"How much the Hun was shook up by that smash," Melton continued, "you can reckon from this: We was almost dead stopped for some minnits, an' all out o' control from the time of rammin' till they started connin' her from the engine-room. There was one fire flickerin' in the wreckage o' the forebridge, an' another somewhere 'midships, while there was also a big glare throwin' up where the foremost funnel was shot away. We was as soft an' easy a target as even a Hun could ask for; an' yet that one was in too much of a funk wi' his own hurts to let off a singl' other gun at us in all the time that he must have been flounderin' on at not much more'n point-blank range. Mebbe he was knocked up even more'n we thought. Nothin' else would account for him not havin' 'nother go at us. "Just one wild bally mess--that was what the _Firebran'_ looked like when I got to my feet again an' cast an eye for'ard. There was too much smoke an' steam to see clear, an' it was mostly flickers o' red light where the fires were startin', an' big, black shadows full o' wreckage. As it looked to _me_ from aft--tho', o' course, the full effects wasn't vis'bl' till daylight, the bridge an' searchlight platform an' mast was shoved right back an' piled up on the foremost funnel. The whaler an' dingy was carried away, an' my first thought, for I was sure she was sinkin', was that we had no boats to put off in. I could see two or three wounded crawlin' out o' the raffle, but I knew that the most to be dished would be in the wreck o' the bridge. The queerest thing o' all was the flashes o' green an' blue light flutterin' thro' the tangled steel o' the wreckage. At first I thought I was sort o' seein' things; but fin'lly I figgered it out as the juice from the busted 'lectric wires short-circuitin'. It meant, I tol' myself, that the men under them tons o' steel was bein' 'lectrocuted on top o' bein' crushed. "It looked like any one o' three or four things would be enough to finish the ol' _Firebran'_. I remember thinkin' that if she didn't blow up, she was sure to burn up; an' that if, by chance, she missed doin' one o' them, she was goin' to founder anyhow. She was already well down by the head, an'--leastways, it looked so to me at the time--still settlin' fast. An' I was just reflectin' that, even if she was lucky enough not to burn up, or blow up, or founder, she was still too easy pickin' for the Huns to miss doin' her in one way or 'nother, when, thunderin' out o' the darkness an' headin' up to crumpl' underfoot what was left o' the stopped an' helpless _Firebran'_, come a hulkin' big battl' cru'ser, the one I was just tellin' you the _'Lympus_ set me thinkin' on a while back.