Ambulances were already in attendance, and the work of transferring the wounded to the naval hospital was immediately put in hand.
Wakefield opened his eyes as he was being carried up the broad steps into the building. Morpeth had a partial return to consciousness almost at the same time.
Looking round at the unfamiliar surroundings, he appeared to be solving some perplexing problem. His last conscious vision as he lay with a shattered arm upon the deck of the ship he had handled so magnificently was that of a man scrambling through the smoke and across a pile of debris to the triple torpedo-tubes. He watched the unknown hero fumbling over the releasing levers until at last a "tin fish" leapt from the only serviceable tube. Then in a swirl of pungent smoke the vision grew blurred and faded into nothingness.
"What I want to know is," he exclaimed with startling clearness, "who the blue blazes fired that last torpedo? 'Tany rate, it got her properly."
And Wakefield smiled to himself and closed his eyes again. But Kenneth Meredith was still in blissful ignorance of his surroundings.
CHAPTER XXIX
WHO FIRED THAT TORPEDO?
It was close on eight o'clock on a clear October evening that Kenneth Meredith, promoted to Lieutenant-Commander R.N.V.R., and having the distinctive letters D.S.C. tacked on to his name, was pacing the crowded departure platform at King's Cross.
Six months was a big chunk out of a man's life—six months of comparative idleness, spent partly in Haslar Hospital, partly in a convalescent home on the South Coast, and latterly at his own home. But carving fantastic-shaped pieces of shell—which, being German by origin, showed decided tendencies to produce gangrene—out of a patient and allowing the wounds to heal takes time, especially when the fragments are lodged in close proximity to the spine. For some weeks it was touch and go, but Meredith's record of clean living and high vitality were in his favour. And now he found himself at King's Cross, bound north to take command of M.L. 1497, attached to the fleet at Scapa Flow.