at an enemy searchlight which winked and went out, and was closing in
to help Gehenna when she found herself under the noses of a couple of
enemy cruisers. "The nearer one," he says, "altered course to ram me
apparently." The Senior Service writes in curiously lawyer-like
fashion, but there is no denying that they act quite directly. "I
therefore put my helm hard aport and the two ships met and rammed each
other, port bow to port bow." There could have been no time to think
and, for Eblis's commander on the bridge, none to gather information.
But he had observant subordinates, and he writes--and I would humbly
suggest that the words be made the ship's motto for evermore--he
writes, "Those aft noted" that the enemy cruiser had certain marks on
her funnel and certain arrangements of derricks on each side which,
quite apart from the evidence she left behind her, betrayed her class.
Eblis and she met. Says Eblis: "I consider I must have considerably
damaged this cruiser, as 20 feet of her side plating was left in my
foc'sle." Twenty feet of ragged rivet-slinging steel, razoring and
reaping about in the dark on a foc'sle that had collapsed like a
concertina! It was very fair plating too. There were side-scuttle
holes in it--what we passengers would call portholes. But it might
have been better, for Eblis reports sorrowfully, "by the thickness of
the coats of paint (duly given in 32nds of the inch) she would not
appear to have been a very new ship."

A FUGITIVE ON FIRE

New or old, the enemy had done her best. She had completely demolished
Eblis's bridge and searchlight platform, brought down the mast and the
fore-funnel, ruined the whaler and the dinghy, split the foc'sle open
above water from the stem to the galley which is abaft the bridge, and
below water had opened it up from the stem to the second bulkhead. She
had further ripped off Eblis's skin-plating for an amazing number of
yards on one side of her, and had fired a couple of large-calibre
shells into Eblis at point-blank range, narrowly missing her vitals.
Even so, Eblis is as impartial as a prize-court. She reports that the
second shot, a trifle of eight inches, "may have been fired at a
different time or just after colliding." But the night was yet young,
and "just after getting clear of this cruiser an enemy battle-cruiser
grazed past our stern at high speed" and again the judgmatic mind--"I
think she must have intended to ram us." She was a large
three-fu