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suddenly, quite close, there was a loud crash, accompanied with the ring of tearing iron. This was not a 6-inch shell, but the “portmanteaus” again. The men became seized with panic, and, listening to nothing and nobody, rushed below.

When we went down into the lower battery, bitterly disappointed at our want of luck just when things seemed beginning to go so well, something (it must have been a splinter of some kind) struck me in the side and I staggered.

“Wounded again?” enquired Kursel, taking his cigar out of his mouth and leaning tenderly over me.

I looked at him and thought: “Ah! if only the whole fleet were composed of men as cool as you are!”