“Well, that night we picked out our opposite number by the name of his funnels, and I put my old hooker at him, an’ rammed him, full bore. Caught him rather far forward--farther than I meant to, but good enough for the purpose. It was like cutting cheese with a hot knife.... Then of course the matelots went berserk. I saw the gunner’s mate go over the side on to her forecastle, lugging a maxim with him and howling like a dervish at the head of a crowd that looked as if they’d rushed out of a pirate junk instead of a respectable British destroyer. My yeoman of signals borrowed my automatic pistol, and sprayed it about till I wrenched it away from him for fear he’d hit one of our men. The sub was clawing at her ensign with a party of die-hards round him laying about them with cutlasses like characters in a Shakespearian play, and to add to the excitement the watch below in the engine-room, who had just been relieved, were slinging scalding cocoa over the rails into the Huns’ faces.” The speaker wiped his mouth, after an interval for refreshment. “I’m still hoarse with laughing and bawling at the gunner’s mate not to start easing off the maxim into the crowd. And if you could have seen ’em lugging prisoners over the rail, and the Huns trying to pull them back by their feet--like a lot of demented people pulling crackers across a table! Lord! I shall never forget it if I live to be a million. “Then she sank--just fell in half and went down. I had half my ship’s company in the water, as well as the Huns. They were just like a lot of fighting dogs after a hose had been played on them. Lucky the Hun hadn’t got a submarine about, because I had to stop and pick ’em all up. Another Hun destroyer had been torpedoed not far off, and was burning like a hayrick. She enlivened matters by taking ‘sitters’ at us with her after-gun while she sank, so I had to silence her first, and by the time I got the last of my Death-or-Glory boys out of the water they were pretty far gone. I asked one fellow how he’d enjoyed himself, and he said, ‘Law, sir, fine! We was flickin’ off their ’eads wiv the cutlass, same’s it might ha’ bin dandelions!’” “Take many prisoners?” asked Aughtlone, laughing. “Fifty-one, _and_ their flag. The sub told me he wanted to present it to the ‘Goat’ or Westminster Abbey, wasn’t sure which. Some of the Huns were pretty nearly done, and my surgeon probationer had a busy time getting life back into one or two. He carried them down to the stokehold and worked at ’em in the warmth. While he was down there, the sub came up to me and said there was another in the forecastle lockers, pegging out, he thought; so when things got quiet, I went along to see if I could do anything. He was just about all-in, but he had strength enough to put out his tongue at me----” “Saucy puss!” from Jerome.