"Faugh!" he ejaculated. "Your beastly turret again."
"Sorry, old man!" replied Blades, apologizing for the misbehaviour of his beloved "box o' tricks". "'Tany rate, if that's all you get, you're lucky."
One of the turret guns' crew appeared and put his face close to Cavendish's ear.
"Message through from Captain, sir," he reported. "'E wants you to go aft and report, seein' as 'ow the ship's been badly 'it."
The two officers exchanged glances.
"Good old Weeds!" exclaimed Blades. "'England expects', and all that sort of thing, you know."
"Yes, I know," agreed Cavendish, with a wry grimace.
Turning up his coat-collar, although it was not until afterwards that he recognized the futility of the action, Cavendish scrambled out of the turret. Wriggling like an eel and feeling very forlorn and unhappy out in the open, he slid over and gained the port superstructure ladder. Cordite-laden clouds were sweeping past him as the guns of B turret fired simultaneously. He could feel the blast and the back-draught much too close to be pleasant. A murderer making for one of the Jewish cities of refuge couldn't have sprinted in quicker time or in greater funk than he did in his mad rush for the door of the superstructure—only to find that aperture barred and bolted.
Hardly knowing how he did it, Cavendish found himself clambering over the remains of the cutter, his progress hastened by a shell that burst against the horizontal leg of the tripod mast, fortunately without carrying it away or bowling the lieutenant over by the shower of splinters.
Right along the deserted mess deck Cavendish hurried. Here and there were fairly round holes where projectiles had passed through the thin steel plating. Soon he located the serious damage; a 14-inch shell had completely penetrated the armour at the water-line and had exploded between decks.