“And the noise of it to you aloft, spotting the shots?” I suggested.  “It must have been a lonely place in such a tornado.”

“Yes.  Besides the crashing blasts from our own guns we had the screams of the shells that went over and the cataracts of water from those short sprinkling the ship with spray.  But this was what one expected.  Everything was what one expected, except that desire to catch the fragments.  Naturally, one was too busy to think much of anything except the enemy’s ships—­to learn where your shells were striking.”

“You could tell?”

“Yes—­just as well and better than at target practice; for the target was larger and solid.  It was enthralling, this watching the flight of our shells toward their target.”  Where were the scars from the wounds?  One looked for them on both the Lion and the Tiger.  An armour patch on the sloping top of a turret might have escaped attention if it had not been pointed out.  A shell struck there and a fair blow, too.  And what happened inside?  Was the turret gear put out of order?

To one who has lived in a wardroom a score of questions were on the tongue’s end.  The turret is the basket which holds the precious eggs.  A turret out of action means two guns out of action; a broken knuckle for the pugilist.

Constructors have racked their brains over the subject of turrets in the old contest between gun-power and protection.  Too much gun-power, too little armour!  Too much armour, too little gun-power!  Finally, results depend on how good is your armour, how sound your machinery which rotates the turret.  That shell did not go through bodily, only a fragment, which killed one man and wounded another.  The turret would still rotate; the other gun kept in action and the one under the shell-burst was soon back in action.  Very satisfactory to the naval constructors.

Up and down the all but perpendicular steel ladders with their narrow steps, and through the winding passages below decks in those cities of steel, one followed his guide, receiving so much information and so many impressions that he was confused as to details between the two veterans, the Lion, which was hit fifteen times, and the Tiger, which was hit eight.  Wherever you went every square inch of space and every bit of equipment seemed to serve some purpose.

A beautiful hit, indeed, was that into a small hooded aperture where an observer looked out from a turret.  He was killed and another man took his place.  Fresh armour and no sign of where the shot had struck.  Then below, into a compartment between the side of the ship and the armoured barbette which protects the delicate machinery for feeding shells and powder from the magazine deep below the water to the guns.

“H——­was killed here.  Impact of the shell passing through the outer plates burst it inside; and, of course, the fragments struck harmlessly against the barbette.”

“Bang in the dug-out!” one exclaimed, from army habit.