A terrific crash, outvoicing every other noise in the pandemonium, shook the fore-top like a rattle. The occupants, hurled violently, subsided in a confused struggling heap upon the steel floor. For some moments they remained prostrate, making no effort to sort themselves out. Peter opened his eyes, to close them quickly again. Someone's heel was beating a tattoo within an inch or so of his nose. He wriggled clear and sat up. One of the bluejackets, wedged in an angle of the walls, was mopping the claret that welled from his nose. The two officers and the midshipman were sorting themselves out, looking too dazed to understand how they got there and what they were doing. The second bluejacket was muttering to himself as he fumbled in his jumper for some article that he had prized and lost. "Anyone hit?" bawled Peter. His words were inaudible, but no one showed any signs of serious injury. The fore-top was shaking badly--not only through the continuous concussion, but as if it were no longer firmly secured to the head of the tripod mast. The small oval aperture that opened into the principal leg of the tripod, and formed an alternative means of gaining the deck, was open. Wisps of smoke issued from it. A man with a bandaged head appeared, squeezing with an obvious effort through the door. Peter recognized him as a petty-officer belonging to the range-finding party. "Fair kippered that way, sir," he shouted. "A perishin' eel couldn't wriggle through. No, mast ain't carried away quite. 'S got a bulge in 'er. Lootenant, 'e told me to report verbally that our range-finder's knocked out, an' all controls smashed up." Having explained his presence, the P.O. spat on his hands, hitched up his trousers, and lowered himself over the edge of the fore-top. Peter, leaning over, watched him grip the rungs on the outside of the tripod and commence his eighty-odd feet descent. Then something else attracted the young officer's attention. All was not well with A and B turrets. They had ceased firing. The smoke had cleared considerably, but from the riven roof of A turret a column of white flame was leaping almost as high as the platform on which Peter stood. He was unpleasantly aware of the heat. The updraught was like that of a blast-furnace. Someone touched him on the shoulder. Turning, he saw Ambrose, one of the officers with him on the top. "Looks like the _Queen Mary_ stunt," said Ambrose grimly. "We'll be blown sky high in half a shake." Peter replied that that possibility was by no means remote. That white flame came from burning cordite. Once the fire got to the magazine the _Rebound_ would be blown to smithereens. "We shan't have to go as far as some of those poor blighters," continued Ambrose, with a wry smile. He came of a stock of fighting men, many of whom had met death with a jest on their lips.