Meanwhile the crew, many of whom were wounded, were being disembarked into a motor-launch, most gallantly laid alongside by Lieutenant G. H. Drummond. This officer, who remained on the bridge till the last man had been taken off, had already been wounded in three places, and had lost an officer and a man of his crew. The last to leave the _Vindictive_ was Lieutenant Crutchley after searching in every {249} quarter with an electric torch; and, when Lieutenant Drummond, having backed his launch away, collapsed and fainted from his wounds, he took charge of the little vessel which was already seriously damaged. Crowded with wounded, and with her fore part flooded, it was only by continual baling with buckets, and by shifting as many men aft as possible, that he was able to keep her afloat, finally bringing her alongside the destroyer _Warwick_ in a sinking condition. An even narrower escape was that of Lieutenant Alleyne, whom we have last seen lying unconscious in the conning-tower, but who was presently found there by Petty-Officer Reed, who carried him aft under the heaviest fire. Before he could be got overboard, Lieutenant Alleyne was badly hit, and fell into the water, presumably lost. Following Lieutenant Drummond, however, Lieutenant Bourke had come into the harbour with a second motor-launch; and, when Lieutenant Drummond backed away, Lieutenant Bourke had come alongside. Finding the _Vindictive_ empty, he too was about to back out when he heard cries from the water, and found Lieutenant Alleyne, with two other men, all of them badly wounded, clinging to an upturned skiff. Under the bitterest fire--his little motor-launch was hit in fifty-five places, and once by a 4-inch shell--Lieutenant Bourke succeeded in rescuing them and bringing his launch out into the open again, where he presently sighted one of the bombarding monitors, by whom he was at last taken in tow. For the parts which they played on this occasion, Lieutenants Crutchley, Drummond, and Bourke each received the Victoria Cross. {250} Such was the conclusion, just as day was breaking, of three unique operations, in that almost every branch of modern science had been laid under contribution for their carrying out. The chemist, the engineer, the pyrotechnician--each had been indispensable to the final success, and yet in no undertakings of the naval campaign had the human factor more palpably triumphed.