As the engines of each great ship came temporarily to rest a vessel of the Red Cross flotilla ranged alongside and the more sombre work of war began. A shell through the sick-bay of H.M.S. _Lion_ had caused Sir David Beatty to have many of the wounded on that ship placed in his own cabins. The only casualty on the _New Zealand_ was caused by a gust of bursting steel over the signal bridge. A big shell had passed longitudinally through the line of officers' cabins in the battered little _Southampton_, and many were the curious escapes from death. In modern naval war a heavy casualty list seems unavoidable, and the deadly nature of a sea fight will perhaps be better realised when it is stated that on one of the battle cruisers there were just over three hundred casualties, of which number very nearly two hundred were killed outright, and this on a ship which still sailed proudly into port in fighting condition. Where the shells had burst in the steel flats the fierce heat generated had burnt off the clothes and skin of many who were untouched by the flying slivers of steel, and the crews of the secondary batteries of smaller guns suffered severely. Cot cases were the first to be lowered from the decks of the warships to the waiting Red Cross boats. The patience and care with which this difficult operation was carried out may be gauged from the fact that there were no casualties or deaths during the work of transportation. Human forms, swathed from head to foot in yellow picric-acid dressings, were lowered on to the decks or carried down the gangways. By a curious ordinance of fate, _picric acid_, one of the most deadly explosives known, also provides a medical dressing for the alleviation of the pain which in another form it may have caused. The walking wounded, with arms in slings or heads covered in lint, were helped down the ship's sides by smoke-blackened comrades in uniforms torn to shreds by the fierce work of naval war. All serious cases of shell shock were conveyed at the utmost speed by special units to the big and lavishly equipped hospital ships. Those with minor injuries were taken ashore and placed in ambulance trains for distribution among the big naval hospitals. So perfect was the organisation that within three hours all the sick-bays had been cleared and fresh crews placed on board. The squadrons were again ready to give battle. Twenty-four hours later the patrol flotillas returned to their base to commence once again the dangerous and monotonous but less spectacular work of minesweeping and patrol. Their work in preventing a concentration of German submarines on the line of route of the returning fleets and in the removal of the wounded received high praise from the commander-in-chief. In the wardroom on the little stone pier a silent toast was given that night to those who had gone aloft in the greatest sea fight since Trafalgar. CHAPTER XXIII A NIGHT ATTACK