midnight watch and he knew that he must get some sleep, but it was a
long time before he closed his eyes and drifted off to dream of home and
his mother.

Athwart that dream came a sudden, frightful, heart-stilling roar of
destruction; a hideous crash followed, a terrible rending, breaking,
smashing, concatenation of noises, succeeded by frightful detonations,
as through the gaping hole torn in the great battleship by the deadly
torpedo, the water rushed upon the heated boilers, the explosion of
which in turn ignited the magazines. By that deadly underwater thrust of
the enemy the battleship was reduced in a few moments to a disjointed,
disorganized, sinking mass of shapeless, formless, splintered steel.

As the explosions ceased, from every point rose shrieks and groans and
cries of men in the death-agony hurled into eternity and torn like the
steel. And then the boy heard the surviving officers coolly, resolutely
calling the men to their stations.

He had been thrown from his berth by the violence of the explosion. His
face was cut and bleeding where he had struck a near-by stanchion. His
left arm hung useless. He had lain dazed on the deck for a few moments
until he heard the orders of his lieutenant. He was one of the signal
midshipmen stationed on the signal bridge. Whatever happened that was
the place to which to go; he still had a duty to perform.

Picking himself up as best he could, he hurried to report to the
lieutenant. With such means as were available signals were made. Calls
for help? Oh, never! Warnings that the enemy's submarines were in the
near vicinity and that other ships should keep away.