He said no more, but watched, while his ship was picked to pieces. The after turret went next, its big guns lifting and falling across each other. It took two shells to do this, though the second may have had aid from the magazine beneath; for the whole turret rose with the explosion. Then the eight-inch turrets, one after the other, shattered to shapeless lumps under that terrible dropping bombardment; then the superstructure, with its inclosed armament of six-inch and smaller guns, received the fire; and when the whole expanse was an uneven tangle of riven plates, twisted rods, smashed boats, and uprooted ventilators, the funnels came in for attention. Three open, ten-foot tubes leading to the vitals, water-tube boilers and steam connections, one after another belched upward a mighty white cloud, and after each uprush of steam the dropping of bombs ceased until the steam had thinned; for in this deadly, leisurely destruction of a battleship, no bombs need be wasted.
There was still the gaping hole where once had been the forward turret, and the commander seemed to be studying this, as Felton, sick at heart and furious with impotent rage, lifted his gaze from the wreck, which, rolling slowly from filled compartments, smoking with inward flame, and covered with crawling dots seeking escape from the inferno beneath, had lately been his refuge and his home—the invincible, impregnable Argyll—queen among battleships.
"I say, there," called the captain to Felton. "What blew up that forward turret? No gun fire can reach a magazine, and it wasn't I that did it."
"How do I know? Perhaps it was something else like you," snapped Felton.
"Do you think," and the commander's face took on an anxious expression, "that it might have been a submarine's torpedo?"
"Find out."
"That's what I'll have to do. We'll go down and see."
One of the men, a big, lumbering fellow with a dull, moon-like face, came up to where Felton lay and kicked him.
"Don't talk like that to the boss," he said.
"D— you!" yelled Felton. "You kick a man bound and down. Loose my hands, if you dare. Loose my hands! I won't need my feet."