As the boat drew near the Russian small shot was tearing up the sea like a wintry storm. The order having been given, the torpedo-spars were lowered, so that each torpedo sank ten feet under water.
“Fire!” yelled Firebrand.
Electricity was applied, both torpedoes exploded, and the launch sheered off gallantly in cataracts of foam.
At the same moment the Russians observed us not ten yards distant, coming stem on at full speed. Her turret guns were concentrated and fired; so were ours. The crash was indescribably hideous, yet it was as nothing compared with that which followed a few seconds later. Our ram, entering the Russian fairly amidships, cut her almost in two. We backed out instantly, intending to repeat the operation. Well was it for us that we did so. We had just backed a few hundred yards astern, and given the order to go ahead full steam, when the Russian’s magazine exploded. Our charge had somehow fired it. Instantly there was a crashing roar as if heaven and earth had met in chaotic conflict. The air was darkened with bursting clouds of blackest smoke, in the midst of which beams, guns, pistons, boilers, armour-plates, human limbs and heads were seen hurling about like the débris of a wrecked universe. Much of this came down upon our iron deck. The clatter was appalling. It was a supreme moment! I was standing on the flying structure beside one of the officers. “Glorious!” he muttered, while a pleasant smile played upon his lips. Just then I chanced to look up, and saw one of the Russian fore-turret 85-ton guns falling towards me. It knocked me off the flying structure, and I fell with an agonising yell on the deck below.
“Hallo!” exclaimed a familiar voice, as a man stooped to raise me.
I looked up. It was my hospital-assistant. I had fallen out of bed!
“You seem to have had a night of it, sir—cheering and shouting to such an extent that I thought of awaking you once or twice, but refrained because of your strict orders to the contrary. Not hurt, I hope?”
“So, then,” I said, with a sigh of intense relief, as I proceeded to dress, “the whole affair has been—A Dream!”
“Ah!” thought I, on passing through the hospital for the last time before quitting it, and gazing sadly on the ghastly rows of sick and wounded, “well were it for this unfortunate world if war and all its horrors were but the phantasmagoria of a similar dream.”