The flotillas of both sides had meanwhile been busy.  At the head of the squadron of German destroyers that came out of the waters behind Helgoland was the V-187.  Without slacking speed she steamed straight for the British destroyers, her small guns spitting rapidly, but she was outnumbered by British destroyers, which poured such an amount of steel into her thin sides that she went under, her guns firing till their muzzles touched the water and her crew cheering as they went to their deaths.  A few managed to keep afloat on wreckage, and during a lull in the fighting, which lasted from nine o’clock till ten, boats were lowered from the British destroyers Goshawk and Defender to pick up these stranded German sailors.

The commanders of the German fleet, perceiving these small boats from afar, thought that the British were resorting to the old principle of boarding, and the German light cruiser Mainz came out to fire upon them.  Two of the British small boats had to be abandoned as their mother ships made off before the oncoming German.  They were in a perilous position, right beneath the guns of the fortress.  But now a daring and unique rescue took place.  The commander of the British submarine E-4 had been watching the fighting through the periscope of his craft, and seeing the helpless position of the two small boats, he submerged, made toward them, and then, to the great surprise of the men in them, came up right between them and took their occupants aboard his boat.

Repairs had been made on the Arethusa which enabled her to go into action again by ten o’clock.  Accompanied again by two light cruisers of ten four-inch guns and the Fearless, she turned westward in answer to calls for assistance from the destroyers Lurcher and Firedrake, which accompanied the submarines and which reported that they were being chased by fast German cruisers.  Suddenly the light cruiser Strassburg again came out of the mist and bore down on the British cruisers.  Her larger guns were too heavy and had too long a range for those of the British craft, and the latter immediately sent out calls which brought into action for the first time certain ships belonging to the squadron of British light cruisers, which had been stationed to the northwest—­the upper left-hand corner of the page.

The vessels which answered the calls were the light cruisers Falmouth and Nottingham with eight eight-inch and nine six-inch guns respectively, but before arriving the Strassburg still had time to inflict more damage on the Arethusa.  The cruisers Koeln and Mainz joined the Strassburg, and the British vessels were having a bad time of it when their commander ordered the Fearless to concentrate all fire on the Strassburg.  This, and a concentrated fire from the destroyers, proved too strong for her and she turned eastward, disappearing in the mist off