ared
hands enough to keep her four guns going. It was hers to show the road
to the Intrepid and Iphigenia which followed. She cleared a string of
armed barges, which defends the channel from the tip of the mole, but
had the ill-fortune to foul one of her propellers upon a net defense
which flanks it on the shore side. The propeller gathered in the net and
it rendered her practically unmanageable. Shore batteries found her and
pounded her unremittingly. She bumped into the bank, edged off and found
herself in the channel again, still some hundreds of yards from the
mouth of the canal in practically a sinking condition. As she lay she
signaled invaluable directions to others, and her commander blew charges
and sank it. Motor launches took off her crew. The Intrepid, smoking
like a volcano, and with all her guns blazing, followed. Her motor
launch had failed to get alongside, outside the harbor, and she had men
enough for anything. Straight into the canal she steered, her smoke
blowing back from her into the Iphigenia's eyes so that the latter was
blinded, and going a little wild, ran into the dredger, with her barge
moored beside it, which lay at the western arm of the canal. She was not
clear though, and entered the canal, pushing the barge before her.

"It was then that a shell hit the steam connections of her whistle and
the escape of steam which followed drove off some of the smoke, and let
her see what she was doing. Lieutenant Carter, commanding the Intrepid,
placed the nose of his ship neatly on the mud of the western bank,
ordered his crew away, and blew up his ship by switches in the chart
room. Lieutenant Leake, commanding the Iphigenia, beached her according
to arrangement on the eastern side, blew her up, saw her drop nicely
across the canal, and left her with her engines still going to hold her
in position till she should have bedded well down on the bottom.
According to the latest reports from air observation the two old ships,
with their holds full of concrete, are lying across the canal in a
V-position, and it is probable that the work they set out to do has been
accomplished and that the canal is effectively blocked."

At Ostend an attempt was also made to block the canal on the same night,
but it was unsuccessful owing to a shift of wind which blew away the
smoke screen behind which the British craft were acting, and enabled the
German gun fire to destroy the flares which had been lit to mark the
entran