Lastly, there were the two remaining Quartermasters—­mutinous dogs, both of ’em—­one wounded in the right hand and the other in the left, who took the wheel between them all the way home, thus improvising one complete Navy-pattern Quartermaster, and “refused to be relieved during the whole thirty-six hours before the ship returned to port.”  So Eblis passes out of the picture with “never a moan or complaint from a single wounded man, and in spite of the rough weather of June 1st they all remained cheery.”  They had one Hun cruiser, torpedoed, to their credit, and strong evidence abroad that they had knocked the end out of another.

But Gehenna went down, and those of her crew who remained hung on to the rafts that destroyers carry till they were picked up about the dawn by Shaitan, third in the line, who, at that hour, was in no shape to give much help.  Here is Shaitan’s tale.  She saw the unknown cruisers overtake the flotilla, saw their leader switch on searchlights and open fire as she drew abreast of Gehenna, and at once fired a torpedo at the third German ship.  Shaitan could not see Eblis, her next ahead, for, as we know, Eblis after firing her torpedoes had hauled off to reload.  When the enemy switched his searchlights off Shaitan hauled out too.  It is not wholesome for destroyers to keep on the same course within a thousand yards of big enemy cruisers.

She picked up a destroyer of another division, Goblin, who for the moment had not been caught by the enemy’s searchlights and had profited by this decent obscurity to fire a torpedo at the hindmost of the cruisers.  Almost as Shaitan took station behind Goblin the latter was lighted up by a large ship and heavily fired at.  The enemy fled, but she left Goblin out of control, with a grisly list of casualties, and her helm jammed.  Goblin swerved, returned, and swerved again; Shaitan astern tried to clear her, and the two fell aboard each other, Goblin’s bows deep in Shaitan’s fore-bridge.  While they hung thus, locked, an unknown destroyer rammed Shaitan aft, cutting off several feet of her stern and leaving her rudder jammed hard over.  As complete a mess as the Personal Devil himself could have devised, and all due to the merest accident of a few panicky salvoes.  Presently the two ships worked clear in a smother of steam and oil, and went their several ways.  Quite a while after she had parted from Shaitan, Goblin discovered several of Shaitan’s people, some of them wounded, on her own foc’sle, where they had been pitched by the collision.  Goblin, working her way homeward on such boilers as remained, carried on a one-gun fight at a few cables’ distance with some enemy destroyers, who, not knowing what state she was in, sheered off after a few rounds.  Shaitan, holed forward and opened up aft, came across the survivors from Gehenna clinging to their raft, and took them aboard.  Then some of our destroyers—­they were thick on the sea that night—­tried to tow her stern-first, for Goblin had cut her up badly