Roughly, very roughly, speaking, our destroyers enjoyed three phases of “prompt decisive action”—­the first, a period of daylight attacks (from 4 to 6 P.M.) such as the one I have just described, while the battle was young and the light fairly good on the afternoon of May 31; the second, towards dark, when the light had lessened and the enemy were more uneasy, and, I think, in more scattered formation; the third, when darkness had fallen, and the destroyers had been strung out astern with orders to help the enemy home, which they did all night as opportunity offered.  One cannot say whether the day or the night work was the more desperate.  From private advices, the young gentlemen concerned seem to have functioned with efficiency either way.  As one of them said:  “After a bit, you see, we were all pretty much on our own, and you could really find out what your ship could do.”

I will tell you later of a piece of night work not without merit.

II

THE NIGHT HUNT

RAMMING AN ENEMY CRUISER

As I said, we will confine ourselves to something quite sane and simple which does not involve more than half-a-dozen different reports.

When the German fleet ran for home, on the night of May 31, it seems to have scattered—­“starred,” I believe, is the word for the evolution—­in a general sauve qui peut, while the Devil, livelily represented by our destroyers, took the hindmost.  Our flotillas were strung out far and wide on this job.  One man compared it to hounds hunting half a hundred separate foxes.

I take the adventures of several couples of destroyers who, on the night of May 31, were nosing along somewhere towards the Schleswig-Holstein coast, ready to chop any Hun-stuff coming back to earth by that particular road.  The leader of one line was Gehenna, and the next two ships astern of her were Eblis and Shaitan, in the order given.  There were others, of course, but with the exception of one Goblin they don’t come violently into this tale.  There had been a good deal of promiscuous firing that evening, and actions were going on all round.  Towards midnight our destroyers were overtaken by several three-and four-funnel German ships (cruisers they thought) hurrying home.  At this stage of the game anybody might have been anybody—­pursuer or pursued.  The Germans took no chances, but switched on their searchlights and opened fire on Gehenna.  Her acting sub-lieutenant reports:  “A salvo hit us forward.  I opened fire with the after-guns.  A shell then struck us in a steam-pipe, and I could see nothing but steam.  But both starboard torpedo-tubes were fired.”