Six miles separated the two lines, and at half-past eight they went to Action Stations, the leading ships of the High Seas Fleet having been picked up an hour before by the easternmost British units. Directing the whole operation--directing, at that moment, the vastest fleet that this planet had seen--Admiral Beatty, in his flagship the _Queen Elizabeth_, had taken his position in the northern line, his second-in-command, Admiral Sir Charles Madden, leading the southern-line battleships in the _Revenge_. Guiding the {291} Germans, in the light cruiser _Cardiff_, was Rear-Admiral Alexander-Sinclair. Of the promised total, one light cruiser, the _Köln_, had broken down and had had to turn back, and one destroyer had struck a mine, going to the bottom, though her crew had been rescued; but, behind the _Cardiff_, in a slow series, moved what had been the cream of the world's second navy. Led by the Battle-Cruiser Squadron, the _Hindenburg_, _Derfflinger_, _Seydlitz_, _Moltke_, and _von der Tann_, came the battleships _Friedrich der Grosse_, flying the German Rear-Admiral's flag, the _Bayern_, _Grosser Kürfürst_, _Kronprinz Wilhelm_, _Markgraf_, _Kaiserin_, _Konig Albreckt_, _Prinz Regent Luitpold_, and _Kaiser_. Behind these again steamed the six light cruisers, _Karlsrühe_, _Frankfurt_, _Emden_, _Nürnberg_, _Brummer_, and _Bremen_; and, bringing up the rear, steaming in five lines, and sandwiched between British escorts, were the remaining forty-nine destroyers of the fifty that had been demanded under the terms of the armistice. So they steamed on, docile to every order, and, when the last of them had been deeply contained, Admiral Beatty gave the signal for the right-about-turn of the Grand Fleet. Surrounded on all sides, filthy, as was afterward to be discovered, and with their men abject and undisciplined, before they reached their anchorage near Inchkeith Island, Admiral Beatty had issued the following order: "The German flag is to be hauled down," he said, "at 3.57 to-day, and is not to be hoisted again without permission." That was at sunset; and, a moment after, Germany had ceased, even in name, to be a sea power. {292}