Our shells passed through their hospital ward and killed the wounded and the surgeons as they were working over them. That any men could have passed through such an ordeal and retained their senses is a tribute to the wonderful effect of naval training and discipline. The _Fearless_ appears to have borne a somewhat charmed life--a large number of shells pitched just short and just over her--she was hit fair and square by seven, one of which played a lot of havoc with the middle deck forward and the mess gear there. Her sides showed some twenty-three holes of varying size, and yet her list of casualties was only eight wounded, none dangerously. She also had two narrow escapes from being torpedoed, one torpedo passing just forward from an unknown source, and another aft from a submarine. During comparative lulls I went onto the upper deck once or twice, to visit the forward station and to see that all was correct. For suppressed excitement and vivid interest I should say the seeker after sensation could scarcely ask for more than a modern naval action. The shells were falling all about us, and why we were not sunk I can never understand. The captain kept the ship zigzagging on her course to upset the enemy's aim. At one time we came within 2,000 yards of the Mainz, which had already been partly wrecked by the long-distance fire from our big battle cruisers, the _Lion_, _Invincible_, and _Queen Mary_. It was our duty to help finish her without sinking our big ships. She made two attempts to torpedo us. I watched one torpedo skimming through the water like a shark about ten yards from the bow, as it seemed to me. We just escaped it by a turn of the wheel in the nick of time. Then another skimmed by our stern, running over the spot we had left only a minute before. "She's a goner," I heard one of our men say. The German cruiser was a burning wreck, but she kept the two small guns, one at each end, firing away to the last. Then one of our destroyers rushed in to close quarters and gave her the finishing blow with a torpedo. III--THE WOUNDED ON THE BLOODY DECK