"Our own mother wouldn't know us, sir," concluded the petty officer.
"Let us hope she'll have the chance," rejoined Sefton, wondering whether it was humanly possible once more to bring the crippled vessel alongside her parent ship, or whether the Calder would again berth alongside the jetty at far-off Rosyth.
The arrival of half a dozen men enabled Sefton to have the commanding officer removed below. Anxiously the sub awaited Stirling's verdict. The report was long in coming, but the doctor's hands were full to overflowing. During that terrible night many a man owed his life, under Providence, to the administrations of the young medico. Indifferent to his own peril, although the crippled destroyer was straining badly in the heavy seas, Pills toiled like a galley-slave in the semi-darkness, for the electric light had failed, and the temporary operating-room, crowded with ghastly cases, was illuminated only by the glimmer of three oil-lamps.
"That you, Pills?" enquired Sefton anxiously, as an officer, distinguishable only by his uniform cap stuck at a comical angle on the top of his head, clambered upon the bridge.
"No--Boxspanner," replied that worthy. "At least what's left of him. Where's the skipper?"
"Knocked out."
"Done in?"
Sefton shook his head.
"Don't know," he replied. "Pills has him in hand. In any case he's got it pretty badly. Well, how goes it?"
"Can't get more'n five knots out of the engines," replied the engineer-lieutenant. "Port engine-room reduced to scrap. There was three feet of water in the stokeholds, but it's subsiding, thank goodness! Deuce of a mess when the lights went out. Stumbled over a man and banged my head. It feels like a blister on the tyre of a car--liable to burst at any moment, don't you know. The fellow strafed me for treading on him. Asked him what the deuce he was lying there for, since he had wind enough to kick up a row. What do you think he was up to?"