"A clean sweep, sir," replied Brown. "A regular wipe-out. Copped us proper, the swine. Both tubes knocked out, after 4-inch blown clean over the side."
"Do you know if we're making much water?" asked the sub anxiously, for the sluggish way in which the destroyer laboured through the water gave rise to considerable apprehension in that respect.
"Can't say, sir."
"Then pass the word for the senior petty officer to report to me."
The A.B. hurried off, muttering curiously expressed words of thanksgiving at his young officer's escape. Gratitude had been a hitherto undeveloped trait in Brown's nature, until that memorable occasion when Sefton risked his life, if not exactly to save, to be with him when he found himself in the "ditch".
Groping for the voice-tube from the bridge to the engine-room, for the telegraph had disappeared, Sefton attempted to call up the engineer-lieutenant, but in vain. This means of communication with the engine-room was completely interrupted.
It seemed an interminable time before the desired petty officer reported himself to the bridge. He was a short, lightly-built man, holding the rank of gunner's mate, and was a capable and fairly well-educated specimen of the lower deck. Yet, had it been daylight, and he had been dumped down just as he was in the streets of a naval town, he would have been promptly run in by the police as a vagrant. His features were literally hidden in soot mingled with blood, for a shell had hurled him face downwards upon a jagged steel grating, which had harrowed his face in a disfiguring though not dangerous fashion. His scanty uniform was in ribbons, and smelt strongly of smouldering embers, while a black scarf tied tightly round his left leg below the knee failed to stop a steady trickle from a shrapnel wound.
Briefly and to the point the petty officer made his report. The Calder had been hulled in more than twenty places, but only three holes were betwixt wind and water. These had already admitted a considerable quantity of water, but temporary repairs were already in hand. The steam-pumps had been damaged, but were capable of being set right, while the use of the hand-pumps enabled the sorry remnant of the destroyer's crew to keep the leaks well under control.
Nevertheless the Calder no longer rose buoyantly to the waves. A sullen, listless movement told its own tale. Not without a grim, determined struggle would her crew be able successfully to combat the joint effects of war and rough weather.
On deck most of the fittings had been swept clear. Of the funnel only seven feet of jagged stump remained. The rest had vanished. Both masts had been shot away close to the deck. Of the conning-tower only the base was left; the rest had been blown away almost with the last shell fired at point-blank range. The Calder's raised fo'c'sle no longer existed. From two feet close to the water-line at the stem, and rising obliquely to the foot of the bridge, there was nothing left but an inclined plane of bent and perforated steel plates.