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 jarring against the foundation of
the Mole with every plunge, they were swept diagonally by machine-gun
fire from both ends of the Mole and by heavy batteries ashore. Commander
A.F.B. Carpenter (now Captain) conned _Vindictive_ from her open bridge
till her stern was laid in, when he took up his position in the
flame-thrower hut on the port side. It is to this hut that reference has
already been made; it is marvellous that any occupant of it should have
survived a minute, so riddled and shattered is it. Officers of _Iris_,
which was in trouble ahead of _Vindictive_, describe Captain Carpenter
as "handling her like a picket-boat."

[Sidenote: The _Vindictive's_ false high deck and gangways.]

_Vindictive_ was fitted along the port side with a high false deck,
whence ran the eighteen brows, or gangways, by which the storming and
demolition parties were to land. The men were gathered in readiness on