"Who was it, sir?" somebody asked him, but he took no notice.
Then the starboard guns and the quarter-deck 8-inch commenced, and we had begun to go past those two forts for the second run.
I pictured our shells bursting against the rocks and among the guns I had seen there, and wondered whether the European in charge was sober or not, and whether the Commander was still holding out round his Krupp gun. If only I hadn't been such a fool as to jump down off that parapet of sand-bags, I might have been with him still.
We were coming to the end of the second run now, and the First Lieutenant had just said as he wiped his forehead: "They can't stand much more of this if we're making anything like decent shooting," when they commenced cheering on deck, and somebody shouted down that the forts had hoisted a white flag. The men below cheered from one end of the passages to the other, and the guns above ceased firing.
Dr. Fox and a sick-berth steward climbed up a hoist to look after some more wounded on deck, and in a few minutes the main engines began to slow down and presently stopped altogether.
On deck we heard the bos'n's mate pipe, "Away, second cutter!" a voice yelled down the hoist, "Any second cutters down below there?" A couple of men belonging to that boat scrambled hastily up, there was silence again, and we could do nothing but wait and wonder what was happening.
"If we sit here much longer I'm blowed if we sha'n't miss our first dog-watch," said one of the stokers cheerfully, and unbending his cramped legs.
"'Tis a hill wind that don't blow nobody no good," added the other reflectively, and they both spat into a dark corner behind the fire-hose.
"Put those two men in the Commander's report," said the First Lieutenant, who had just come over from the opposite side and saw them spit.
Daisy, his midshipman, got out his pocket-book and took their names.