As he ran up the ladder to the bridge, he heard a roar in the air, and a moment later a great sheet of flame leaped up just in front of the forward funnel with a colossal detonation. The blast of the explosion flung him to the deck. He picked himself up, bruised, dazed, but uninjured, and looked for the enemy. The turret had swung its two guns over to starboard, and as he followed their direction they discharged with a couple of almost simultaneous reports. He steadied himself and gazed hard into the distance. In the mist on the horizon he thought he distinguished a long, low band of brownish smoke, and at one end of it a dark spot and a tiny twinkle of flame. A minute later the roar of heavy projectiles tearing through the air came to his ears. Instinctively he flung himself flat upon the deck in the shelter of a gun-turret of the starboard battery. The sharp, splitting report of the gun in that turret was blotted out on the instant by a fearful upheaval that leaped from the centre of the ship with such a blast of noise as seemed to burst his ears. He had a glimpse, he knew not how, of a sheet of lurid flame and of a mighty upspout of water on the ship's flank. In the awful silence which ensued--a silence so profound that he wondered if he were permanently deafened--he staggered to his feet. The turret in front of him had been burst open, the gun protruded askew at a curious angle. He gazed at it, motionless, as though rendered imbecile with the shock. Then a chorus of agonised screams and shrieks came from the turret and continued. He heard them with a sense of relief, so terrible was that unbroken silence. Recovering his wits, he looked about him. The second gun-shield of the starboard battery had also been destroyed, the bridge was a hanging mass of contorted scrap-iron, the wireless "aerials" streamed away to leeward in the gale. The two forward funnels had disappeared and torrents of black smoke were welling up from the level of the deck, obliterating everything. In that smoke, tongues of fire licked upwards, whether from the furnaces or from a conflagration he did not know. Automatically he began to run towards the conning-tower. Without defining itself, the thought that the captain should be informed of the state of affairs impelled him. As he went he heard again the roar of projectiles. Again he flung himself flat. This time the enemy was not so successful. A shell burst somewhere on the fore-castle. The rest flung up spouts of water all around that fell again with a heavy splash. An instant later he was hammering at the lid of the manhole in the conning-tower.