’"Stop engines," I think,’ Mr. Bigge said, squinting through his telescope to see if she took any notice. Something did go fluttering to her masthead—she only had one mast, a tripod one, amidships—but it was the black and green flag, and a huge one at that. ’She’s not going to stop,’ Mr. Bigge muttered. ’The Sub was right after all. We’ll have to fight her.’ I did feel so uncomfortable and horrid ’inside,’ and looked to see that the sighting-hood was open so that I could crawl down into the turret again—quickly. Every one was simply gazing at the big ship, wondering what she would do, and you couldn’t hear a sound, except the hissing noise of some steam, escaping from a leaky joint near the syren fog-horn up on the foremost funnel. Just aft of our turret was the first 7.5 turret, and the ’Forlorn Hope’—just a little pale—was leaning against the side of it looking at the ship—I was jolly glad that I wasn’t so fat, I felt much too big already—and the ’Shadow’ slipped out of the next 7.5 turret to yarn with him and then ran back again and shut the door. Dr. Clegg came cheerily along from under the fo’c’stle, and stopped near our turret to look at her too. He sang out asking if we had our ’first aid’ bag, and I put my head down the sighting-hood to find out. ’Yes, sir!’ I shouted down—it did me good to shout. ’Just seeing that all our things are rigged,’ he said, smiling at Mr. Bigge, looking along at the sunrise for a moment with a funny expression in his face before he dived down below. ’He may not see it again,’ Mr. Bigge said, and I understood and felt shivery all over. Inside my turret I could hear the Gunlayer, who had his eye to the telescopic sight, talking to the Sight Setter. ’Now don’t you go a-playing none of your tricks, Bill. Tie a bit of spun yarn round your right thumb and you’ll know it from your left, and won’t be playing the ass with the deflection as you did at the battle practice—a-spoiling the whole ship’s shooting.’ Raynor, the Engineer Sub, came along too, and went down into our turret to see if the hydraulic machinery was all right. He climbed out of the sighting-hood in a few minutes, borrowed Mr. Bigge’s telescope to have a look at the white ship, told us that everything was working well, and climbed down on deck. Then, up in the for’ard fire-control position—high up the mast—I heard the ’Angel’s’ voice reading off the ranges on the long range finder, ’eight thousand nine fifty—eight thousand nine hundred—eight thousand eight fifty’—and I popped my head down inside to see if _our_ range indicator was working properly. It was, and the figures were slipping round all right. I looked up again, but he had his eyes glued to the range finder and didn’t see me. Marchant, the Inkslinger, leaned out of the ’control’ position, caught sight of me, and waved his bandaged hand—he was beaming all over.