"Fire-control platform, Mr. Tressidar," ordered the captain when the sub. reported himself in the conning-tower. "Mr. McTulloch has just been sent down—badly wounded. Look alive—we want the range of Battery 45 pretty quickly."
The monitor had ceased firing, owing to the smoke from the intervening destroyers. It also gave the guns a chance to cool, for they had been firing continuously for the last two hours.
Through the acrid-smelling smoke that wafted from below the sub. made his way to one of the oblique legs of the tripod mast. One glance showed that it was no longer possible to gain the lofty platform by that means, for the metal tube was torn half-way through by a shell, a dozen or more of the metal rungs of the ladder had been shorn away, and the steel was still unbearable to the hand owing to the heat generated by the terrible impact.
Fifteen feet above the sub.'s head dangled the frayed end of the rope by which the officer he was about to relieve was lowered from the fire-control platform. McTulloch, seriously wounded by a fragment of shell, had hardly gained the deck ere another sliver of steel had cut away his means of descent.
Crossing to the second inclined leg of the tripod mast, Tressidar found that the steel ladder was comparatively intact. The metal tubing of the mast had been dented in several places and perforated more than once. The metal, too, was hot, but not to the same extent as was the damaged leg.
Up through the drifting smoke the sub. made his way, the whole fabric of the mast trembling under the continuous discharge of the heavy ordnance.
When half-way up he felt a terrific jar, accompanied by a roar that outvoiced the noise of the guns. The smoke was torn by lurid flashes; fragments of metal hurtled past him or struck the mast with a sound like that of a heavy hammer clanging on an anvil.
Temporarily blinded by the glare and partly stunned by the concussion, Tressidar hung on like grim death. It was the triumph of muscles over mind, for the action was purely automatic. Out swung the tripod mast till the leg by which he was ascending was perpendicular, although normally inclined thirty degrees to the vertical line. From beneath him dense clouds of black and yellow smoke vomited from the superstructure, to the accompaniment of the crackling of flames and the groans of the wounded.
A hostile shell had scored a direct hit, partially wrecking the after-end of the superstructure, making a clean sweep of the gear, including the two anti-aircraft guns.
Tressidar was yet to know this. He was merely aware that the Huns had "got one home." He wondered whether he was still alive, until the mist cleared before his eyes and he found himself still clinging to the slippery rungs.