"Starin' at our own fires must have blinded me a good bit, or I'd have seen him sooner'n I did. He looked like he been gettin' no end o' a hammerin', for his second funnel was gone, an' out of the hole it left a big spurt o' flame an' smoke was rushin' that would have showed him up for miles. There was a red hot fire ragin' under his fo'c'sl', too, an' I saw the flames lashin' round thro' some jagged shell holes in his port bow. Lucky for us, he was runnin' for his life, an' had no time to more than try to run us down in passin'. "It must have been just from habit I yelled down my voice-pipe, for I knew they was no longer controllin' her from the bridge; but the roarin' o' a fire an' the clank of bangin' metal was the only sounds that come back. When I looked up again the Hun was right on top of us, an' I must have just stood there--froze--like to-night wi' the _'Lympus_. By the grace o' Gawd, he hadn't been abl' to alter course enough to do the trick. His stem shot by wi' twenty feet or more clearance, an' it was only the fat bulge of him that kissed us off in passin'. It was by the glare o' his fires, not ours, which throwed no light abaft the superstructure I was on, that I saw some of the hands was already workin' to rig a jury steerin' gear aft. Then he was gone, an' much too full o' his own troubles to turn back, or even send the one heavy proj that would have cooked us for good an' all. A few minutes more, an' the wreck o' the _Firebran'_ begun gatherin' way again, an' when I saw her come round to her nor'westerly course an' push ahead wi'out settlin' any deeper, I knew that the bulkheads were holdin' an' that--always providin' we run into no more Huns--there was a fightin' chance o' pullin' thro'. "There was about a hundred jobs that needed doin' all at once, an' 'tween the loss o' dead an' wounded--only about half the reg'lar ship's company was fit for work. The bulkheads had to be shored, for, wi' the fo'c'sl' crumpled up like a concertina an' the deck an' side platin' ripped off from the stem right back to the capstan engine, she was open to the whole North Sea from the galley right for'ard. This made the first an' second bulkheads o' no use, an' made the third bulkhead all that stood 'tween us an' goin' to the bottom. Then there was the fires--'bove deck an' 'tween decks--that had to be put out 'fore they got to the magazines, an' the engines to be kept goin', an' the ship to be navigated, an' the wounded to be looked to. An' on top o' all this, the ship had to be got into some kind o' fightin' trim in case any more Huns come pokin' her way. I won't be havin' to tell you it was one bally awful job, carryin' on like that in the dark, an' wi' half the ship's company knocked out.