[Illustration: "It went up in a slanting direction and then, ... it steered straight for the enemy's balloon...."] The black water gurgled and splashed around his feet as he rushed on, dashing with a hollow sound against one side of the passage when the ship heeled over, only to be tossed back in a moment with equal force. What was that?--Lieutenant Meade had reached the officers' mess--was it music or were his ears playing him a trick? Meade opened the door and thought at first he must be dreaming. There sat his friend and comrade, Lieutenant Besser, at the piano, hammering wildly on the keys. That same Johnny Besser who, on account of his theological predilections went by the nickname of "The Reverend," and who could argue until long after midnight over the most profound Biblical problems, that same Johnny Besser, who was perpetually on the water-wagon. There he sat, banging away as hard as he could on the piano! Meade rushed at him angrily and seizing him by the arm cried: "Johnny, what are you doing here? Are you crazy?" Johnny took no notice of him whatever, but went on playing and began in a strange uncanny voice to sing the old mariner's song: "Tom Brown's mother she likes whisky in her tea, As we go rolling home. Glory, Glory Hallelujah." Horror seized Meade, and he tried to pull Johnny away from the piano, but the resistance offered by the poor fellow who had become mentally deranged from sheer terror was too great, and he had to give up the struggle. From the outside came the din of battle. Meade threw the door of the mess shut behind him, shivering with horror. Once more he heard the strains of "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah," and then he hurried upstairs. He kept the condition in which he had found Johnny to himself. When Lieutenant Meade got back to the conning-tower to make his report, the two fleets had passed each other in a parallel course. The enemy's shells had swept the decks of the _Connecticut_ with the force of a hurricane. The gunners from the port side had already been called on to fill up the gaps in the turrets on the starboard side. By this time dead bodies were removed only where they were in the way, and even the wounded were left to lie where they had fallen. When large pieces of wood from the burning boats began to be thrown on deck by the bursting shells, a fresh danger was created, and the attempt was made to toss them overboard with the aid of the cranes. But this succeeded only on the port side. The starboard crane was smashed to bits by a Japanese explosive shell just as it was raising a launch, the same shot carrying off the third funnel just behind it. When Togo's last ship had left the _Connecticut_ behind, only one funnel full of gaping holes and half of the mainmast were left standing on the deck of the admiral's flag-ship, which presented a wild chaos of bent and broken ironwork. Through the ruins of the deck structures rose the flames and thick smoke from the boilers.