The enemy ships were rapidly becoming distinguishable as funnels and masts hurrying beneath a pall of smoke. The hulls were still under the rim of the horizon, but were gradually rising.
‘When we can see the hulls the range will be approximately 24,000 yards, and firing will open any time after that,’ remarked the lieutenant to an officer whose first action this was.
Meanwhile, the range-finder was being rapidly adjusted by an able seaman who, seated behind it, commenced singing out in a monotonous voice with the suspicion of a shake of excitement in it: ‘22,000—20,500—19,000—18,000.’
As he reached the last figure, there was a spattering sound in the seas on their port side, and huge columns of spray were thrown 200 feet up in the air. Driven back by the wind, sheets of water swept against the top and drenched the luckless crew. Heedless, the lieutenant watched the fall of the shot and muttered: ‘Five hundred short. Damned good effort at opening the ball.’
As he spoke there was a thundering roar from the ship beneath him, and he instinctively stepped back from the edge of the top to avoid the blast from the guns beneath. ‘That’s A turret firing’; and as he traced the flight of the huge projectile which was plainly visible winging its way towards the distant speck, he waited anxiously for the splash which would indicate its fall. ‘Good hunting! About five hundred short, too!’
These were not his guns and were not under his control; but he knew that the capable lieutenant spotting in the gun control tower below him, and the warrant officer in the top twenty feet above him, would speedily correct the error. His job was to wait and watch.
The action had become general. Shells, looking like Gargantuan hailstones, were falling on every side of him; while columns of water, like geysers, were rising everywhere and obscuring the range. As a shell whizzed past them and its breath pushed them farther back into the top, a shout of admiration escaped him. ‘Straddled in the third salvo! Oh, by Jove! good shooting! Hope we’re doing as well!’
The top rocked to the thundering reverberation of our own guns; the air was thick with the cordite smoke; the whistle and shriek of shells as they passed, hit, or burst short were as insistent as the noise of a railway engine’s whistle in a tunnel; sheets of spray were wafted up to them and fell like waterfalls without making any distinguishable sound; whilst, as he caught sight of them between the showers, the range-finder’s voice, all trace of excitement gone, went on with its monotonous sing-song: ‘17,000—16,500—15,000.’
For a second the officer glanced at the ships ahead. Even as he turned, he saw three enemy shells falling on the next ahead.