d the Lieutenant. He
straightened up, staring ahead through his glasses in the direction of
the invisible fight.

For a while no one spoke. The tense minutes dragged by as the sounds
of firing grew momentarily more distinct. The uncertain outline of the
near horizon was punctuated by vivid flashes of flame from the guns of
the approaching enemy. They were still hidden by the mist and
apparently unconscious of the Battle-Fleet bearing down upon them like
some vast, implacable instrument of doom. The target of their guns
suddenly became visible as the Battle-cruisers appeared on the
starboard bow, moving rapidly across the limit of vision like a line of
grey phantoms spitting fire and destruction as they went. Misty
columns of foam that leaped up from the water all about them showed
that they were under heavy fire.

The Battle-Fleet was deploying into Line of Battle, Squadron forming up
astern of Squadron in a single line of mailed monsters extending far
into the haze that was momentarily closing in upon them. The curtain
ahead was again pierced by a retreating force of Cruisers beaten back
on the protection of the Battle-Fleet and ringed by leaping waterspouts
as the enemy's salvos pursued them.

As yet the enemy were invisible, but when the last ship swung into
deployment the mist cleared for a moment and disclosed them amid a
cloud of smoke and the furious flashes of guns. The moment had come,
and all along the extended British battle-line the turret guns opened
fire with a roar of angry sound that seemed to split the grey vault of
heaven. As if to mock them in that supreme instant the mist swirled
across again and hid the German Fleet wheeling round in panic flight.

The gases belched from the muzzles of the guns, together with the smoke
of hundreds of funnels caught and held by the encircling mist, reeled
to and fro across the spouting water and mingled with the grey clouds
from bursting shell. Through it all the two Fleets, the pursuing and
the pursued, grappled in blindfold headlong fury.

Thorogood's battery was on the disengaged side of the ship during the
earlier phases of the action. Across the deck they heard the guns of
Tweedledee's battery open fire with a roar, and then the cheering of
the crews, mingled with the cordite fumes, was drowned by an
ear-splitting detonation in the confined spaces of the mess deck,
followed by a blinding flash of light.

Tweedledee was flung from where he was s