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 CHAPTER II

suddenly about noon on Sunday, after the disconcerting fashion of cruisers, one of our side flying the general recall, and telling us to go down to the Flag. But when we reached that place we found neither Flag nor battle ships, but the Powerful and the Terrible, who took us under their wing all six of us, second and third-class cruisers. Till that point we had been sizeable ships, but those two huge things dwarfed us to mean little tramps. One never gets used to the bulk and height of these berserk Campanias. Then we all began talking. Who knew anything about anything; and who had dragged who round the walls of what? Our next astern gave us one slateful of information which was rather dizzying. That a cruiser at 7.30 that morning had reported to the Battle Fleet, who had spent the night patrolling outside Blacksod Bay, 'Enemy to the Westward.' That the Fleet had given chase; that the Flagship had fired one gun when she came within three miles of the said enemy fifteen miles West of Blacksod Bay. That the enemy had gone in to Blacksod Bay, and, he believed, our own battleships had gone south to Bantry. (I have already explained rudely what the enemy had done.)