The ships were steaming in double column, line ahead, the Defence, flying the Rear-Admiral's flag, leading the starboard and the Warrior the port line. With faultless precision they came on, three cables' distance separating the units of each division, and twice that interval betwixt the columns.
"They've spotted us, sir," exclaimed Able Seaman Brown, as the alteration of position of the red flag and green cone displayed from the cruiser's mainmast yard-arm told the two men that the Warrior's helm was being ported. Simultaneously the "steaming cones" were reversed, showing that the ship's engines were going astern--a manoeuvre followed by the rest of the squadron.
Almost before way was taken off the ship the Warrior's sea-boat was rapidly lowered from the davits. Sefton could hear the dull thud of the lower blocks as the releasing-gear came into action and the falls surged against the ship's side, and the treble-voiced midshipman urging his boat's crew to "give way there, my lads, for all you're worth."
Although only a minute and a half elapsed between the time the sea-boat got away from the ship and her arrival at the scene of the rescue, the interval seemed interminable to Sub-lieutenant Sefton.
With feelings of indescribable relief he realized that he was being gripped by two pairs of horny powerful hands and lifted over the dipping gunwale into the stern-sheets, while others performed a like office for the saturated A.B.
Smartly the sea-boat was brought alongside the cruiser. Deftly the hoisting-gear was engaged, and with a hundred-and-twenty men tailing on the falls the boat and her occupants were whisked up to a level with the vessel's quarter-deck.
And thus Acting Sub-lieutenant John Sefton found himself on board H.M.S. Warrior, in blissful ignorance of the gallant part the armoured cruiser was about to bear in the glorious battle off the Jutland Bank.
[CHAPTER VI--Action at the Double]
The ship upon which Sefton found himself as an unauthorized supernumerary was an armoured cruiser of 13,550 tons, built and completed at Pembroke nine years previously. She was one of a class of four that marked a new departure in naval architecture--each of her guns being mounted singly and in a separate turret. At the time when she was laid down she was considered one of the heaviest armed cruisers of her day, mounting six 9.2-inch and four 7.5-inch guns. Of these, three 9.2's could be made to fire ahead, and a similar number astern, while on either broadside she could deliver a formidable salvo from four of the guns of heavier calibre and two of the 7.5's. With the exception of the following year's programme of the Minotaur class, the Warrior and her sister ships were the last armoured cruisers laid down by the British Admiralty, the all-big-gun battle-cruisers simply outclassing at one swoop the armoured cruisers of the world's navies.
Nevertheless the Warrior was still a powerful unit, and calculated to be more than a match for any German vessel of her size. Her designed speed of a fraction over 22 knots--a rate that when necessity arose could be exceeded--enabled her with the rest of her class to form a valuable, hard-hitting auxiliary to the vessels of the battle-cruiser squadrons.