remaining arm in greetings. 'Good luck to you,' he called as the rest
of the stormers hastened by. 'Good luck.'

"The lower deck was a shambles as the commander made the rounds of the
ship, yet those wounded and dying raised themselves to cheer as he made
his tour. . . .

"The _Iris_ had troubles of her own. Her first attempts to make fast
to the mole ahead of the _Vindictive_ failed, as her grapnels were not
large enough to span the parapet. Two officers, Lieutenant Commander
Bradford and Lieutenant Hawkins, climbed ashore and sat astride the
parapet trying to make the grapnels fast till each was killed and fell
down between the ship and the wall. Commander Valentine Gibbs had both
legs shot away and died next morning. Lieutenant Spencer though
wounded, took command and refused to be relieved.

"The _Iris_ was obliged at last to change her position and fall in
astern of the _Vindictive_, and suffered very heavily from fire. A
single big shell plunged through the upper deck and burst below at a
point where fifty-six marines were waiting for the order to go to the
gangways. Forty-nine were killed. The remaining seven were wounded.
Another shell in the wardroom, which was serving as a sick bay, killed
four officers and twenty-six men. Her total casualties were eight
officers and sixty-nine men killed, and three officers and 103 men
wounded.

"Storming and demolition parties upon the mole met with no resistance
from the Germans other than intense and unremitting fire. One after
another buildings burst into flame or split and crumbled as dynamite
went off. A bombing party working up toward the mole extension in
search of the enemy destroyed several machine-gun emplacements, but not
a single prisoner rewarded them. It appears that upon the approach of
the ships and with the opening of fire the enemy simply retired and
contented themselves with bringing machine guns to the short end of the
mole."

[Illustration: One of the camouflaged guns of the German shore
batteries which raked with fire the _Vindictive_, the _Daffodil_, and
the _Iris_ when they grappled with the mole, during the night raid.
The outer end of this mole, where a viaduct joins the mole to the
shore, was destroyed for a distance of sixty to one hundred feet by an
old British submarine, loaded with high explosives, running into the
channel and blowing itself up at the entrance.]

The story of the three block ships that were to be sunk in the