Torpedoers in Action.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 791, 6 April 1905, Page 4

Torpedoers in Action.

I There appears in Blackwood's Magazine a vivid account by a Husfcian naval 1 officer o? an action in which the torpedo-boat Plotva look part'.: | " I could see," he writes, " that we now lwd a Japanese itiosU'oyer ■ abeam on the port side, Jly eye i caught the blood-red radiations on I its smoke-fouled bunting. Its 'funnels were belching flame, while it i was so close that the incessant flasK from its quick-firers hurt the eyo. Projectiles swished above us». bin at tho moment I did not realise that we were the target. My gun had stopped firing. ' Ammunition ! ' X shouted, and then realised for tho first time that I alone of all my gun-crew was standing. -My fellows

were a heap of hideously mutilated flesh." 'His commander was killed, and ho was called upon the bridge to take charge. "Save for the wlieel, steersman, and binnacle," ho continues, " the bridge wusi swept clean. As I clung to a fumiel'-Ktuv. 1 \va» actuol'ly looking down tlx.' smoking throat ot a J apa>ncso 12poimdcr not six fathoms distant.

'Black, hissing and battered, the boat was closing- upon us like son® hideous soa-m-onster. There was n | grinding jar, and wo shiltcred past them, ''carrying away their rails and forward hamper, and grinding to pulp, against our plates, such of their boarders ob had jumped short. As we shook clear our six-pnunder Welched into her vitals, and a great 1 1 geyser of steam shrieked out between ' her smoke-stacks amidships. I re--11 member seeing my men pitchfork the 1 four Utile devils who had .boarded ' | us over the side with their bavo- ! nets, and then X pitched headlong on '' |to the debris d! gun-crew and Maxim on the deck below. A rifle Inil- ; let had just missed my spine and '■ perfortated my right lung. Tho en- ' gincer brought the Plotva out."