After some fifteen minutes of this work the batteries on the Mole were silenced, the dugouts cleaned out, and the whole range of hangars and store sheds set blazing, or blown to ruins with dynamite. Then came the first great moment of triumph. ‘A quarter of an hour after the _Vindictive_ took her position, a tremendous explosion was seen at the shore end of the Mole. We then knew that our submarine (the old C. 3, who had certainly reached the age for retiring) had managed to get herself in between the piles of the (railway) viaduct connecting the Mole with the shore, and had blown herself up. She carried several tons of high explosive (the equivalent of over 40 good mines) and the effect of her action was effectually to cut off the Mole from the land. Before the explosion the crew of the submarine, which comprised some half-dozen officers and men (under command of Lieutenant R. D. Sandford, R.N.), got away in a very small motor skiff, which lost its propeller and had to be pulled with (a single pair of) paddles against a heavy tide and under machine-gun fire from a range which could be reckoned only in feet. Most of the crew were wounded, but the tiny boat was picked up by a steam pinnace (commanded by Lieut.-Commander Sandford, who rescued his brother and the other five salamanders when they had struggled only 200 yards away from the point of explosion). It is possible that the Germans who saw the submarine coming in under the play of their searchlights, thought that her object was to attack the vessels within the Mole, and that she thought it feasible to get through the viaduct to do this. Their neglect to stop the submarine as she approached could only be put down to the fact that they knew she could not get through owing to the large amount of interlacing between the piles, and that they really believed they were catching her! A large number of Germans were actually on the viaduct, a few feet above the submarine, and were firing at her with machine-guns. I think it can safely be said that everyone of those Germans went up with the viaduct. The cheer raised by my men in the _Vindictive_ when they saw the terrific explosion, was one of the finest things I ever heard. Many of the men were severely wounded--some had three and even four wounds--but they had no thought except for the success of the operation. (They cheered their captain as he went round the decks and kept asking, “Have we won?”--just as if it had been a football match.)