It was already obvious that rapidity would be vital. The weather conditions had been growing more and more unfavourable to the gunnery on which the British Fleet would rely for victory. Everything pointed to the conditions growing steadily worse. It was a case of seizing victory quickly or missing it altogether. Had there been no shifting mists there would have been two and a half or three hours of daylight on which to count. But with lowering clouds and heavy vapours, clear seeing at 10,000 or even 5,000 yards might be as impossible two hours before as two hours after sunset. Everything pointed, therefore, to this: the British attack would have to be instant--or it might not materialize at all. The Vice-Admiral commanding the Battle-Cruiser Fleet saw his duty clearly and simply. But to decide exactly what action he should take was a different thing altogether. No less clear was the task of the British Commander-in-Chief. Twelve miles away from him was the whole naval strength of the enemy, 150 miles from his mine-fields, more than 200 from his fleet bases. Against sixteen modern battleships, he himself commanded twenty-four--a superiority of three to two. His gun-power, measured by the weight and striking energy of his broadsides, must have been nearly twice that of the enemy; measured by the striking energy and the destructive power of its heavier shells, it was greater still. Opposed to the enemy’s five battle-cruisers, there were four under the command of Sir David Beatty and three led by Rear-Admiral Hood. Against the six 18-knot pre-Dreadnoughts that formed the rear of the German Fleet, with their twenty-four 11-inch guns firing a 700-pound shell, there were Rear-Admiral Evan-Thomas’s four 25-knot ships of the Fifth Battle Squadron, carrying thirty-two 15-inch guns, whose shells were three times as heavy and must have been nine times as destructive. This force, vastly superior if it could be concentrated for its purpose, had to be deployed for a blow which, if simultaneously delivered at a range at which the guns would hit, must be final in a very brief period. The German Admiral could never have had the least doubt as to his task. His business was to save his fleet from the annihilation with which it was manifestly menaced. So far fortune had been kind. The British Battle-Cruiser Fleet had done what the Germans had expected it to do. It had engaged promptly and determinedly and its losses, surprisingly enough, had been suffered, not while it was holding a force greatly superior to itself, but while engaging Von Hipper, whose ships were less numerous and more lightly armed. Though Scheer did not expect an encounter with the Grand Fleet, he was very far from being unprepared, should it come. Accordingly, when at six o’clock he realized that the supreme moment had arrived, he was probably as little in doubt as to his method of executing his task, as to the character of the task itself. THE TACTICAL PLANS _Admiral Scheer’s tactics_