It must be explained that the outer pathway along the top of the Mole was about six feet wide. Then came a drop of 30 feet on to the Mole itself, and once they passed over into this abyss both storming and demolition parties were lost to view. They took ladders for the purposes of this descent, and the sight of those reeling brows a-swarm with men, laden as they were with these ladders, flamethrowers, machine-guns, bombs, cutlasses, and demolition implements, will always haunt me. They dropped like flies, to lie where they fell, dangling across the narrow gangways or clinging piteously for a moment ere they let go and slipped into oblivion. The forecastle was just a battered heap of dead and shattered wreckage, and aft along the batteries I saw Jock Macrae's assistants bending among the motionless heaps and rushing the wounded below. The Pilot joined me after a while, and together we watched the blockships pass through the entrance a few cables away, vomiting flashes and spurts of heavy and machine-gun fire. How they got across that harbour, lit like day by searchlights, whipped into a sheet of foam by shrapnel and machine-gun fire, only God and their Captains know. We saw Jimmy Thorogood in the _Dauntless_ go crashing through the flimsy anti-submarine defences, and I believe we gave him a crazy, cracked cheer. They were plastering him with gas shell, and he was on fire aft and blazing like a hay-rick. But he held on and made the entrance to the Canal, and was lost to view behind some sheds. _Daring_ came next, and _Determination_, trailing in the rear and almost hidden by waterspouts of falling shell. And then Selby gripped my arm and pointed to the foremost brow. Our Padre was lurching along it with splinters flying all round him, looking for all the world like a tightrope walker learning his profession. He reached the Mole intact, and stood looking about him. Then suddenly bending down, he swung the unconscious form of a giant Marine over his shoulder, and carrying him thus, turned and retraced his steps. Other matters claimed my attention for the moment, but when I next looked along the ship's side I saw him returning with another precious human freight slung on his back. It was impossible to tell what was going on along the causeway below the parapet of the Mole. Twice with a deafening concussion a great sheet of flame leaped into the air, and I came to the conclusion that Mouldy's merry men had "touched off" something. It was afterwards, when we came to piece together the breathless narratives of those who returned, that we, whose business it was only to stand and wait, learned something of that desperate hand-to-hand righting; of the rushing and bombing of the machine-guns and a Destroyer alongside; the destruction of the seaplane sheds; and the yelling bayonet charge Milsom led against the angry reinforcements of the Huns.