and the smoke together were too dense for even the flares. _Vindictive_
then put her helm over and started to cruise to find the entrance. Twice
in her wanderings she must have passed across it, and at her third turn,
upon reaching the position at which she had first lost her way, there
came a rift in the mist, and she saw the entrance clear, the piers to
either side and the opening dead ahead. The inevitable motor-boat dashed
up, raced on into the opening under a heavy and momentarily growing
fire, and planted a flare on the water between the piers. _Vindictive_
steamed over it and on. She was in.

[Sidenote: A hail of lead falls upon the _Vindictive_.]

The guns found her at once. She was hit every few seconds after she
entered, her scarred hull broken afresh in a score of places and her
decks and upper works swept. The machine-gun on the end of the western
pier had been put out of action by the motor-boat's torpedo, but from
other machine-guns at the inshore ends of the pier, from a position on
the front, and from machine-guns apparently firing over the eastern
pier, there converged upon her a hail of lead. The after-control was
demolished by a shell which killed all its occupants. Upper and lower
bridges and chart-room were swept by bullets, and Commander Godsal,
R.N., ordered his officers to go with him to the conning-tower.

[Sidenote: The _Vindictive_ prepares to turn.]

They observed through the observation slit in the steel wall of the
conning-tower that the eastern pier was breached some two hundred yards
from its seaward end, as though at some time a ship had been in
collision with it. They saw the front of the town silhouetted again and
again in the light of the guns that blazed at them; the night was a