PAGE 7
The Brain Of The Battle-Ship
by
But the yells suddenly ceased and the gunners changed their aim. A small thing had left the nearly submerged tube in the cruiser’s stem, and the gunners were now firing at a darting line of bubbles, obliterating the target for a moment with the churning of the water, only to see the frothy streak within their range, coming on at locomotive speed. They aimed ahead; two five-inch guns added their clamor, and even a Hontoria turret-gun voiced its roar and sent its messenger. But the bubbles would not stop; they entered the bow wave of the battle-ship, and a second later the great floating fort separated into two parts, with a crackling thunder of sound and an outburst of flame and smoke which came of nothing less than an exploded magazine. The two halves rolled far to starboard, then to port, shivered, settled, turned completely over, and sank in a turmoil of bursting steam and air-bubbles. Three minutes later the Beaufort lifted her stern and dived gently after her victim, still groaning hoarsely from her punctured iron lungs. In her death-agony she had given birth to a child more terrible than a battle-ship.
The rear ship of the inner column, the Atholl, was officially an armored cruiser, but possessed none of the attributes of the cruiser class. She was the laggard of the fleet, and her heaviest guns were of six-inch caliber; but, being designed for a battle-ship, she carried this temporary battery behind sixteen inches of steel, and had maintained her integrity, taking harder blows than she could give. With the going down of the Beaufort she took a position astern of the Sutherland, and the double line of battle was reduced to a single line; for the Argyll had left the column when the flag-ship sank.
And this is why the overmatched, battered, and all but demoralized cruisers received no more attention from the enemy; it were wiser to deal with the Argyll. The Saratov, blazing fiercely from the effects of a well-planted shell, had drawn out of line, the better to deal with her trouble. Her place in the line and that of the sunken Riga were filled by the following ships drawing ahead; but the fleet still held to double column, and into the lane between the lines the Argyll was coming at sixteen knots, breathing flame, vomiting steel–delivering destruction and death.
She had rounded the Moscow’s stern, raking her as she came, and sending armor-piercing shells through her citadel. Some exploded on impact, some inside; all did work. An eight-inch projectile entered the after turret-port, and silenced the gun and gun-crew forever. Before the Argyll was abeam the Moscow had ceased firing. Rolling and smoking, her crew decimated, her guns disabled and steering-gear carried away, she swung out of line; and the appearance in his field of vision of several rushing waves with short smoke-stacks behind, and the supplementary pelting his ship was now receiving from the Marlborough, decided her commander to lower his flag.
On the starboard bow of the Argyll was the armored cruiser Orenburg. Her fire, hot and true, ceased on the explosion of a large shell at her water-line, and she swung out of the fight, silent but for the roar of escaping steam, heeled heavily to port, and sank in ten minutes, her ensigns flying to the last. Mr. Clarkson rejoiced with his gun-crew. He had sent the shell.
On stormed the Argyll. Her next adversary was the Kharkov, a battle-ship nearly equal in guns and armor to herself, but not quite–by an inch. And that inch cost her the fight. With her main turrets damaged, her superstructure, secondary guns, and torpedo-tubes shot away, she yielded to fate, and, while the Argyll passed on, hauled down her ensigns at the request of a torpedo-boat.
Ahead and to starboard was the cruiser Tobolsk, leaving the neighborhood as fast as her twin screws could push her. Her end was in sight; in her wake were two gray destroyers, and behind, charging across the broken formation, was the fleet Marlborough. The Argyll ignored the Tobolsk; for slowing down to await her coming was the black and high-sided Warsaw, the monster of the fleet, bristling with guns, somber, and ominous in her silence.