The rat-tat-tat! rat, tat, tat, tat! on our side from time to time, as we got into the thick of it, told us plainly of shells pitching short and bursting, whose fragments struck but did not penetrate the ship's skin; it was a weird sound, occasionally varied by a tremendous "woomp," which once at least made the paymaster, who was reclining near me on a flour sack, and myself, look hard at the side close by us, where we fully expected, for the moment, to see water coming in. As a matter of fact, this shell entered some forty feet away, bursting on entry into the Lieutenant Commander's cabin, while its solid nose finally fetched up in the wardroom, where later on it was christened "our honorary member." For this trophy I believe we have the Mainz or Koeln to thank. The wardroom steward found a similar piece of shell in his hammock that night. It had penetrated the ship's side and a bulkhead before finally choosing its highly suitable place of rest.
The shells that missed us burst upon the surface of the ocean near by and, strange as it may seem to those not familiar with such things, the fragments flew from the water with sufficient force to dent the sides of the ship and to kill men when they dropped on the deck.
When a shell actually struck our ship and penetrated the structure there was a reverberating crash that roared from end to end and nearly drove our eardrums in and made work of any delicacy impossible. It was bad enough with us, but what must have been happening on some of the German ships that were now sinking and were being pierced by great shells from three sides at once I leave to some one with imagination.
II—"I WATCHED THE BURNING CRUISER SINK"
It would surely require the pen of a Dante to depict all the horrors that were happening on the German cruiser Mainz, as she went down. We knew that she was burning. The men stayed at their guns until the flames actually began to burn up their legs. The wounded lay in heaps on the deck and the flames destroyed them without help. The blood ran on the decks so that the men who were still trying to work the light deck guns slipped in it and fell.
Our shells passed through their hospital ward and killed the wounded and the surgeons as they were working over them. That any men could have passed through such an ordeal and retained their senses is a tribute to the wonderful effect of naval training and discipline.
The Fearless appears to have borne a somewhat charmed life—a large number of shells pitched just short and just over her—she was hit fair and square by seven, one of which played a lot of havoc with the middle deck forward and the mess gear there. Her sides showed some twenty-three holes of varying size, and yet her list of casualties was only eight wounded, none dangerously. She also had two narrow escapes from being torpedoed, one torpedo passing just forward from an unknown source, and another aft from a submarine.
During comparative lulls I went onto the upper deck once or twice, to visit the forward station and to see that all was correct. For suppressed excitement and vivid interest I should say the seeker after sensation could scarcely ask for more than a modern naval action.
The shells were falling all about us, and why we were not sunk I can never understand. The captain kept the ship zigzagging on her course to upset the enemy's aim. At one time we came within 2,000 yards of the Mainz, which had already been partly wrecked by the long-distance fire from our big battle cruisers, the Lion, Invincible, and Queen Mary. It was our duty to help finish her without sinking our big ships.