There were no fires; everything that could ignite had already been burned. The four 12-pounder guns had been torn off their mountings, and in vain I looked on them for marks of direct hits. None could be seen. The havoc had clearly been caused by the force of the explosion, and not by the impact of the shell. How was this? Neither mines nor pyroxylene were stored in the battery, so the enemy’s shells must have exploded with the force of mines.
To my readers, walking about the crippled wreck of a ship like this and inspecting the damage done may appear strange, but it must be remembered that a peculiar, even extraordinary condition of affairs prevailed on board. “So fearful as not to be in the least terrible.” To every one it was perfectly clear that all was over. Neither past or future existed. We lived only in the actual moment, and were possessed with an overpowering desire to do something, no matter what.
Having again gone down to the lower battery, I was proceeding to the stern light gun battery, which I wished to inspect, when I met Kursel.
Verner von Kursel, a Courlandian by birth, and a general favourite with every one in the Suvoroff’s ward-room, had been in the merchant service almost since his cradle, and could speak every language in Europe, though he was equally bad at all of them. When they chaffed him about this in the ward-room he used to say quite seriously: “I think that I’m better at German than any other!”[25] He had seen and been through so much that he never lost his presence of mind, and nothing prevented him meeting his friends with a pleasant smile.
And so now, nodding his head to me in the distance, he cheerily asked:
“Well! How are you passing the time?”
“Badly,” I answered.
“Oh! that’s it, is it? They don’t seem able to hit me yet, but I see that you have been wounded.”
“I was.”
“Where are you off to?”