As for the _Arethusa_, her repairs were made good at Chatham, and a month later she was able to rejoin the Harwich Force. She had further adventures and narrow escapes, but her life, if stirring and most useful to her country, was a short one, and her end was tragic. In February 1916, only eighteen months after she had been launched, while returning from an attempt to intercept an enemy force, she was struck by a mine off Felixstowe, and her engines were disabled by the explosion, which killed eleven men in her boiler-room. A south-east gale was blowing and a high sea was running. Attempts were made to take her in tow, but the hawsers parted, and she drifted helplessly on to the Cutler shoal in a sinking condition. Her back was broken, and she fell in two. A dreadful incident of this tragedy was the attempt of a stoker, maddened by pain, to escape from below by climbing up the inside of the funnel. He was seen appearing over the top of the funnel, and was helped down. His clothes had all been burnt off; his injuries were terrible, and he shortly afterwards died. The fate of the stokers trapped below, when disaster comes in this fashion, is a feature of naval warfare horrible to contemplate. One of the _Arethusa's_ stokers, by the way, must have been a very powerful sleeper. While the ship was breaking up and all the survivors--so it was supposed--had been taken off, a man appeared on a portion of the wreck, waving his hand for help. He was rescued, and proved to be a stoker, who had been sleeping below tranquilly through the explosion, the wreck, and the breaking up of the ship. It was only when he was awash and the water was pouring over his face that he woke to the situation. CHAPTER III OTHER ACTIONS CHAPTER III OTHER ACTIONS The battle of the Dogger Bank--The sinking of the _Bluecher_--The Lowestoft raid--The action off Texel.