It was now twenty minutes to five, and a message from the _Southampton_, scouting ahead to the south, had suddenly transformed not only the immediate situation, but the entire future outlook of the action. Just below the horizon, but soon to be above it, was the whole of the German Battle Fleet--such were the tidings rapped out to his chief by Commodore Goodenough of the _Southampton_. So far Admiral Beatty's problem had been a comparatively simple one, and the forces at his disposal ample for its solution. But now he was to be thrown, for an indefinite period, into a position of almost crushing inferiority, yet with the possibility in front of him, if the enemy could be tempted to the point of rashness, of leading up to a victory of the first magnitude. For another four minutes he held his course, and then, having sighted the German Battle Fleet to the southeast, he recalled his destroyers, and headed for the northwest, determining to take full advantage of his superior speed. Before doing so, however, he had sustained, at about half-past four, yet another and most serious loss in the sinking of the _Queen Mary_, after a violent explosion, caused by an enemy salvo. With the _Queen Mary_ we are already familiar, owing to her presence at the Battle of the Bight; and, to her three fellow-members of the First Battle-Cruiser Squadron, her loss was irreparable. Between these splendid cruisers, the _Lion_, the _Tiger_, the _Princess Royal_, and the _Queen Mary_, there had grown {178} to be a bond of deep and justifiable pride--a sort of consciousness of each other's aristocracy, nonchalantly concealed, but not lightly to be challenged; while, apart from this, the _Queen Mary_ was one of the finest gunnery ships in the Fleet. Something of the ordeal that she went through may best be gathered, perhaps, from the account afterward given by one of her rescued midshipmen.