endures a strain. One
error in battle by any one of them might wreck the British Empire.

It is difficult to write about any man-of-war and not be technical; for
everything about her seems technical and mechanical except the fact
that she floats. Her officers and crew are engaged in work which is
legerdemain to the civilian.

"Was it like what you thought it would be after all your training for a
naval action?" one asked.

"Yes, quite; pretty much as we reasoned it out," was the reply.
"Indeed, this was the most remarkable thing. It was battle practice--
with the other fellow shooting at you!"

The fire-control officers, who were aloft, all agreed about one
unexpected sensation, which had not occurred to any expert
scientifically predicting what action would be like. They are the only
ones who may really "see" the battle in the full sense.

"When the shells burst against the armour," said one of these
officers, "the fragments were visible as they flew about. We had a
desire, in the midst of preoccupation with our work, to reach out and
catch them. Singular mental phenomenon, wasn't it?"

At eight or nine thousand yards one knew that the modern battleship
could tear a target to pieces. But eighteen thousand--was accuracy
possible at that distance?

"Did one in five German shells hit at that range?" I asked.

"No!"

Or in ten? No! In twenty? Still no, though less decisively. You got a
conviction, then, that the day of holding your fire until you were close
in enough for a large percentage of hits was past. Accuracy was still
vital and decisive, but generic accuracy. At eighteen thousand yards
all the factors which send a thousand or fifteen hundred or two
thousand pounds of steel that long distance cannot be so gauged
that each one will strike in exactly the same line when ten issue from
the gun-muzzles in a broadside. But if one out of twenty is on at
eighteen thousand yards, it may mean a turret out of action. Again,
four or five might hit, or none. So, no risk of waiting may be taken, in
face of the danger of a chance shot at long range. It was a chance
shot which struck the Lion's feed tank and disabled her and kept the
cat squadron from doing to the other German cruisers what they had
done to the Bluecher.

"And the noise of it to you aloft, spotting the shots?" I suggested. "It
must have been a lonely place in such a tornado."

"Yes. Besides the crashing blasts from our own guns we had the
screams of