"Between the twenty-three from the _Seagull_ and what were left of the _Bow's_ fo'c'sl' guns' crews, there must have been thirty-five to forty men bunched together there for'rard of the wreck of the bridge. When the firing started, the whole kaboodle of us did what you're always under orders to do when you have nothing to stand up for--laid down. Or, rather, we just tumbled into a heap like a pile of dead rabbits. "I went sprawling over the poor devil I was trying to help, and there were two or three on top of me. Into that squirming hump of human flesh one of the Hun's projes landed kerplump. It didn't hit me at all, that one, but I can feel yet the kind of heave the whole bunch gave as it ploughed through. Then it was like warm water was being thrown on the pile in buckets, but it wasn't till I had scrambled out and found it sticky that I twigged it was blood. "Bad as it was, it might have been a lot worse. There hadn't been enough resistance to explode the proj, and so it killed only four or five and wounded, maybe, twice that, where it would have scoured every man jack of us into the sea and Kingdom Come if it had gone off. The next one found something in the wreck of the bridge hard enough to crack it off though, and it was a ragged scrap of its casing that drove in to the point of my hip and put a kink in my rolling gait that I've never quite shaken out yet. It wasn't much of a hurt to what it gave some, though, 'specially a lad that caught the main kick of it and got ditched to starboard, some of him going under the wire rail, and some over. "The Huns couldn't have known how down and out the _Bow_ really was, for there was nothing in the world but that one port gun to prevent their closing and polishing her off. The chances are they recognised her class, knew she was more than a match for the pair of them if she was right, and were glad to get off with no more'n an exchange of shots in passing. That was the end of the fighting for the _Bow_, and about time, too. Her bows were stove in, all the fore part of her was full of water, her bridge was smashed and useless, her W.T. and searchlights were finished, all but one gun was out of action, and--when they came to count noses next day--forty-two of her crew were dead. Far from looking for more trouble, it was now only a question of making harbour, and even that--as it turned out--was touch-and-go for two days.