"She's not a cutter, you juggins!" exclaimed Farnborough. "I believe those fellows are rotten Huns."
He was about to telegraph for "Full-speed-ahead both engines", when Branscombe gripped his arm.
"It's old Seton, by smoke!" he shouted, in order to make himself heard above the din.
Quickly the well-nigh exhausted men were assisted over the side, Seton minus a little finger, and the R.A.F. officer with a bullet wound completely through his left shoulder.
It was no time for explanations. Like a thing endowed with life M.-L. 4452 leapt forward. She was now on the point of repassing the badly-damaged lighthouse on the Mole-head. Here Huns, no longer in danger of being strafed by the Vindictive's landing-parties, were frantically blazing away with their quick-firers and machine-guns. A 4.1 shell fired at point-blank range furrowed the fore-deck and, without exploding, passed completely through the side a few inches above the water-line. Another blew the M.-L.'s "tin" dinghy into the sea, davits and all; while a third, striking the stern, smashed the quadrant of the steering-gear and blew off the head of the rudder.
M.-L. 4452 began to describe a large circle, her head falling off until she pointed straight for the Mole. To attempt to keep her on her course by means of the helm was an impossibility, for not only had the spare tiller—for use when as sometimes happened the steering-wires and chains carried away—shared the fate of the davits, but the rudder-head itself was bent and twisted by the explosion of the shell.
Immediately the ship was hit Branscombe made his way aft to investigate and report. He was back in the wheel-house just in time to find Farnborough and the coxswain lying motionless on the floor, and the M.-L., left to her own devices, circling to port.
The helm useless, Branscombe realized that he had to steer by means of the twin screws. Under ordinary conditions it was a tricky job, but the difficulties were now increased tenfold. A partly-disabled boat, nearly half her complement out of action; a dark, fog-enshrouded night with occasional bursts of dazzling light from search-lights, star-shells, and the flashes of guns; a short, confused sea, and the constant danger of ramming, or being rammed by, other craft manoeuvring without lights.
There were dozens of similar vessels out that night engaged in the same work. Frail little M.-L.'s, manned by amateur yachtsmen of yesterday, were achieving wonders. Men from the Clyde, the Solent, and the East Coast, whose knowledge of the sea was confined to a few days or weeks of summer cruising under favourable conditions, were proving their worth as fighters of the Empire. Experience gained in those dainty little yachts, snow-white of deck and glittering with burnished brass, was put to good use in those squat, grey-hulled M.-L.'s. It was on St. George's Day that the practically unknown R.N.V.R., unostentatiously at work as a unit of the great Silent Navy, suddenly leapt upon the pinnacle of fame.
A dense pall of smoke drifted down and enveloped M.-L. 4452. Branscombe had to steer solely by his sense of direction. He was one of those men who instinctively could find his way through a dense fog. At the back of his mind there was ever an impression—rarely, if ever, at fault—of the direction in which lay the north. The compass was useless: the same blow that had struck down the skipper and the coxswain had wrecked the binnacle.