Dr. Clegg came cheerily along from under the fo'c'stle, and stopped near our turret to look at her too.
He sang out asking if we had our 'first aid' bag, and I put my head down the sighting-hood to find out.
'Yes, sir!' I shouted down—it did me good to shout.
'Just seeing that all our things are rigged,' he said, smiling at Mr. Bigge, looking along at the sunrise for a moment with a funny expression in his face before he dived down below.
'He may not see it again,' Mr. Bigge said, and I understood and felt shivery all over.
Inside my turret I could hear the Gunlayer, who had his eye to the telescopic sight, talking to the Sight Setter. 'Now don't you go a-playing none of your tricks, Bill. Tie a bit of spun yarn round your right thumb and you'll know it from your left, and won't be playing the ass with the deflection as you did at the battle practice—a-spoiling the whole ship's shooting.'
Raynor, the Engineer Sub, came along too, and went down into our turret to see if the hydraulic machinery was all right. He climbed out of the sighting-hood in a few minutes, borrowed Mr. Bigge's telescope to have a look at the white ship, told us that everything was working well, and climbed down on deck.
Then, up in the for'ard fire-control position—high up the mast—I heard the 'Angel's' voice reading off the ranges on the long range finder, 'eight thousand nine fifty—eight thousand nine hundred—eight thousand eight fifty'—and I popped my head down inside to see if our range indicator was working properly. It was, and the figures were slipping round all right. I looked up again, but he had his eyes glued to the range finder and didn't see me.
Marchant, the Inkslinger, leaned out of the 'control' position, caught sight of me, and waved his bandaged hand—he was beaming all over.
Mr. Montague, too, looked down and sang out to the fore bridge for some of the signal halyards to be hauled aside as they were fouling the range finder, and I could just see the feet of Pearson, the Assistant Paymaster, who was sitting, straddle-legs, on the top of it, doing 'spotting officer'—to spot whether shots fell short or over. I was jolly glad that I wasn't up there, and that, if it did come to a fight, I had six inches of armour to get behind.