forward.  But, since Shaitan lacked any stern, and her rudder was jammed hard across where the stern should have been, the hawsers parted, and, after leave asked of lawful authority, across all that waste of waters, they sank Shaitan by gun-fire, having first taken all the proper steps about the confidential books.  Yet Shaitan had had her little crumb of comfort ere the end.  While she lay crippled she saw quite close to her a German cruiser that was trailing homeward in the dawn gradually heel over and sink.

This completes my version of the various accounts of the four destroyers directly concerned for a few hours, on one minute section of one wing of our battle.  Other ships witnessed other aspects of the agony and duly noted them as they went about their business.  One of our battleships, for instance, made out by the glare of burning Gehenna that the supposed cruiser that Eblis torpedoed was a German battleship of a certain class.  So Gehenna did not die in vain, and we may take it that the discovery did not unduly depress Eblis’s wounded in hospital.

ASKING FOR TROUBLE

The rest of the flotilla that the four destroyers belonged to had their own adventures later.  One of them, chasing or being chased, saw Goblin out of control just before Goblin and Shaitan locked, and narrowly escaped adding herself to that triple collision.  Another loosed a couple of torpedoes at the enemy ships who were attacking Gehenna, which, perhaps, accounts for the anxiety of the enemy to break away from that hornets’ nest as soon as possible.  Half a dozen or so of them ran into four German battleships, which they set about torpedoing at ranges varying from half a mile to a mile and a half.  It was asking for trouble and they got it; but they got in return at least one big ship, and the same observant battleship of ours who identified Eblis’s bird reported three satisfactory explosions in half an hour, followed by a glare that lit up all the sky.  One of the flotilla, closing on what she thought was the smoke of a sister in difficulties, found herself well in among the four battleships.  “It was too late to get away,” she says, so she attacked, fired her torpedo, was caught up in the glare of a couple of searchlights, and pounded to pieces in five minutes, not even her rafts being left.  She went down with her colours flying, having fought to the last available gun.

Another destroyer who had borne a hand in Gehenna’s trouble had her try at the four battleships and got in a torpedo at 800 yards.  She saw it explode and the ship take a heavy list.  “Then I was chased,” which is not surprising.  She picked up a friend who could only do 20 knots.  They sighted several Hun destroyers who fled from them; then dropped on to four Hun destroyers all together, who made great parade of commencing action, but soon afterwards “thought better of it, and turned away.”  So you see, in that flotilla alone