Periodical bursts of firing were still audible from ahead, where our battle cruisers were harrying the rear of the fast retreating enemy.
We remained at our action stations for another half-hour, and then "Hands to Night Defence" was sounded off. After packing up in the conning-tower we all rushed off to see what damage the ship had sustained.
After my look round I went to the gunroom and managed to get a glass of very flat beer, a hunk of bread, and a piece of pressed beef. This was the only food I had between tea and breakfast the next morning. Then I went up on to the bridge, and had not been there long when the lights of some strange ship were sighted on our port bow. The 4-in. guns' crews immediately closed up, but as we drew nearer the suspect proved to be nothing but an inoffensive trawler.
This incident over, I went aft to my night defence station—a little platform screened by canvas, barely six feet square, and a good fifty feet above the water-line. It is commonly known as the "Eiffel Tower," and in this small space a party of eight had to spend the night. Obviously there was no room to lie down, and, further, it was bitterly cold.
All night the Hun destroyers tried to press home an attack on the Battle Fleet, but our light craft continually beat them off, sinking many in the process. At intervals the whole sky was lighted up with a lurid glare as one or other of the enemy ships flared skyward and crashed to her doom. All around the eastern horizon the flash of guns was distinctly visible, only dying away in one quarter to blaze up in another. Had I been less busy—or less cold—I might have thought of Tennyson's lines in "The Revenge":
Ship after ship the whole night long
With her battle-thunder and flame,
Ship after ship the whole night long
Drew back with her dead and her shame.