and captain in the
conning-towers to officers and men in barbettes and casemates, and the
sweating stokers and engineers in their steel prisons--which might well
become their tombs--every man risked and gave his life as cheerfully as
the most reckless commander or seaman on the torpedo flotillas.

It was a fight to the death, and every man knew it, and accepted the
fact with the grim joy of the true fighting man.

Naturally, no detailed description of the battle of Dover would be
possible, even if it were necessary to the narrative. Not a man who
survived it could have written such a description. All that was known to
the officials on shore was that every now and then an aerogram came,
telling in broken fragments of the sinking of a battleship or cruiser on
one side or the other, and the gradual weakening of the enemy's defence;
but to those who were waiting and watching so anxiously along the line
of cliffs, the only tidings that came were told by the gradual
slackening of the battle-thunder, and the ever-diminishing frequency of
the pale flashes of flame gleaming through the drifting gusts of smoke.

Then at last morning dawned, and the pale November sun lit up as sorry a
scene as human eyes had ever looked upon. Not a fourth of the ships
which had gone into action on either side were still afloat, and these
were little better than drifting wrecks.

All along the shore from East Wear Bay to the South Foreland lay the
shattered, shell-riddled hulks of what twelve hours before had been the
finest battleships and cruisers afloat, run ashore in despair to save
the lives of the few who had come alive through that awful battle-storm.
Outside them showed the masts and fighting-tops of those which had sunk
before reaching shore, and outside these again lay a score or so of
battleships and a few armoured cruisers, some down by the head, some by
the stern, and some listing badly to starboard or port--still afloat,
and still with a little fight left in them, in spite of their gashed
sides, torn decks, riddled topworks and smashed barbettes.

But, ghastly as the spectacle was, it was not long before a mighty cheer
went rolling along the cliffs and over the ruined town for, whether flew
the French or German flag, there was not a ship that French or German
sailor or marine had landed on English soil save as prisoners.

The old Sea Lion had for the first time in three hundred and fifty years
been attacked in his lair, and now a