of many who
were untouched by the flying slivers of steel, and the crews of the
secondary batteries of smaller guns suffered severely.

Cot cases were the first to be lowered from the decks of the warships to
the waiting Red Cross boats. The patience and care with which this
difficult operation was carried out may be gauged from the fact that
there were no casualties or deaths during the work of transportation.
Human forms, swathed from head to foot in yellow picric-acid dressings,
were lowered on to the decks or carried down the gangways. By a curious
ordinance of fate, _picric acid_, one of the most deadly explosives
known, also provides a medical dressing for the alleviation of the pain
which in another form it may have caused. The walking wounded, with arms
in slings or heads covered in lint, were helped down the ship's sides by
smoke-blackened comrades in uniforms torn to shreds by the fierce work
of naval war.

All serious cases of shell shock were conveyed at the utmost speed by
special units to the big and lavishly equipped hospital ships. Those
with minor injuries were taken ashore and placed in ambulance trains for
distribution among the big naval hospitals. So perfect was the
organisation that within three hours all the sick-bays had been cleared
and fresh crews placed on board. The squadrons were again ready to give
battle.

Twenty-four hours later the patrol flotillas returned to their base to
commence once again the dangerous and monotonous but less spectacular
work of minesweeping and patrol. Their work in preventing a
concentration of German submarines on the line of route of the returning
fleets and in the removal of the wounded received high praise from the
commander-in-chief. In the wardroom on the little stone pier a silent
toast was given that night to those who had gone aloft in the greatest
sea fight since Trafalgar.

CHAPTER XXIII

A NIGHT ATTACK

TWO drifters, about a mile apart, with no lights to indicate their
presence, were drifting idly with the ebb tide. It was an oppressively
hot night in mid-August. Scarcely a ripple disturbed the surface of the
sea, but the intense darkness and the absence of stars told of the heavy
clouds above. The barometer had been falling rapidly for some hours and
all the conditions seemed to indicate a coming storm.

The duty of these two vessels was to watch lines of cunningly laid
submerged nets (described in an earlier chapter) and to guide th