"Are we getting close inshore?" "Have the forts opened fire yet?" "Is that big gun still firing?" "Where's the Strong Arm?"
Then there was silence again—all but the noises of the engines drumming and thudding on the other side of the white bulk-heads.
The First Lieutenant, trying to appear calm, walked round and round, first along the port side, then down the starboard passage, seeing that everything was ready and everybody in his place, speaking a word here and there to a petty officer, and followed closely by his midshipman messenger, a very junior chap we called "Daisy".
Then the little bell at our end of the conning-tower voice-pipe tinkled loudly. The man stationed there sang out for the First Lieutenant, and he came running up. Captain Helston was giving him an order from the conning tower.
"Very good, sir," he shouted back.
"Stand by on the port side, men; we are just going to commence."
Oh, wasn't it exciting! and didn't I wish that I was up above that armoured deck with the sky overhead, instead of lying down there so stiff and sore that I could barely move!
The men were fidgeting nervously from one foot to the other, and then the silence was broken by the banging of the guns in the port battery overhead. A second later the quarter-deck 8-inch went off, and we could feel the ship quiver; another quiver came from the fo'c'stle big gun for'ard. Two minutes of this and then men shouted hoarsely down the hoists for more ammunition, the voice-pipe bells tinkled, and the order came down to pass up only common shell (shell with thin walls and a large bursting charge).
Men flew backwards and forwards, the dust thickened again, the heat and the mugginess were horrid, and every now and again some of the powder smoke would be blown down the hoists and make those stifling ammunition passages darker still.
The First Lieutenant walked steadily backwards and forwards along the port side, singing out, "Steady, men; don't hurry—don't crowd," and the two stokers near me tucked their feet out of the way and went on chewing their quids of tobacco.