"The _Liepzig's_ gunnery had not begun to go to pieces at this juncture, and every little while one of those beautifully bunched little salvoes of four-point-ones would throw up its pretty nest of foam jets in the near-by water. A shell from one of these struck somewhere amidships as I came out upon the bridge, and I found the man at the range-finder just throwing an appraising glance over his shoulder to where the fragments of a whaler were mounting skyward in a cloud of smoke. 'My word, sir,' he greeted me with, 'but it's jolly glad I am I ain't back ther' w'ere the projers catch you 'tween decks. Now, up 'ere it's diff'rent--they just passes straight on into the water.' "'They pass straight through!' I repeated. 'What do you mean by that?' 'Jest wot I sez, sir,' he replied. 'Look w'ere you're standin', sir! The canvas ain't 'arf stiff enuf to stop 'em.' "I looked. On my left the canvas wind-shield was punctured with a smooth round hole at about the level of my waist, while on my right a similar strip had been pinked about even with the calf of my leg. From the upper hole the ragged ends of the painted canvas were bent inwards: from the lower hole, outwards. "''Twas from the 'Uns' last salvo but one, sir,' said the signalman, grinning down at me over the range-finder. ''Twould 'a' jest about plugged you in the knees. You was jest too late in comin' up, sir.' "I believe I told him," said the Captain with a laugh, "that, while I should hate to be setting an example for unpunctuality on my own ship, I sincerely hoped and trusted that I should continue being equally late for 'appointments' of that kind. He was a brave chap, that one, and I'm glad to say my recommendation brought him a D.C.M. for the way he carried on that afternoon. "It's very funny the things one 'imagines' in the course of an action, one in which you are being hit, I mean. There isn't a lot of your ship that you can see from a conning-tower, and so when anything happens--like the explosion of a shell, for instance--you (generally more or less sub-consciously, for your whole active mind is engrossed with fighting the ship) have to speculate on where it struck and what damage it did. Here is an example of one of my efforts in this line that afternoon. A terrific smashing-banging followed the explosion of a shell somewhere amidships, and from the nature of the racket I instantly jumped to the conclusion that it could be only one thing. 'After funnel carried away,' I announced to my Staff Paymaster, whom I had kept standing by to take notes and the time of any incidents I thought worth recording, though just why I concluded it was the _after_ one I don't remember. 'After funnel carried away,' he repeated, and jotted down the entry against the time the disaster had occurred.