each
captain free to work his own ship till that shoal of torpedoes had
passed. The torpedoes arrived at about thirty miles an hour, shoals of
them together, and showing no sign but the little line of bubbles from
their screws. But most of them were spotted and not one got home. The
_Revenge_ worked her perilous way between a couple, one just missing
her rudder and the other almost grazing her bows.

During the whole of this fourth round the fight went on by fits and
starts. Whenever any part of the enemy's line showed up through the
thickening mist the British guns turned on it with shattering salvoes.
The _Iron Duke_, whose gunnery was simply perfect, caught a big German
battleship for a few minutes only. But by the time the mist had shut
down again the German was like a furnace, seething with a mass of
flame. Meanwhile the battle cruisers were crumpling up their opposite
numbers in the German line, which thus became shorter and more
overlapped than ever. The _Lion_ and _Princess Royal_ each set their
opponent on fire, while the _New Zealand_ and _Indomitable_ drove
another clean out of line, heeling over, and burning furiously fore and
aft. (The _Indomitable_ was King George's Flagship at the Quebec
Tercentenary in 1908, and the _New Zealand_ was Jellicoe's flagship on
his tour of advice round the oversea Empire in 1919.)

At 8.20, somewhere behind the mist which then veiled the German line,
there was a volcanic roar that shook every keel for miles around.
Scheer was losing heavily, running for his life, and doing his best to
hold Jellicoe back by desperate light craft attacks with hundreds of
torpedoes. But Jellicoe countered this with his own light craft, which
sank four enemy destroyers before the night closed in.

_Fifth and Last round: The Germans in Full Flight: 9.00 P.M. 31st of
May, to 4 P.M. 1st of June, 1916._

Jellicoe now had another hard question to answer, a question, indeed,
to which there could not be a perfect answer. The Germans were broken
and flying. But they still had many light craft with hundreds of
torpedoes; they were not far from home and near a swarm of their best
submarines; and their whole coast was full of mines for many miles off
shore, while the shore itself and the string of off-shore islands were
defended by a regular chain of gigantic forts armed with enormous guns.
Following them home was therefore out of the question altogether; for
you _can_ sink a fleet, while