n British light cruisers and
destroyers went into the Bight on a scouting cruise planned by the
Admiralty, not the Grand Fleet. The German destroyers fell back to
lure the British within range of the enormous guns on Heligoland. That
failed. But suddenly, out of the morning mist, came a bunch of German
shells throwing up water-spouts that almost splashed aboard. Instantly
the British destroyers strung out, farther apart, and put on full
racing speed as the next two bunches crept closer in. _Whirrh!_ went
the fourth, just overhead, as the flotilla flagship _Arethusa_
signalled to fire torpedoes. At once the destroyers turned, all
together, lashing the sea into foam as their sterns whisked round, and
charged, faster than any cavalry, straight for the enemy. When the
Germans found the range and once more began bunching their shells too
close in, the British destroyers snaked right and left, threw out the
range-finding, and then raced ahead again. In less than ten minutes
they had made more than five miles, fired their torpedoes, and were on
their way back. Then up came the British cruisers and converged on the
_Mainz_, which went down fighting. "The _Mainz_," wrote one of the
British officers who saw her, "was immensely gallant. With her whole
midships a fuming inferno she kept one gun forward and another aft
still spitting forth fury and defiance like a wild cat mad with
wounds." In the mean time Jellicoe, rightly anxious about leaving
British light craft unsupported by heavier vessels so close to the
German Fleet, urged the Admiralty to change their plan by sending on
the battle cruisers. Then up came Beatty's four lordly giants--_Lion,
Queen Mary, Invincible, New Zealand_--and the outclassed Germans
retired.

[Illustration: DESTROYER.]

The destroyer _Defender_, having sunk a German, had lowered a whaleboat
to pick up survivors, when she was chased by a big German cruiser. So
there, all alone, was her whaler, a mere open boat, on the enemy's part
of the battlefield. But, through a swirl alongside, up came Submarine
E4, opened her conning tower, took the whole boat's crew aboard, dived
down again before the Germans could catch her, and landed safe home.

E9 crept in six miles south of Heligoland a fortnight later and sank
the German cruiser _Hela_. But within a week the German von Weddigen
had become the most famous of submarine commanders, for sinking no less
than three British armoured cruisers with