The ship no longer rose to the seas. She rolled heavily from side to side in the trough of the waves. The lieutenant looked around helplessly at the bodies on the floor, at the wrecked indicators, at the useless wheel, at the man who rocked to and fro with his head in his hands. His continuous pitiful moaning exasperated the lieutenant to madness. He drew his revolver and commanded him, with frenzied vehemence, to be quiet. The man stared wildly at the muzzle of the revolver, opened his mouth as though about to shriek, and collapsed in a dead faint. The lieutenant turned from him and went to the observation slit. As the ship lifted clumsily sideways on a wave he had a view of a dark grey cruiser driving through the mist, quite close--on the port side! This was a new unsuspected enemy. Water was streaming from her decks as she rose buoyantly on the sea. A string of flags fluttered along a halyard from her mast. She seemed as normal as a ship on manoeuvres. Suddenly half a dozen spurts of bright flame broke from her dark sides. The lieutenant felt the ship under his feet shiver and stagger in a deafening roar. Then he felt the weight of his body heavy against the wall of the conning-tower. He was lying almost horizontal against that wall. Through the slit he looked out upon confused water only, in the place of sea and sky. A great wave rolled straight towards him, splashed against the conning-tower, poured through the slit in a torrent. He sprang back in pitch darkness, fighting with both hands in a last instinctive struggle for life. The solid floor went from under him, human hands clutched at his legs, blindly feeling up his trousers. He kicked--choking--in a rayless night. * * * * * Hull-down on the horizon a German battle-cruiser was reporting a strange vessel that had suddenly appeared, challenged and received her fire, and then run back into the midst of British cruisers which had immediately sunk her. Emden sent disquieting answers to urgent enquiries. The great wireless station at Nauen received the news of another inexplicable disaster. THE AIR SCOUT (1914)