'Pull yourself together, Bob,' he whispered, 'remember that you are an officer. They felt no pain.'
I heard the Commander bellow at Billums; he roared my name too and cursed me, sending me down to the Engineer Commander for as many stokers as he could spare.
I was too absolutely frozen to care about anything, and when I met 'Blotchy' Smith, half blubbing, and he told me that Barton had been killed in the after turret and the Forlorn Hope in his, I hardly heard what he said—I felt quite silly and 'wobbly' in my head.
I really could not tell you what happened for the next five hours—I was so dazed and numbed—but I found myself going down into a boat with a lot more of our mids., and we crawled up a ladder on board the Hercules. We huddled up in a corner of her gun-room, and they brought us something to eat, but it nearly made me sick to look at it. The Hercules mids. let us alone and didn't ask any questions, and for hours we sat there, covered with dirt and smoke, till some one led us away and made us clean ourselves. Some one lent me a pair of pyjamas, and I crawled into a hammock, but daren't shut my eyes, and had to get out and sit close to a light. I don't know how long I sat there, but one of the Hercules' doctors found me, and lifted me back into my hammock. He injected something into my arm, and was going away, but I clutched his sleeve—I couldn't be left alone—and then cried till I thought I should die.
CHAPTER XV
The Santa Cruz Fleet again
Written by Sub-Lieutenant William Wilson, R.N.
For days after that awful morning we seemed half stunned. We had left El Castellar the night before, as smart a ship and as cheery a lot of officers and men as there were in the Navy, and fifteen minutes after La Buena Presidente fired her first broadside the Hector was a complete wreck above the waterline, and was so badly holed beneath it that she only managed with difficulty to keep herself afloat and crawl back into shallow water. Fortunately one anchor and cable had not been destroyed, and we anchored under El Castellar, the Hercules anchoring as close as possible in case it should become necessary for us to abandon the ship.
She sent working parties aboard at once, and we eventually managed to make the Hector fairly water-tight, pump her dry, and get her on an even keel again. But that was not until the third day, and those three days and nights have always been like a horrible nightmare.
We could not get away from things—the stump of the foretopmast and that single copper voice-pipe, sticking out where the fore control had been, to remind us that Montague, Pearson the A.P., Marchant the cheery little Clerk, and the 'Angel' had simply disappeared—blown to pieces; the stump of the after 9.2, inside the turret of which Barton had been killed, and the wreckage of the bridge, on top of the starboard foremost turret, which had crushed poor Bigge.