he Mole;
_Sirius_ and _Brilliant_ shifted their course for Ostend; and the great
swarm of destroyers and motor craft sowed themselves abroad upon their
multifarious particular duties. The night was overcast and there was a
drift of haze; down the coast a great searchlight swung its beams to and
fro; there was a small wind and a short sea.

[Sidenote: The _Vindictive_ heads for the Mole.]

[Sidenote: The wind helps make a smoke-screen.]

From _Vindictive's_ bridge, as she headed in towards the Mole with her
faithful ferry-boats at her heels, there was scarcely a glimmer of
light to be seen shorewards. Ahead of her, as she drove through the
water, rolled the smoke-screen, her cloak of invisibility, wrapped about
her by the small craft. This was a device of Wing-Commander Brock,
R.N.A.S., "without which," acknowledges the Admiral in Command, "the
operation could not have been conducted." The north-east wind moved the
volume of it shoreward ahead of the ships; beyond it, the distant town
and its defenders were unsuspicious; and it was not till _Vindictive_,
with her bluejackets and marines standing ready for the landing, was
close upon the Mole that the wind lulled and came away again from the
south-west, sweeping back the smoke-screen and laying her bare to the
eyes that looked seaward.

[Sidenote: The star shells discover the ships and battle opens.]

[Sidenote: The _Vindictive_ reaches the Mole.]

There was a moment immediately afterwards when it seemed to those in the
ships as if the dim coast and the hidden harbor exploded into light. A
star shell soared aloft, then a score of star shells; the wavering beams
of the searchlights swung round and settled to a glare; the wildfire of
gun flashes leaped against the sky; strings of luminous green beads shot
aloft, hung and sank; and the darkness of the night was supplanted by
the nightmare daylight of battle fires. Guns and machine-guns along the
Mole and batteries ashore woke to life, and it was in a gale of shelling
that _Vindictive_ laid her nose against the thirty-foot high concrete
side of the Mole, let go an anchor, and signed to _Daffodil_ to shove
her stern in. _Iris_ went ahead and endeavored to get alongside
likewise.

[Sidenote: Captain Carpenter in the flame-thrower hut.]

The fire, from the account of everybody concerned, was intense. While
ships plunged and rolled beside the Mole in an unexpected send of sea,
_Vindictive_ with her greater draught jarrin