off was never divulged. A story did get
about afterwards,--I saw it mentioned in some of the newspapers,--to
the effect that one of them had arrived within two hundred feet
immediately over the object he wanted to drop his bombs on, and then
found he could not let them go because the releasing gear was clogged
up with frozen snow. Whether or not the yarn is true it is impossible
to say, but imagine the fellow's feelings when, after planing down to
two hundred feet with all the anti-aircraft guns in the place going
full blast, he found he could not drop a single egg! Poor devil!

The seaplanes that did return were soon hoisted in, but in the
meanwhile eight destroyers and a couple of other craft had been sent on
to steam down the coast in line abreast to see if by any chance the two
missing ones had come down on the water. We were with this lot, and
after an hour's steaming at 20 knots, by which time the island of Sylt
was plainly visible about nine or ten miles dead ahead and no trace of
the lost sheep had been seen, the search had to be abandoned.

It was then that the three destroyers to seaward sighted two steam
trawlers some way off to the south-westward. They were flying no
colours so far as we could see, but seemed to be in single line ahead,
and as they were going straight for Sylt it was pretty obvious that
they were mine-sweepers or patrol boats, and not mere fishermen.

The three outer destroyers,--we happened to be one of them,--promptly
altered course to cut them off from the coast, and before very long we
were buzzing along at something like 30 knots with an enormous mountain
of water piled up in our wake, the water being rather shallow.

The trawlers, poor chaps, hadn't a dog's chance of getting away or of
doing anything; but I must say we all admired them for their pluck.
They had got into line abreast, and soon, when we were within about
5,000 yards, our leading craft hoisted some signal. We had no time to
look it up in the book, but took it to be a signal asking if they would
surrender. But not a bit of it. They were patrol boats, and each of
them had a small gun, and presently there came a flash and a little
cloud of brown smoke from the nearer one of the two. The shell fell
some distance short.

We had all held our fire up till then, for it was mere baby killing and
we did not want to do the dirty on them if it could be avoided, but as
they started the game of firing on us, we had no alte