quarter, and with a calm sea for the small craft. The operation cannot
be rehearsed beforehand, since the essence of it is secrecy, and though
one might have to wait a long time to realize all the essential
conditions of wind and weather, secrecy wears badly when large numbers
of men are brought together in readiness for the attack.

[Sidenote: The _Vindictive_ makes for Ostend.]

The _Sirius_ lies in the surf some two thousand yards east of the
entrance to Ostend Harbor, which she failed so gallantly to block; and
when, in the early hours of yesterday morning, the _Vindictive_ groped
her way through the smoke-screen and headed for the entrance, it was as
though the old fighting-ship awoke and looked on. A coastal motor-boat
had visited her and hung a flare in her slack and rusty rigging; and
that eye of unsteady fire, paling in the blaze of the star-shells or
reddening through the drift of the smoke, watched the whole great
enterprise, from the moment when it hung in doubt to its ultimate
triumphant success.

[Sidenote: Unforeseen conditions add to the difficulties.]

[Sidenote: German destroyers guard the coast.]

The planning and execution of that success had been entrusted by the
Vice-Admiral, Sir Roger Keyes, to Commodore Hubert Lynes, C.M.G., who
directed the previous attempt to block the harbor with _Sirius_ and
_Brilliant_. Upon that occasion, a combination of unforeseen, and
unforeseeable, conditions had fought against him; upon this, the main
problem was to secure the effect of a surprise attack upon an enemy who
was clearly, from his ascertained dispositions, expecting him. _Sirius_
and _Brilliant_ had been baffled by the displacement of the Stroom Bank
buoy, which marks the channel to the harbor entrance, but since then
aerial reconnaissance had established that the Germans had removed the
buoy altogether and that there were now no guiding marks of any kind.
They had also cut gaps in the piers as a precaution against a landing;
and, further, when towards midnight on Thursday the ships moved from
their anchorage, it was known that some nine German destroyers were out
and at large upon the coast. The solution of the problem is best
indicated by the chronicle of the event.

[Sidenote: A still sea and no moon.]

It was a night that promised well for the enterprise--nearly windless,
and what little breeze stirred came from a point or so west of north; a
sky of lead-blue, faintly star-dotted, and no moon; a