[Sidenote:  The splendid heroism of men and officers.]

Where every moment had its deed and every deed its hero, a recital of acts of valor becomes a mere catalogue.  “The men were magnificent,” say the officers; the men’s opinion of their leaders expresses itself in the manner in which they followed them, in their cheers, in their demeanor to-day while they tidy up their battered ships, setting aside the inevitable souvenirs, from the bullet-torn engines to great chunks of Zeebrugge Mole dragged down and still hanging in the fenders of the Vindictive.  The motor launch from the canal cleared the end of the Mole and there beheld, trim and ready, the shape of the Warwick, with the great silk flag presented to the Admiral by the officers of his old ship, the Centurion.  They stood up on the crowded decks of the little craft and cheered it again and again.

[Sidenote:  The Warwick takes off the men from the canal.]

While the Warwick took them on board, they saw Vindictive, towed loose from the Mole by Daffodil, turn and make for home—­a great black shape, with funnels gapped and leaning out of the true, flying a vast streamer of flame as her stokers worked her up—­her, the almost wreck—­to a final display of seventeen knots.  Her forward funnel was a sieve; her decks were a dazzle of sparks; but she brought back intact the horseshoe nailed to it, which Sir Roger Keyes had presented to her commander.

[Sidenote:  One destroyer, the North Star, is sunk.]

[Sidenote:  Monitors and siege guns bombard the enemy.]

Meantime the destroyers North Star, Phoebe, and Warwick, which guarded the Vindictive from action by enemy destroyers while she lay beside the Mole, had their share in the battle. North Star, losing her way in the smoke, emerged to the light of the star-shells, and was sunk.  The German communique, which states that only a few members of the crew could be saved by them, is in this detail of an unusual accuracy, for the Phoebe came up under a heavy fire in time to rescue nearly all.  Throughout the operations monitors and the siege guns in Flanders, manned by the Royal Marine Artillery, heavily bombarded the enemy’s batteries.

[Sidenote:  The attack on Ostend.]

The wind that blew back the smoke-screen at Zeebrugge served us even worse off Ostend, where that and nothing else prevented the success of an operation ably directed by Commodore Hubert Lynes, C.M.G.  The coastal motor boats had lit the approaches and the ends of the piers with calcium flares and made a smoke-cloud which effectually hid the fact from the enemy. Sirius and Brilliant were already past the Stroom Bank buoy when the wind changed, revealing the arrangements to the enemy, who extinguished the flares with gunfire.

[Sidenote:  The Sirius runs aground.]