“That was much what we did at 7 a. m. on August 28.  The sheep were the German torpedo craft, which fell back on the limits of our range and tried to lure us within the fire of the Heligoland forts.  But a cruiser then came out and engaged our Arethusa and they had a real heart-to-heart talk, while we looked on, and a few of us tried to shoot at the enemy, too, though it was beyond our distance.

“We were getting nearer Heligoland all the time.  There was a thick mist and I expected every minute to find the forts on the island bombarding us, so the Arethusa presently drew off after landing at least one good shell on the enemy.  The enemy gave every hit as good as he got there.

“We then reformed, but a strong destroyer belonging to the submarines got chased, and the Arethusa and Fearless went back to look after it.  We presently heard a hot action astern, so the captain in command of the flotilla turned us around and we went back to help.  But they had driven the enemy off and on our arrival told us to ‘form up’ on the Arethusa.

CRUISER FIRES ON SHIPS

“When we had partly formed and were very much bunched together, making a fine target, suddenly out of the mist arrived five or six shells from a point not 150 yards away.  We gazed at whence they came and again five or six stabs of fire pierced the fog, and we made out a four-funneled German cruiser of the Breslau class.

“Those stabs were its guns going off.  We waited fifteen seconds and the shots and noise of its guns arrived pretty well from fifty yards away.  Its next salvo of shots went above us, and I ducked as they whirred overhead like a covey of fast partridges.

“You would suppose our captain had done this sort of thing all his life.  He went full speed ahead at once, upon the first salvo, to string the bunch out and thus offer less target.  The commodore from the Arethusa made a signal to us to attack with torpedoes.  So we swung round at right angles and charged full speed at the enemy like a hussar attack.

“Our boat got away at the start magnificently and led the field, so all the enemy’s firing was aimed at us for the next ten minutes, when we got so close that debris from their shells fell on board.  Then we altered our course and so threw them out in their reckoning of our speed, and they had all their work to do over again.

“Humanly speaking, our captain by twisting and turning at psychological moments saved us.  Actually, I feel that we were in God’s keeping that day.  After ten minutes we got near enough to fire our torpedo.  Then we turned back to the Arethusa.  Next our follower arrived just where we had been and fired its torpedo, and of course the enemy fired at it instead of at us.  What a blessed relief!

“After the destroyers came the Fearless, and it stayed on the scene.  Soon we found it was engaging a three-funneler, the Mainz, so off we started again, now for the Mainz, the situation being that the crippled Arethusa was too tubby to do anything but be defended by us, its children.