The events of the next few seconds will always remain a blur in my memory; the bark of a high-angle gun from one of the Destroyers astern cut short his words. The drone above us seemed suddenly to become a rushing roar of sound, and a blast of machine-gun fire swept the deck and bridge as a flight of seaplanes whizzed overhead flying low, so that I could see the goggled faces of the pilots behind the spurts of flame from their guns. The next instant they were gone again in the mist. It was the last sting from the hornets' nest we had been burning out, and Milsom was at my feet leaning on his one arm and staring stupidly at the thin dark stream trickling across the planking. The Destroyers on our beam were firing fruitlessly into the mist. I bent and put my arms about him and he turned his face towards me. Twice he tried to speak, and an attempt at a smile, a ghost of the old jaunty smile, flitted across his grey face. He made one more supreme effort, and with my ear to the bloody lips I just caught the last whispered breath that took his soul with it. 13 We passed up harbour to our berth alongside the following afternoon, and every craft in harbour manned ship and gave us a cheer while the tugs and ferry craft hooted, and the folk ashore lined the beach and waved flags and handkerchiefs. I am not ashamed to own that I saw it all through a blur; and as the off-shore wind carried the thin sound of women's voices, I couldn't help thinking of the lads below the shattered upper deck, who had fallen asleep that England on the morrow might wake to a fuller realisation of her glory. We dined together that night in the coffee room of the big hotel that had been converted into the Naval Headquarters of the Base. We had counted on having a tremendous jamboree--those of us who returned. But somehow the feeling that predominated was a sort of dazed astonishment that we were still alive. And our heads ached "fit to split" as housemaids say. Mouldy was in bed, recovering from a slight gassing, but Thorogood sat next to me, squeezing my arm at intervals as if to reassure himself that he wasn't dreaming; and on the other a big subaltern of Marines who seemed to regard his recent experiences with less emotion that the last Army _v._ Navy rugger match, in which I saw him play. Glegg was there with a bandage over one eye, but Brakespear was in hospital with a piece of shrapnel somewhere in his anatomy. Jervis had shorn his beard, and in the process seemed to have parted with something of his effervescent vivacity, and when I remembered him as I had last seen him, as we shoved off from the blazing Mole, stumbling amid the dead and bawling through his megaphone.... No, we weren't feeling gay.