It was not until night fell that the British Destroyers began their savage work in earnest. Flotilla after flotilla was detached from the Fleet and swallowed by the short summer night, moving swiftly and relentlessly to their appointed tasks like black panthers on the trail. Cut off from their base by the British Fleet the scattered German squadrons dodged and doubled through the darkness, striving to elude the cordon drawn across their path. They can be pictured as towering black shadows rushing headlong through the night, with the wounded groaning between their wreckage-strewn decks; and on each bridge, high above them in the windy darkness, men talked in guttural mono-syllables, peering through high-power glasses for the menace that stalked them.... On the trigger of every gun there would be a twitching finger, and all the while the blackness round them would be pierced and rent by distant spurts of flame.... The wind and sea had risen, and over an area of several hundred square miles of stormy sea swept the Terror by Night. Bursting star-shell and questioning searchlight fought with the darkness, betraying to the guns the sinister black hulls driving through clouds of silver spray, the loaded tubes and streaming decks, the oilskin-clad figures on each bridge forcing the attack home against the devastating blast of the shrapnel. Death was abroad, berserk and blindfold. A fleeing German Cruiser fell among a flotilla of Destroyers and altered her helm, with every gun and searchlight blazing, to ram the leading boat. The Destroyer had time to alter course sufficiently to bring the two ships bow to bow before the impact came. Then there was a grinding crash: forecastle, bridge and foremost gun a pile of wreckage and struggling figures. The blast of the German guns swept the funnels, boats, cowls and men away as a gale blows dead leaves before it. Then the Cruiser swung clear and vanished into the darkness, pursued by the remainder of the Flotilla, and leaving the Destroyer reeling among the waves like a man that has been struck in the face with a knuckle-duster by a runaway thief. In the direction where the Cruiser had disappeared five minutes later a column of flame leaped skyward, and the Flotilla, vengeance accomplished, swung off through the darkness in search of a fresh quarry. All night long the disabled Destroyer rolled helplessly in the trough of the sea. The dawn came slowly across the sky, as if apprehensive of what it might behold on the face of the troubled waters; in the growing light the survivors of the Destroyer's crew saw a crippled German Cruiser trailing south at slow speed. Only one gun remained in action onboard the Destroyer, and round that gathered the bandaged remnant of what had once been a ship's company. They shook hands grimly among themselves and spat and girded their loins for their last fight. The German Cruiser turned slowly over and sank while they trained the gun....