“You might as well ask a sardine, hermetically sealed in a tin, to describe a fire in a grocer’s shop,” wrote he. “I was that sardine, and so were nearly all of us. Those in the conning tower saw something, and so did the officers in the spotting top when they were not being smothered by smoke and by water thrown up by bursting shells. But as for the rest of us—don’t you believe the stories told you by eye-witnesses of naval battles. They are all second or third hand, and rubbish at that. When I have sorted the thing out from all those who did see, and collated the discrepant accounts, I will give you my conclusions, but I shall not be allowed to write them. For a literary man the Navy is a rotten service.” * * * * * Cæsar at this time wrote rather crossly. He had, I think, visualised himself as the writer some day of an immortal story of the greatest naval battle in history. Now that he had been through it, he knew as little of it at first hand as a heavy gunner in France does of the advancing infantry whose path forward he is cutting out. The isolation of a busy turret in action may be realised when one learns that Cæsar knew nothing of the loss of the _Queen Mary_, _Indefatigable_, or _Invincible_ until hours after they had gone to the bottom. He had heard nothing even of damage suffered by his own ship until, a grimy figure in frowsy overalls, he crawled through the roof of his big sardine tin and met in the darkness one of his friends who had been in the spotting top. * * * * * “There was a frightful row going on as we sat there on the turret’s roof,” wrote Cæsar to me. “Our destroyers were charging in upon Fritz’s flying ships, which with searchlights and guns of all calibres were seeking to defend themselves. We could not fire for our destroyers were in the way. The horizon flamed like the aurora borealis, and now and then big shells, ricochetting, would scream over us. I enjoyed myself fine, and had no wish to seek safety in my turret, of which I was heartily sick. That is the only part of the action which I saw, and the details were buried in confusion and darkness. All the rest of the day I had been serving two hungry guns with shells and cordite, and firing them into unknown space. I was too intent on my duties to be bored, but I did not get the least bit of a thrill until I climbed out on the roof. Still I am glad to have been in the Battle, and, I love my big wise guns.” * * * * *