transmitted by means of wireless signals from a seaplane hovering
overhead, the abnormal force of the explosion being due to the heavy
charge of high explosive which such a craft was able to carry in her
bow, so arranged as to fire on striking the object of attack.

With the failure of this ingenious but costly method of attack
precautions were at once taken against a repetition and the seaplane
hovering inconveniently overhead was driven off. The bombardment was
carried on for the allotted span, by which time the shore batteries that
still remained in action had found the range, notwithstanding the heavy
smoke screen emitted by the M.L.'s. "Heavies" were ploughing up the
water unpleasantly close to the monitors, one of which was struck,
though but little damaged.

It was now considered time to draw off seawards, and the spotting
officers, perched on their tripods, had to climb down the railway irons
under a heavy fire and swim to the ships sent to rescue them. The
tripods were then pulled over on to their sides by ropes attached to
their summits and left lying in the shallow water.

Under cover of the smoke screen the bombarding fleet withdrew, after
inflicting severe damage on the submarine base of Zeebrugge.

. . . . . . . .

Some two weeks previous to this bombardment a warship patrolling off the
Belgian coast had reported a curious explosion in the direction of
Nieuport. The night was dark and the stillness of summer rested over the
Pas-de-Calais. Waves lapped gently the distant sand-dunes and war seemed
a thing far away, remote as the icy winds which blow around the Poles.

In the conning-tower and at the gun stations both officers and men
watched keenly, silently, for the predatory Hun. At any moment the thin
blackish-brown hulls of a raiding flotilla from the bases at Zeebrugge
and Ostend might slide out of the blueness of the night. The beams of
searchlights would momentarily cross and recross the intervening sea and
then the guns would mingle their sharp reports with the groans of dying
men.

To the nerve-racking duties of night patrol in the Straits of Dover they
had grown accustomed--indifferent with the contempt born of
familiarity--but this did not cause any relaxation of vigilance. The
element of surprise is too important a factor in modern war to be
treated lightly.

So it happened that when, shortly after eight bells in the middle watch,
a momenta