could have beaten, and with a trained skill no Viking could have equalled, every seaman and Marine in that heroic party who was not killed or disabled pressed on till the flaming battery was silenced. Then the survivors swarmed back with all the wounded they could find, climbed over the few broken gangways still holding together, and turned to the work of getting clear. At last the _Vindictive_, though a mere mangled wreck, got off and limped home victorious with all that was left of the equally daring flotilla of small craft. Zeebrugge was the bigger base on the Belgian coast. But Ostend remained; and both were connected by canals with Bruges, which stood several miles inland. The whole formed a triple base shaped like the letter V, with Bruges at the bottom, Zeebrugge (sea-Bruges) to the right, and Ostend to the left. To close only Zeebrugge was to leave the back door open. So Ostend was raided, and smashed later on, the old _Vindictive_, now past her fighting days, being sunk full of concrete. From all that remained of her still above water the hero-king, Albert, was cheered into Ostend after the Armistice by the Belgian Boy Scouts, as he steamed past with Sir Roger Keyes to land, with his heroine-queen, on the soil so long fouled by German pirates. These raids spoilt German chances from the nearest ports to Britain. But they did not stop the submarine campaign; and there was still plenty of work for camouflage, convoys, and "Q" ships. Camouflage at sea is a very different thing from camouflage on land. On land camouflage is meant to make one thing look like something else or to hide it altogether. But no kind of camouflage will hide a ship. Nor is there any point in making a boat look like anything else; for everybody knows that ships are the only things at sea. Camouflage afloat was therefore meant to confuse the submarine commander's aim by deceiving his eye as to his target's speed and course. By painting cunning arrangements of stripes and splashes of different colours a ship's course and speed could be so disguised that the torpedoist was puzzled in getting his sights on her and in working out the range and speed. If an old-fashioned sailor could have suddenly been dropped on to the deck of a transport in the midst of a convoy of camouflaged ships he would have thought all their helmsmen were drunk or stark, staring mad; for they would have seemed to be steering every which way at large and not one on any proper course at all.