Having joined up with them, and being now close to Heligoland, Commodore Tyrwhitt thought it wiser to retreat a little to the westward, but, a few minutes later, sighted a four-funnelled German cruiser, which opened a very heavy fire upon the British force about eleven o'clock. The position being somewhat critical, Commodore Tyrwhitt ordered the _Fearless_ to attack and the First Flotilla to launch torpedoes; but, though they did so with immense spirit, the cruiser evaded the onslaught and vanished in the mist. Ten minutes later she appeared again from another direction, to be attacked both by the _Arethusa_ and the _Fearless_, the former especially escaping destruction from her only by the slenderest of margins. Salvo after salvo of shells plunged into the water, some of {39} them barely thirty feet short of the _Arethusa_, while two torpedoes were also launched at her, but fortunately also fell short, leaving her unharmed. Meanwhile both Commodore Tyrwhitt and Commodore Keyes had been communicating by wireless with Admiral Beatty, who, just after eleven, having evaded three submarines, ordered the Light Cruiser Squadron to the support of the light forces. While this was hurrying to their assistance, however, the _Arethusa's_ 6-inch guns had proved too accurate for the German cruiser, who had broken off action, disappearing into the mist again in the direction of the Island. How badly she was damaged could only be guessed, but, four minutes later, yet another cruiser was sighted, the three-funnelled _Mainz_, which was immediately attacked both by the _Arethusa_ and the _Fearless_. The blood of everybody was up now as never before, and, for twenty-five minutes, the assault was so fiercely pressed that, at the end of that time, the _Mainz_, in spite of her powerful resistance, was seen to be on fire and sinking by the head. Her engines had stopped, and it was just at this moment that the Light Cruiser Squadron appeared on the scene, reducing her, in a very few minutes, to a condition that, as Commodore Tyrwhitt put it, must have been indescribable. How bad it was let a single quotation from a cruiser officer's diary suffice to indicate. Watching the deck of the _Mainz_ through his powerful glasses, he was at first completely puzzled by two things--the absence of corpses and the enormous profusion of deck-sponges soaked in blood. It was not for some time {40} that he began to realize that the one accounted for the other. "Enough said," he wrote, "a six-inch projectile does not kill a man nor even dismember him; it simply scatters him."