Simultaneously the Hun let fly a broadside. The destroyer reeled under the shock, but once again she was in luck, for none of the hostile guns could be sufficiently depressed to score a vital hit. The next instant the cruiser was lost to sight in the darkness, saluted by a number of rounds from the destroyer's after 4-inch gun.
Temporarily stunned by the detonations of the German cruiser's guns--for he was within twenty feet of the muzzles of several of the weapons--Sefton leaned against the conning-tower. The metal was unpleasantly hot, for a light shell had burst against it hardly a minute before. Beyond denting the steel armour and blowing the signal-locker over the side, the missile had done no further damage.
Coughing the acrid fumes from his lungs and clearing his eyes of involuntary tears, for the air was thick with irritating dust, Sefton began to take a renewed interest in his surroundings.
The Calder had penetrated the hostile line without sustaining serious damage. She had now to return.
The sub grasped one of the voice-tubes. The flexible pipe came away in his hand, the whole system having been cut through with a fragment of shell.
"We've had it pretty hot!" he soliloquized. "Wonder we're still afloat. Well, now for it once more."
He leant over the after side of the bridge. A dark figure was moving for'ard ten feet beneath him.
"Pass the word to the L.T.O.," ordered the sub, "to report the number of torpedoes remaining."
"Aye, aye, sir," replied the man, and, retracing his steps, he hurried aft to where the leading torpedo-man was standing at the tubes.
Back came the messenger, lurching as he loomed through the darkness.