gun-fire, we must all have been more or less blinded in the _Firebrand_,
for we had run close to what may have been a part of the main en'my
battl' line wi'out nothin' bein' reported. Our firin' had give us away,
o' course, an' the nearest ships must have had their guns trained on us,
waitin' to be sure what we was. One o' 'em must have made up his mind we
was en'my even before we spotted 'em at all, for the first thing I saw
was the white o' the bow wave an' wake as she turned toward us, prob'ly
to ram. She'd have caught us just about midships if the bridge hadn't
sighted her an' done the only thing open to do--turned to meet her head
on.

"I don't remember that either she or us switched on recognition lights,
but the Hun opened with ev'rything that would bear just before we
slammed together. It must have been by the gun-flashes that I saw she
had three funnels, wi' what looked like some kind o' marks painted on
'em in red. I saw our second funnel give a jump and crumple up as a proj
hit it, an' then a spurt o' flame--from a big gun fired almost
point-blank--looked to shoot right on to the bridge. I thought that it
must have killed ev'ry man there an' carried away all the steering gear.
But no.

"The old _Firebrand_ wi' helm hard-a-port, went swingin' right on thro'
the point or two more that saved her life. I could feel by the way she
jumped an' gathered herself that last second that the ol' girl was still
under control. Then we struck wi' a horrible grind an' crash, an' I went
sprawlin' flat.

"If the Hun had hit us half a wink sooner, or if we had turned half a
point less, we'd have been swallowed alive and split up in small hunks.
As it was, we didn't have a lot the worst o' it, an' p'raps we more than
broke even. It was like a mastiff an' terrier runnin' into each other in
the dark, an' the terrier only gettin' run over an' the mastiff gettin'
a piece bit clean out o' his neck. It was our port bows that come
together, an' for only a sort o' glancin' blow. But it was the stem o'
the _Firebran'_ that was turned in sharpest, an' it was her that was
hittin' up--by a good ten knots--the most speed. She was left in a
terribl' mess, but most o' the damage was from her rammin' the Hun, not
from the Hun rammin' her. While as for what she did to the Hun, the best
proof o' it was the more'n twenty feet of her side-platin'--an upper
strake, wi' scuttl' holes in it an' pieces o' gutterway deck hangin' to
it--that we found