command, the operation could not have been conducted. A northeast wind
moved the volume of it shoreward ahead of the ships. Beyond it was the
distant town, its defenders unsuspicious.

It was not until the Vindictive, with bluejackets and marines standing
ready for landing, was close upon the mole, that the wind lulled and
came away again from the southeast, sweeping back the smoke screen and
laying her bare to eyes that looked seaward, There was a moment
immediately afterward when it seemed to those on the ships as if the dim
harbor exploded into light. A star shell soared aloft, then a score of
star shells. Wavering beams of the searchlights swung around and settled
into a glare. A wild fire of gun flashes leaped against the sky; strings
of luminous green beads shot aloft, hung and sank. The darkness of the
night was supplemented by a nightmare daylight of battle-fired guns, and
machine guns along the mole. The batteries ashore woke to life.

It was in a gale of shelling that the Vindictive laid her nose against
the thirty-foot-high concrete side of the mole, let go her anchor, and
signaled to the Daffodil to shove her stern in. The Iris went ahead and
endeavored to get alongside likewise.

The fire was intense while the ships plunged and rolled beside the mole
in the seas, the Vindictive, with her greater draft, jarring against the
foundations of the mole with every lunge. They were swept diagonally by
machine-gun fire from both ends of the mole and by the heavy batteries
on shore. Captain Carpenter conned the Vindictive from the open bridge
until her stern was laid in, when he took up his position in the flame
thrower hut on the port side. It is marvelous that any occupant should
have survived a minute in this hut, so riddled and shattered was it.

The officer of the Iris, which was in trouble ahead of the Vindictive,
described Captain Carpenter as handling her like a picket boat. The
Vindictive was fitted along her port side with a high, false deck, from
which ran eighteen brows, or gangways, by which the storming and
demolition parties were to land. The men gathered in readiness on the
main lower decks, while Colonel Elliott, who was to lead the marines,
waited on the false deck just abaft the bridge. Captain Hallahan, who
commanded the bluejackets, was amidships. The word for the assault had
not yet been given when both leaders were killed.

The mere landing on the mole was a perilous business. It involved a