“Not hurt, I hope, Amos?” he exclaimed, when he could find his breath.
“Er—I guess only a bump or so,” stammered the other, trying to smile, although the effort was a dismal failure because it made his head hurt. “Say, that was a peach of a crack, wasn’t it? They got our range that time all right, seems like, and more may follow that shell.”
“They’ve changed the course of the ship, I think,” said Jack, “for the purpose of blocking that very game. I wonder how much damage it did aboard?”
“I’m almost afraid to find out,” Amos admitted, “because some of the poor fellows may be lying around terribly hurt, or else blown into bits.”
Gaining their feet they pushed in the direction of the spot where the shell had burst. It was forward on the port side, and from this fact they knew the missile must have come from a battery or fort on Gallipoli and not the Asiatic side of the straits.
Despite the fact that there was nothing but the best of steel to be struck by the monster shell, so powerful was the explosive contained in the same that much material damage had been effected. Luckily few of the crew chanced to be within reach of the explosion. Three men received minor wounds, no one was killed, and the damage, the boys quickly learned, was not likely to interfere in the least with the work laid out for the Thunderer on that morning.
“If one of those big things ever burst close to a fellow,” Amos commented as he examined the effect of the gunfire, “it would be all day with him.”
“One thing sure,” Jack added, “he would never know what hurt him. It would be like being struck by lightning; they say the victim sees a flash, and that is the end of it. He never lives long enough to hear the thunder, even when it comes hot on the heels of the lightning.”
The boys were greatly interested in the humble and dangerous though necessary work of the numerous mine-sweepers. Glory there was none for the brave-hearted men aboard the small boats that kept stubbornly at their labor, despite the fire to which they were frequently subjected. Now and then one might be hit and go down, whereupon the crew of a few men must take their chances with the sharks known to infest those waters when there was so much fighting going on.
“They are heroes, every one of them,” Amos declared, when they talked of the remarkable courage shown by the men aboard these small craft. “Just as much as the fellow who does some striking deed in the spotlight, and is rewarded by the Nation’s praise, as well as the Victoria Cross. But they never expect to be known, and are content to just go on and do their work the best way they can see, content if success crowns their efforts.”