itan aft, cutting off several
feet of her stern and leaving her rudder jammed hard over. As complete
a mess as the Personal Devil himself could have devised, and all due
to the merest accident of a few panicky salvoes. Presently the two
ships worked clear in a smother of steam and oil, and went their
several ways. Quite a while after she had parted from Shaitan, Goblin
discovered several of Shaitan's people, some of them wounded, on her
own foc'sle, where they had been pitched by the collision. Goblin,
working her way homeward on such boilers as remained, carried on a
one-gun fight at a few cables' distance with some enemy destroyers,
who, not knowing what state she was in, sheered off after a few
rounds. Shaitan, holed forward and opened up aft, came across the
survivors from Gehenna clinging to their raft, and took them aboard.
Then some of our destroyers--they were thick on the sea that
night--tried to tow her stern-first, for Goblin had cut her up badly
forward. But, since Shaitan lacked any stern, and her rudder was
jammed hard across where the stern should have been, the hawsers
parted, and, after leave asked of lawful authority, across all that
waste of waters, they sank Shaitan by gun-fire, having first taken all
the proper steps about the confidential books. Yet Shaitan had had her
little crumb of comfort ere the end. While she lay crippled she saw
quite close to her a German cruiser that was trailing homeward in the
dawn gradually heel over and sink.

This completes my version of the various accounts of the four
destroyers directly concerned for a few hours, on one minute section
of one wing of our battle. Other ships witnessed other aspects of the
agony and duly noted them as they went about their business. One of
our battleships, for instance, made out by the glare of burning
Gehenna that the supposed cruiser that Eblis torpedoed was a German
battleship of a certain class. So Gehenna did not die in vain, and we
may take it that the discovery did not unduly depress Eblis's wounded
in hospital.

ASKING FOR TROUBLE

The rest of the flotilla that the four destroyers belonged to had
their own adventures later. One of them, chasing or being chased, saw
Goblin out of control just before Goblin and Shaitan locked, and
narrowly escaped adding herself to that triple collision. Another
loosed a couple of torpedoes at the enemy ships who were attacking
Gehenna, which, perhaps, accounts for the anxiety of the enemy