[Sidenote:  Destroyers keep in touch by lights and sirens.]

The destroyers had to turn on their lights and use their sirens to keep in touch with each other; the air attack was suspended, and Vindictive, with some distance yet to go, found herself in gross darkness.

[Sidenote:  The fog and smoke are dense.]

[Sidenote:  A motor-boat leads the way for Vindictive.]

There were motor-boats to either side of her, escorting her to the entrance, and these were supplied with what are called Dover flares—­enormous lights capable of illuminating square miles of sea at once.  A “Very” pistol was fired as a signal to light these; but the fog and the smoke together were too dense for even the flares. Vindictive then put her helm over and started to cruise to find the entrance.  Twice in her wanderings she must have passed across it, and at her third turn, upon reaching the position at which she had first lost her way, there came a rift in the mist, and she saw the entrance clear, the piers to either side and the opening dead ahead.  The inevitable motor-boat dashed up, raced on into the opening under a heavy and momentarily growing fire, and planted a flare on the water between the piers. Vindictive steamed over it and on.  She was in.

[Sidenote:  A hail of lead falls upon the Vindictive.]

The guns found her at once.  She was hit every few seconds after she entered, her scarred hull broken afresh in a score of places and her decks and upper works swept.  The machine-gun on the end of the western pier had been put out of action by the motor-boat’s torpedo, but from other machine-guns at the inshore ends of the pier, from a position on the front, and from machine-guns apparently firing over the eastern pier, there converged upon her a hail of lead.  The after-control was demolished by a shell which killed all its occupants.  Upper and lower bridges and chart-room were swept by bullets, and Commander Godsal, R.N., ordered his officers to go with him to the conning-tower.

[Sidenote:  The Vindictive prepares to turn.]

They observed through the observation slit in the steel wall of the conning-tower that the eastern pier was breached some two hundred yards from its seaward end, as though at some time a ship had been in collision with it.  They saw the front of the town silhouetted again and again in the light of the guns that blazed at them; the night was a patchwork of fire and darkness.  Immediately after passing the breach in the pier.  Commander Godsal left the conning-tower and went out on deck, the better to watch the ship’s movements; he chose his position, and called in through the slit of the conning-tower his order to starboard the helm.  The Vindictive responded; she laid her battered nose to the eastern pier and prepared to swing her 320 feet of length across the channel.

[Sidenote:  A shell strikes the conning-tower.]