At this moment there was another explosion quite close to me, and something from behind hit me in the right leg. It was not hard, and I felt no pain. I turned round to look, but none of my men were to be seen. Were they killed, or had they gone below?
“Haven’t we any stretchers?” I heard Danchich ask anxiously.
“For whom?” I said.
“Why! for you. You’re bleeding.”
Looking down I saw that my right leg was standing in a pool of blood, but the leg itself felt sound enough.
It was 3 p.m.
“Can you manage to go? Stop—I’ll tell off some one to go with you,” said Danchich, making what seemed to me an unnecessary fuss.
I was annoyed, and angrily said: “Who wants to be accompanied?” and bravely started to go down the ladder, not realising what had happened. When a small splinter had wounded me in the waist at the beginning of the fight, it had hurt me; but this time I felt nothing.
Later, in the hospital, when carried there on a stretcher, I understood why it is that during a fight one hears neither groans nor shouts. All that comes afterwards. Apparently our feelings have strict limits for receiving external impressions, being even deeply impressed by an absurd sentence. A thing can be so painful that you feel nothing, so terrible that you fear nothing.
Having passed through the upper and lower batteries, I descended to the mess deck (under the armoured one), to the hospital, but I involuntarily went back to the ladder.