prisoner rewarded them. It appears that upon the approach of the ships,
and with the opening of the fire, the enemy simply retired and contented
themselves with bringing machine-guns to the shore end of the Mole. And
while they worked and destroyed, the covering party below the parapet
could see in the harbor, by the light of the German star shells, the
shapes of the block ships stealing in and out of their own smoke and
making for the mouth of the canal.

[Sidenote: The _Thetis_ shows the road to all the ships.]

_Thetis_ came first, steaming into a tornado of shell from the great
batteries ashore. All her crew, save a remnant who remained to steam her
in and sink her, had already been taken off by the ubiquitous motor
launches, but the remnant spared hands enough to keep her four guns
going. It was hers to show the road to _Intrepid_ and _Iphigenia_, who
followed.

[Sidenote: The _Thetis_ is sunk.]

She cleared the string of armed barges which defends the channel from
the tip of the Mole, but had the ill-fortune to foul one of her
propellers upon the net defence which flanks it on the shore side. The
propeller gathered in the net and rendered her practically unmanageable;
the shore batteries found her and pounded her unremittingly; she bumped
into a bank, edged off, and found herself in the channel again, still
some hundreds of yards from the mouth of the canal, in a practically
sinking condition. As she lay she signalled invaluable directions to the
others, and here Commander R.S. Sneyd, D.S.O., accordingly blew the
charges and sank her. A motor launch, under Lieutenant H. Littleton,
R.N.V.R., raced alongside and took off her crew. Her losses were five