Prince, engrossed in his story, forgot that the end of his poker had a sheet of flame playing upon it, and the heat which crept back from the rosy-red tip gave his palm a sharp singe as he clutched the handle preparatory to executing one of his sweeping gestures. From then on to the end of his narrative he paused frequently to lick with his tongue the blistered cuticle, the stoker's sovereign remedy for a slight burn. "I was just starting to give the 'T.I.' an account of what I had had a lot better chance to see than he had," he went on thickly, still touching the blisters gingerly with an extended tongue-tip, "when I heard him growl, 'Stand by! here's another one. What speed d'you think she's making?' I was still standing up on top of the tubes, and--to get a better view--right in front of the 'T.I.', with my waist on just about the level of his face. As I turned my head to look at the second Hun he straddled us fair with a full salvo. Most of it went over, but one proj struck right alongside and just about flooded us out. But there was something heavier than water that it sent aboard. I felt a sharp sting across my stomach, as if someone had given me a cut with a whip. As I put my hand down to it the whole front of my overall dropped away where a fragment of shell casing had shot across it. A few threads--I found out later--had been started on my singlet, but my hide was not even scratched. I heard the 'T.I.' give a yell, and when I looked round saw his face covered with blood, and a flap of skin from his forehead hanging down over one eye like a skye terrier's ear. The piece of proj had caught him a nasty side-swipe, though without hurting anything but his looks in the least. And it wasn't that he was yelling about, either, but at me for not giving him the course and speed of the second cruiser. He had the flap of skin tied up out of his eye--using a strip of my overall because neither of us could find a handkerchief--by the time I was back at the handle. I saw the blood dribbling over his sights, but he seemed to be seeing through them all right, for he was telling me how to train when I felt the helm begin to grind as it was thrown hard over to make a sudden alteration of course. She heeled fifteen or twenty degrees as she turned six points to starboard, and the boil of her wake flooded across her stern three or four feet deep. The sudden heel threw me off my feet, and I pulled up just in time to see us rushing by, and just missing by a few yards, a stopped destroyer that was nothing but spurts of fire flashing under a rolling cloud of steam and smoke.