All the other compasses having been destroyed, we had to depend upon the conning-tower compass. The magnetic directive force on a compass needle is necessarily very weak in a conning tower of such small dimensions. The ship had received so many hard knocks that the magnetism on board was pretty certain to have undergone considerable change. Thus, whereas this particular compass was somewhat independable before, it was now exceedingly unreliable. In spite of the many hundreds of times that I must previously have instructed young officers that no iron should be placed within five feet of the compass, I have {240} my first lieutenant to thank for pointing out that the presence of so many steel helmets in the conning tower was inadvisable. _Daffodil_ was ordered to tow _Vindictive's_ bow away from the wall. Lieutenant Campbell obeyed at once; our anchor cable was slipped overboard. Directly after the strain came on the _Daffodil's_ hawser the latter broke, but it had served its purpose. "Full speed ahead" was ordered and the ship moved forward almost immediately. This was at 1.11 A.M. A large steel boom--the original mainmast of the ship--had been rigged over the port side of the quarter-deck, jutting out rather further than the port propeller with the object of saving the latter from hitting the wall. When _Vindictive's_ helm was put over to port, her stern swung towards the Mole, but the boom saved the situation as a result of a heavy blow against the wall. As soon as _Vindictive_ had moved a few feet the gangways slipped off the wall and fell overboard with a resounding crash. For a few moments the wreckage fouled and stopped the port propeller, but quickly cleared again without having done any serious damage. [Sidenote: The German's Last Straw]