Already Fritz had turned tail. Under cover of a heavy smoke-screen the remaining Hun torpedo boats were "legging it," steering zig-zag courses in order to avoid, if possible, the long-range shells that followed with uncanny accuracy. And they were steering neither for the Bight nor for the Kattegat. The Zeppelin, that had been hovering around throughout the operations, had given warning of the outflanking British destroyers, and they were making for a place of security which is recognised as such by the navies of the world save that of Germany--the three-mile limit of a neutral seaboard. The light cruisers opened outwards to avoid the far-flung line of artificially-created fog. It was unwise to penetrate that screen. A Hun torpedo boat at bay might seize an opportunity to "slap a tinfish" into an opponent at close range, or U-boats might be lurking in the fringe of the pall to claim a victim. The _Pylos_ and the _Polyxo_, jogging along, held straight on. By the time they reached the fog-screen the smoke would have lifted, and there was a chance that they might pick up some of the light cruisers' leavings in the shape of a few Huns. It so happened that a sudden dispersal of a part of the smoke-screen under the steady westerly breeze revealed to the _Polyxo_ what appeared to be an intact hostile torpedo boat with her engines broken down. She was still flying the Black Cross Ensign. Gleefully the destroyer altered helm, let fly with her bow quick-firer, and prepared to send Fritz to the bottom by means of a torpedo. But Fritz objected. He had had no compunction at firing, together with half a dozen of his kind, at a solitary British Q-boat; and he had been considerably surprised when the Q-boat had chopped off twenty or thirty feet of her stern. But when a destroyer suddenly loomed out of the fog, the panic-stricken kapitan-leutnant promptly gave orders to lower the Black Cross Ensign and substitute one that was as blank and pale as his face. While the officers and men of the _Polyxo_ were enjoying a performance of the "Kamerad" order, the _Pylos_, slower than her consort, butted up against what she took to be at first sight a Hun submarine, down by the head and with practically all her top hamper gone. From her mast-head hung a flag, tattered, torn and dun-coloured by smoke and dust. "By Jove!" ejaculated the astonished lieutenant-commander of the _Pylos_. "It's Q 171." Every officer and man on board the destroyer had been firmly convinced that the mystery ship had been sunk. Indeed it seemed incredible that the lightly-built vessel could have withstood a hammering from half a dozen relatively heavily-armed ocean-going torpedo boats, and yet remain afloat. On the Q-boat's deck were standing ten or twelve grimy men, stripped to the waist, and for the most part wearing bandages. There were others--some sitting with their heads supported by their hands, others stretched motionless.