"When the leader was about abreast the _Killarney_ and inside of half a mile range, she flashed on some red and green lights, switched on her searchlights and opened fire. Ship for ship, the Huns were just about even with our line now, and the _Firebrand_ and _Seagull_ must have launched mouldies at the second and third cruisers at near the same moment. Hitting at that range ships running on parallel courses was a cinch, and both slugs slipped home. It was some sight, those two spouts of fire and smoke shooting up together, and by the light of 'em I could see that the _Firebrand's_ bag was a four-funneller, and ours a three. The first one keeled right over and began to sink at once, but the one our mouldie hit went staggering on, though down by the stern and with a heavy list to port. "We would sure have put the kibosh on this one with the next torpedo if we hadn't had to turn sharp to port to avoid the _Killarney_ just then, and so missed our last chance to do something in 'the Great War.' I lost sight of the _Firebrand_ and took it for granted she had been blown up. It was not till a week afterwards that we learned she had turned the other way, engaged one Hun cruiser with gunfire, rammed another, just missed being rammed by a third, and finally crawled into port under her own steam. "The _Seagull_ came under the searchlights of the leading Hun cruiser for a few seconds as she came up abreast of the burning _Killarney_, and then the smoke and steam cut off the beam and I was blind as a bat for a minute. The _Killarney_ had been left astern when I looked for her again, and seemed all in, with fires all over her and only one gun yapping away on her quarter-deck. I didn't know it at the time, but it was my old college friend, Gains, here, who was passing the projes, for that pert little piece. You'd never think it to look at him, would you?" Gains, feigning to discover something which needed adjustment in the training mechanism, ducked his head behind the breech of his gun at this juncture, and did not bob up again until a resumption of the yarn deflected the centre of interest back to Number Two. [Illustration: GERMAN SHELLS STRIKING THE WATER AT THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND] [Illustration: A BROADSIDE AT NIGHT AT THE BATTLE OF JUTLAND]