The circumstances of the moment were exceptionally favourable for their employment. The conditions of atmosphere that made long-range gunnery difficult, made the establishment of smoke screens to render it more difficult still, exceptionally easy. The wind had dropped, the air was heavy and vaporous, the ships were running from one bank of light fog into another. It was a day on which smoke would stay where it was made, clinging to the surface of the sea, mingling with and permeating the water-laden atmosphere. Further, these were just the conditions in which, were a torpedo attack delivered at a fleet by the fast destroyer flotillas, the threat would have an element of surprise that would be lacking in clear vision. Such menaces, then, should they have any deterrent effect on the enemy’s closing, would be likely to have a maximum effect. The respite from gunfire, the delay in the re-formation of the fleet for pursuit, each could be the longest possible. Two considerations must have caused Scheer the gravest possible anxiety. In the first place, smoke screens would not protect the van of his fleet. What if the British used their speed to concentrate ships there and crush it? Secondly, as destroyer attacks could only be delivered from a point in advance of the course of the squadrons it was hoped to injure or divert, the method on which he relied, first for breaking off from, and then evading, action could not be used until he had the British Fleet on his quarter or astern. Now at six o’clock the British Fleet was dead ahead of him. Its fleet’s speed must have been three, and may have been four, knots greater than his own. He had four powerful ships, six or seven knots faster still, on his port bow at a range of only 14,000 yards, supported by a 25-knot squadron only three knots slower and of enormous gun power. How was he to turn a line of twenty-one ships to get the whole of this force behind him, without some portion of it being overwhelmed in the process? For to turn in succession would be to leave first the centre and the rear, and then the rear entirely unsupported as the leading ships escaped. As we have seen in a previous chapter, until the enemy’s artillery was neutralized, it was out of the question to do anything but to turn on a flat arc, so that so long as it was necessary or possible, all the ships should act in mutual support. The crux of the situation was this: The Grand Fleet was but twelve miles off, a distance that could be shortened to easy gun range in ten or twelve minutes. What if the whole of this force were in a quarter of an hour brought parallel to, and well ahead of, his own? To engage it defensively by gun power would be useless for the odds were hopeless. To turn the head of the line sharply would be to purchase a precarious safety for the van by the certain immolation of the centre and the rear. Scheer must have seen that, were things to develop along this line, he would have no