"She was going out by herself--bound for the Mediterranean, if I remember rightly--and what happened is probably largely due to the fact that they drove her, with the tide, into the teeth of the storm (perhaps to get out where there was more sea-room as quickly as possible) instead of slowing down and taking it easy, as we would be inclined to do now, even with ships a good deal bigger and more powerful. Most of these things have to be learned by experience, and if the '----' hadn't learned the lesson and paid the price, probably one of the others of us would have had to. "At any rate, she bucked right into a mountain of a wave that swept her with hundreds--perhaps thousands--of tons of solid green water. When it had passed, her bridges and superstructures--everything, indeed, but her mast and turrets--was crushed down and carried away. A number of men went over the side with the wreckage, and most of those above decks not carried away were killed. The Captain was picked up on the quarterdeck, alive but with his legs broken. Nothing but a battleship could have survived such a blow, though it is quite possible that a more buoyant craft would have ridden higher over the wave and so shipped less solid water. I have seen a good many warships that have dragged themselves back to port after a battle, but never a one that presented such a sight as the poor old '----' did when she limped home the morning after the night before. She is still in commission, I believe, but there can't be an unreplaced rivet in her that doesn't have a crook in its neck to remind it that something hit her that night in Pentland Firth." The Flag Lieutenant turned his glass for a moment toward a succession of flashes, in which a destroyer was pouring out its troubles to us from the outer darkness, and then leaned back on the rail again. "It would be hard to say whether the Firth is really our worst enemy or our best friend," he resumed presently. "There is a good deal to be said on both sides. First and last, it has probably bashed us about a good deal more than the Hun has; but, at the same time, there is no use denying that it has prevented him from making us a good deal of trouble he might have made if there had been an ordinary respectable sheet of water running right up to the front door of our refuge.