By this time the firing had become general. The four British battleships were letting rip as fast as the loading-trays could deliver shells and ammunition into the rapacious breeches of the enormous weapons. The din was terrific, while the vibration was so intense that the fore-top was shaking and rattling like a high-pressure engine on a faulty bed.
"Goodness only knows what we're here for," thought Peter, wiping the cordite dust from his eyes and shaking the beads of salt spray from the peak of his cap. "Can't see a blessed thing."
He continued to peer out automatically. There was little to be seen, save when an occasional lifting of the pall of spray and smoke enabled him to see the flashes of the guns of the Royal Oak and her consorts. His senses were benumbed by the continuous crashes. He was no longer afraid. A sort of stolid indifference seemed to take possession of the fragments of thought left in his brain. The whole business seemed a ghastly, bewildering nightmare.
A terrific crash, outvoicing every other noise in the pandemonium, shook the fore-top like a rattle. The occupants, hurled violently, subsided in a confused struggling heap upon the steel floor. For some moments they remained prostrate, making no effort to sort themselves out.
Peter opened his eyes, to close them quickly again. Someone's heel was beating a tattoo within an inch or so of his nose.
He wriggled clear and sat up. One of the bluejackets, wedged in an angle of the walls, was mopping the claret that welled from his nose. The two officers and the midshipman were sorting themselves out, looking too dazed to understand how they got there and what they were doing. The second bluejacket was muttering to himself as he fumbled in his jumper for some article that he had prized and lost.
"Anyone hit?" bawled Peter.
His words were inaudible, but no one showed any signs of serious injury. The fore-top was shaking badly—not only through the continuous concussion, but as if it were no longer firmly secured to the head of the tripod mast. The small oval aperture that opened into the principal leg of the tripod, and formed an alternative means of gaining the deck, was open. Wisps of smoke issued from it.
A man with a bandaged head appeared, squeezing with an obvious effort through the door. Peter recognized him as a petty-officer belonging to the range-finding party.
"Fair kippered that way, sir," he shouted. "A perishin' eel couldn't wriggle through. No, mast ain't carried away quite. 'S got a bulge in 'er. Lootenant, 'e told me to report verbally that our range-finder's knocked out, an' all controls smashed up."