_, Erskine had done a great deal more
damage to the enemy than he knew, for she had been sent not for fighting
purposes, but as a depot ship for the _Flying Fishes_, from which they
could renew their torpedoes and the gas cylinders which furnished their
driving power. Being a light craft, she was to take up an agreed
position off Bracklesham Bay three miles to the north-west of Selsey
Bill, the loneliest and shallowest part of the coast, with all lights
out, ready to supply all that was wanted or to make any repairs that
might be necessary. Her sinking, therefore, deprived John Castellan's
craft of their base.

After the _Dupleix_ had gone down, the _Ithuriel_ rose again, and
Erskine said to Lennard:

"There must be more of them outside, they wouldn't be such fools as to
rush Portsmouth with three destroyers and a couple of cruisers. We'd
better go on and reconnoitre."

The _Ithuriel_ ran out south-eastward at twenty knots in a series of
broad curves, and she was just beginning to make the fourth of these
when six black shapes crowned with wreaths of smoke loomed up out of the
semi-darkness.

"Thought so--destroyers," said Erskine. "Yes, and look there, behind
them--cruiser supports, three of them--these are for the second rush.
Coming up pretty fast, too; they'll be there in half an hour. We shall
have something to say about that. Hold on, Lennard."

"Same tactics, I suppose," said Lennard.

"Yes," replied Erskine, taking down the receiver. "Are you there,
Castellan? All right. We've six more destroyers to get rid of. Full
speed ahead, as soon as you like--guns all ready, I suppose? Good--go
ahead."

The _Ithuriel_ was now about two miles to the westward and about a mile
in front of the line of destroyers, which just gave her room to get up
full speed. As she gathered way, Lennard saw the nose of the great ram
rise slowly out of the water. The destroyer's guns crackled, but it is
not easy to hit a low-lying object moving at fifty miles an hour, end
on, when you are yourself moving nearly twenty-five. Just the same thing
happened as before. The point of the ram passed over the destroyer's
bows, crumpled them up and crushed them down, and the _Ithuriel_ rushed
on over the sinking wreck, swerved a quarter turn, and bore down on her
next victim. It was all over in ten minutes. The _Ithuriel_ rushed
hither and thither among the destroyers like some leviathan of the deep.
A crash, a swift grinding scrape, and a mass