To my mind the chief reasons for our successful running of the gantlet were twofold, firstly, the fact that we were so close, and secondly, the splendid manner in which our guns' crews stuck to their work. With regard to the former, a longer range would have entailed more deliberate firing, and this in turn would have given time for more deliberate choice of point of aim. A few projectiles penetrating the engine or boiler rooms, or holing us at the water-line, would have settled the matter. The range being so short one can conjecture that the German gunners, realising that they could not miss, pumped ammunition into us at the utmost speed of which their guns were capable without regard to the particular damage which they were likely to cause. Their loss of serenity, due in the {180} first place to the novel circumstances of the case, must have been considerably augmented by the fact that our own projectiles were hitting the wall near the gun muzzles--it was too much to hope that we should actually obtain any hits on the guns themselves. The petty officer at one of our six-inch guns, when asked afterwards what ranges he fired at, said that he reckoned he opened fire at about two hundred yards and he continued till close to the Mole. "How close?" he was asked. "Reckoning from the gun muzzle," he replied, "I should say it was about three feet!" [Sidenote: Gun-fire from the Mole] One can picture the situation as seen from the Mole itself. A hostile vessel suddenly looming out of the fog at point-blank range, the intense excitement which resulted, the commencement of fire, the bursting of shell on the wall, the ardent desire to hit something as rapidly and as often as possible, the natural inclination to fire at the nearest object, namely, that part of the vessel on their own level, and the realisation that in a few moments the guns would no longer bear on the target. One can imagine the thoughts that were uppermost in their minds, "Hit her, smash her, pump it in, curse those guns of hers, don't lose a second of time, blow her to bits!" One cannot blame those gunners. To use a war-time expression, "They had the wind up." We had counted on that, we had concentrated all our efforts at "putting the wind up." Yet if anybody had seriously suggested that a ship could steam close past a shore battery in these modern days of gunnery he would have been laughed to scorn. Yet it was easy. The reason is not far to seek. {181} Those who worship _matériel_ have followed a false god. The crux of all fighting lies with the personnel--a fact borne out again and again on this particular night just as throughout past history. If the German gunners had been superhuman this tale would not have been told, but human nature, reckoned with by the attackers, was on our side; the initiative was ours.