As the great Battle Fleet came rushing from the north every eye was strained to catch the first sight of Beatty and the Germans. The thunder of a thousand guns rolled far across that summer sea. It was heard along the coast of Jutland a hundred miles away; and the main body of the Grand Fleet knew _The Day_ had come long before they reached the battlefield. Presently the flashes began sparkling into view; and then the ships themselves loomed up, dimly made out through mist and smoke. Jellicoe did not yet know exactly where the Germans were, and Beatty could not tell what they would do now Jellicoe had come. But Beatty turned sharp east immediately he sighted Jellicoe, and the Germans soon turned too, fearing to have him cross their T while Jellicoe was rounding on them. They wanted to escape, seeing the fight was hopeless. But they could not take the quickest way, that of turning all together--each ship turning right round where she was and making off as hard as she could--because this would have changed the places of the admirals and put the battle cruisers in the rear as well. Nor could they safely turn right back on their course, while keeping the same line-ahead, because some ships would then be masking the fire of others till the whole line had been reversed; and they sorely needed every gun they had. So the only way left was to keep parallel with Beatty till a chance came to turn sharply enough to get away, but not sharply enough to mask any of their own fire. Imagine the whole enormous battlefield as something like a target, with the Germans circling round the bull's-eye, Beatty round the inner, and Jellicoe just coming into the outer. From Beatty's reports and his own observation Jellicoe could not know even that before six. So he sent out his own battle cruiser squadron under Admiral Hood to lengthen Beatty's line and overlap the Germans. Hood then sent one of his light cruisers, the _Chester_, speeding ahead to scout. But three German light cruisers held her up in a furious fight of twenty minutes. The _Chester_ fought desperately, losing more than half her men, but getting her scout work done in spite of the fearful odds against her. How well she fought may be found out from the story of Jack Cornwell; for he was only one of her many heroes. Ship's boy, first class, and sixteen years of age, Jack Cornwell would have been the youngest V.C. in the world had he lived to wear it. With every man in the gun's crew round him dead or dying, and with the gun-shield shot away, he stood there, under a terrific fire, mortally wounded, with the receivers at his ears, reporting exactly what had happened to everyone except himself, and calmly waiting for orders how to carry on.