Both remaining sections of the defending force now closed in upon the Germans, their great guns doing more and deadlier work as the range was lessened. One of the German battleships was now on fire, and the great clouds of smoke that rose for a time so hid the ships that firing was suspended. When the smoke cleared the British admiral gave another signal, and then the deadly wasps of naval warfare--the torpedo flotilla--swarmed in upon the enemy to complete the havoc and destruction commenced by the great guns of our battleships. England, sovereign of the seas, had won another victory. Her flag was still supreme! * * * * * The scattered units of the German fleet had not only to seek safety from their pursuers, but also, as the short day closed in, to battle with a formidable gale. For the _Schiller_ and other ships that had steamed westward, the position was one of appalling jeopardy. They had to reckon with the terrors of a wild and rocky shore. Less than three hundred miles from London, the westerly extremity of England, grey and granitic, frowns on the roaring seas that beat in vain upon its rocky bastions. Here the channels mingle with the mighty ocean, and stupendous billows, tumbling shoreward, break on the cliffs with a terrific roar that sometimes daunts the hardened miner at work in the galleries that stretch beneath the ocean-bed. A little more than a mile from the cliffs the Longship’s Lighthouse throws its rays upon the spume of the tremendous waves, and away to the west lies the granite group of the Scilly Isles. The wind and the rain are twin rulers of these islands; and the yeasty currents have swept many a gallant ship upon their jagged reefs. The “Bishop” and his “Clerks” are always on the watch to shrive the souls of shipwrecked mariners. It was here on the Gilstone Rock (near the small islet of Roseviar) that Sir Cloudesley Shovel, returning from the siege of Toulon, met with his tragic end. Driven off his course by storms, his ship, the _Association_, was forced upon the rock, and in a few minutes fell to pieces. In that night of dreadful memory, the _Phœnix_, the _Romney_, and the _Firebrand_ met a like fate. The _St George_ only narrowly escaped. Upwards of 2000 lives were lost in that dread night, and since that far-off time many another ship has gone to pieces in those hungry jaws. It was around these ragged westerly islands that the storm raged with especial fury on the night that followed the scattering of the German fleet. CHAPTER XXXII MARCUS WHITE AND THE MOB