was
the fact that at the beginning of the firing a man standing on the deck
of one of the German ships could not even see the ship which was
firing the shells at her, though the weather was very clear.

By a quarter to ten o'clock the _Lion_ had come up with and had passed
the slow _Bluecher_, firing broadsides into her as she went by. The
_Tiger_ then passed the unfortunate German ship, also letting her have a
heavy fire, and then the _Princess Royal_ did likewise. Finally the _New
Zealand_ was able to engage her and later even the slow _Indomitable_
got near enough to do so. By that time the _Bluecher_ was afire and one
of her gun turrets, with its crew and gun, had been swept off bodily by
a British shell.

Meanwhile the _Lion_, _Tiger_, and _Princess Royal_ kept straight ahead
till they were able to "straddle" even the leading ship of the enemy's
line. The _Tiger_ and _Lion_ poured shells into the _Seydlitz_, but were
unable to do much damage to the _Moltke_. While they were thus engaged
the _Princess Royal_ singled out the _Derfflinger_ for her target. The
light British cruiser _Aurora_, _Arethusa_, and _Undaunted_ were far
ahead of the rest of the British fleet and were firing at the _Moltke_,
but thick black smoke which poured from their funnels as their engines
were speeded up got between the gunners of the _Lion_ and their target,
the _Moltke_, completely obscuring the latter. As a result the three
light British cruisers were ordered to slow down and to take positions
to the rear.

By eleven o'clock there were fires raging on both the _Seydlitz_ and the
_Derfflinger_, and Admiral Hipper decided to try to save his larger
ships by sacrificing the destroyers that accompanied them. Consequently
the German destroyers put their bows right toward the large British
ships and charged, but the fire which they drew was too much for them
and they gave up this maneuver.

The British destroyer _Meteor_, which had been maintaining a perilous
position between the battleships, then attempted to torpedo the
_Bluecher_, which had fallen far to the rearward to be abandoned by the
rest of the German fleet. Badly damaged as the _Bluecher_ was, the crew
of one of her guns managed to get in some final shots, one of them
nearly ending the career of the British destroyer. The _Arethusa_ had
also come up and prepared to launch a torpedo. Cruiser and destroyer
torpedoed her at about the same moment, and later, while within 200
yards