the ships broke away, it was the result of a ‘flap’ started by some ijits yelling that we were cut in two and going down. What was more natural, then, with the Bow looming up there big and solid—she was a good sight larger than the Gull—that the ‘rats’ should leave the sinking ship for one that looked like she might go on floating for a while. I’m not trying to make an excuse for what happened, but only explaining it. The Lord knows we paid a big enough price for it, anyhow.

“The Bow hit us like a thousand o’ bricks just before the bridge, and cut more than half-way through to the port side. The shock seemed to knock the deck right out from under my feet, and I

was slammed hard against the starboard wire rail, which must have kept me from being ditched then and there. A lot of the wreckage from the Bow’s shot-up bridge showered down on the Seagull’s fo’c’sl’, but my friend, Jock Campbell, floated down on the side toward the bridge, so I had no chance to welcome him. From where I was when I pulled up to my feet, it looked as if the Bow only lacked a few feet from cutting all the way through us, and as soon as I saw her screws beating up the sea as she tried to go astern, I had the feeling that the whole fo’c’sl’ of the Gull must break off and sink as soon as the ‘plug’ was pulled out. I was still sitting tight, though, when that howl started that we were already breaking off and going down, and—well, I joined the rush, and it was just as easy as stepping from a launch to the side of a quay. I’m not trying to make out a case for anybody, but the little bunch of us who climbed to the Bow from that half-cut-off fo’c’sl’ sure had more excuse than them that swarmed over from aft and leaving the main solid lump of the ship. But we none of us had no business clambering off till we were ordered. In doing that we were only asking for trouble, and we sure got it.

“The fo’c’sl’ of the Bow was all buckled up in waves from the collision, and there was a slipperiness underfoot that I twigged didn’t come from sea water just as soon as I stumbled over the bodies lying round the wreck of the port foremost gun

where I climbed over. We couldn’t get aft very well on account of the smashed bridge, and so the bunch of us just huddled up there like a lot of sheep, waiting for some one to tell us what to do. The captain had already left the bridge and was conning her from aft—or possibly the engine-room—at this time. From the way she was shaking and swinging, I knew they were trying to worry her nose out, putting the engines astern, now one and now the other. The clanking and the grinding was something fierce, but pretty soon she began to back clear.

“It was just a minute or two before the Bow tore free from her that the poor old Gull got the wallop that was finally responsible for doing her in. This was from a destroyer that came charging up out of the night and wasn’t able to turn in time to clear the Gull’s stern, with the result that she went right through it. Her sharp stem slashed through the quarterdeck like it was cutting bully beef, slicing five or ten feet of it clean off, so that it fell clear and sank. The jar of it ran through the whole length of the Seagull, and I felt the quick kick of it even in the Bow. In fact, I think the shock of this second collision was the thing that finally broke them clear of the first, for it was just after that I saw the wreck of the Seagull’s bridge begin to slide away along the Bow’s starboard bow, as what was left of it wriggled clear.

“It wasn’t much of a look I had at this last

destroyer, but I had a hunch even then that she was the Wreath, who had been our next astern. It wasn’t till a long time afterward that I learned for certain that this was a fact. The Wreath had followed us out of line when we turned to clear the stopped and burning Killarney, and then, when we messed up with the Bow, not having time to go round, she had to take a short cut through the tail feathers of the poor old Seagull. Then she tore right on hell-for-leather hunting for Huns, for it’s each ship for herself and the devil take the hind-most in the destroyer game more than in any other.

“I saw the water boiling into the hole in the side of the Seagull as the Bow backed away, and expected every minute to see the for’rard end of her break off and sink. But beyond settling down a lot by the head, she still held together and still floated. Bulkheads fore and aft were holding, it looked like, and there was still enough ‘ship’ left to carry on with. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the blurred wreck of her begin to gather stern way. But it was a fact. Though her rudder, of course, was smashed or carried away, and though she couldn’t go ahead without breaking in two, she was still able to move through the water, and perhaps even to steer a rough sort of course with her screws. As it turned out, it wouldn’t have made no difference whether we was in her or no; but just the same it was blooming awful, standing

there and knowing that you’d left her while she still had a kick in her. The ragged line where some of the wrecked stern of her showed against the phosphorescent glow of the churn of her screws—that was my good-bye peep at all that was left of the good old Seagull. Gains here, or Jock Campbell, can tell you what her finish was. I don’t like to talk about it.

“Some of us tried to get aft as soon as we were clear of the Seagull, but couldn’t make the grade over the wreck of the bridge. As all the officers and men who had been there had either been killed or wounded, or had gone to the after steering position they were now conning her from, we were as much cut off from them as though we were on another craft altogether. All the crews of her fo’c’sl’ guns—or such of them as were still alive—were in the same fix. So we just bunched up there in the dark and waited. Some of the wounded were in beastly shape, but there wasn’t much to be done for them, even in the way of first aid. Some shipmates of other times drifted together in the darkness, and I remember ’specially—it was while I was trying to tie up some guy’s scalp with the sleeve of my shirt—hearing one of them telling another of a wool mat he had just made, all with ravellings from ‘Harry Freeman.’ [B] Funny how it’s the little things like that a man remembers.

The gunner whose head I bound up was telling me just how the Bow happened to be strafed, but it went in one ear and out of the other.

“But the queerest thing was me hearing some guy lying all messed up on the deck muttering something about skookum kluches, and some more Chinook wa-wa that I knew he couldn’t have picked up anywhere else but from serving in a ‘T.B.D.’ working up and down the old Inland Passage from Vancouver Island. I felt my way to where he was huddled up in the wreck of a smashed gun, told him that I was another tilicum from the ’Squimalt Base, and asked him what ship he had been