It must have been because they were afraid of some kind of a trap, for there were a half-dozen ways in which a force of their strength could have disposed of a ship as helpless and knocked-out generally as was the Flop. The Flip had also been hard hit, and when I had a chance for a good look at her again it appeared that her mast, like ours, was trailing over the side. She was still firing, however, and it was she rather than the enemy that was trying to close. We were quite cut off from wireless communication, as all attempts to disentangle the aerials from the wreckage of the mast had been unsuccessful; but it was evident that help was coming to us, and that the Austrians had in some way got wind of it. At