Then it was that the Sub knew why the admiral had sent him to investigate, for amongst the slain was Sir Noel's youngest son, a midshipman fresh from his two years' course on a training cruiser.
Putting his hand over his eyes as he vainly tried to shut out the mental vision of the annihilated gun's crew, Hamerton reeled away. Just as he gained the foot of the ladder to the conning tower a tremendous concussion, greater even than the impact of the huge shells, shook the ship. It seemed as if the twenty-five thousand tons of deadweight was lifted vertically for quite a foot.
The Sub exchanged glances with the lieutenant standing by the submerged steering wheel.
"Torpedoed," exclaimed the officer laconically. Up the fifty feet of vertical ladder Hamerton hastened. At the top he paused abruptly. The conning tower was filled with dense smoke. The admiral lay propped against the armoured walls with his forehead cut from temple to temple by a sliver of steel. The flag-lieutenant was down, slain by a fragment of the same shell that had killed his chief, while the captain, pale as a sheet, was supporting himself by the partly-shattered binnacle. Only the two petty officers remained unwounded, though completely dazed by the concussion.
"Glad you've come," said the captain weakly. "Pass the word for the commander. We must haul out of line. Tell him to take what steps he thinks——"
The captain's words trailed off into an unmeaning sentence, his head dropped on his chest, and he sank unconscious beside the body of the ill-fated admiral.
By the time the commander reached the conning tower the Royal Sovereign had automatically dropped out of station. A torpedo, fired by a badly shattered German warship, the Pommern, had struck her a few feet forward of the sternpost, shattering both rudders and the two starboard propellers. A few feet farther forward and nothing could have saved her from total destruction, for the powerful Schwartz-Kopff would have blown a hole large enough for a carriage to pass completely through her double skin. As it was, the after flats were completely flooded, and the flagship was deeply down by the stern.
At this juncture the engines were stopped, and screened from the enemy's fire by the Repulse, that gallantly intervened, the Royal Sovereign lost way when about two miles to the west of the first division of the British fleet.
Already the battle was decided. Superior numbers and gunnery won the day in spite of the frequent use of torpedoes by the Germans. Several of the British ships had, indeed, narrow escapes from these sinister and powerful weapons, for the range was an ideal one. Only the furious and accurate gunnery of the British ships and the speed of the two opposing fleets prevented the torpedoes from doing greater damage, for it was afterwards ascertained that in almost every case the concussion of the heavy shells destroyed all communication between the conning towers and the submerged torpedo-rooms of the various German ships.
Now, for the first time since the commencement of the action, Hamerton was able to see what was going on without. Thank God! All around were British and German ships flying the good old White Ensign—ships no longer, but merely battered and shattered masses of steel. Away in the haze firing was still being maintained in a desultory manner, but of the issue of the conflict there could be no doubt.