Half an hour before the Zeebrugge force arrived at its destination, star-shell began to curve skyward from the menaced harbour, fruitlessly searching the darkness and artificial mist that enveloped the mole and batteries. A little later, however, the wind (on which the smoke screen depended for its success) wavered, died down, and awoke lightly again from a contrary direction. Groping through the white billows of fog rolling back upon her, the _Vindictive_ came out into a clear space lit by star-shell, and saw, a cable ahead, her destination. A single gun on the mole opened fired with a bark like a challenge, and the next instant loosed a hellish uproar of guns from ship and shore. Through a tornado of shrapnel and machine-gun fire, Captain Carpenter brought his veteran command alongside the mole, and before St. George’s Day was a minute old the _Vindictive_, blazing defiance from battery and top, was grating against her fenders in the swell that surged across the outer wall. According to the carefully thought-out scheme, Lieutenant Campbell in the _Daffodil_ thrust the bows of his ship against the _Vindictive’s_ quarter and held her bodily alongside, enabling the already splintered and shattered “brows,” or gangways, to reach the mole. By this time the point-blank fire had taken heavy toll amid the closely packed ranks awaiting disembarkation. Colonel Elliot and Major Cordner, the two senior officers of the Royal Marine storming parties, and Captain Halahan, Royal Navy, were already dead. Commander Valentine Gibbs brought the _Iris_ alongside in the wake of the _Vindictive_ and endeavoured to grapple; Lieutenant Hawkins, R.N., reached the mole, secured the grappling anchor, and died. He was instantly followed by Lieutenant-Commander Bradford, R.N., who was swung from a derrick with a second anchor, and succeeded in securing it before he, too, was killed, his riddled body falling into the water. A number of his men laboured with fruitless devotion to recover his corpse, one, Petty Officer Hallihan, giving his life in the attempt. No sooner had the two foremost brows been launched from the _Vindictive_ than the storming parties, led by Lieutenant Commanders A. L. Harrison and B. F. Adams, and Major B. G. Waller, Royal Marines, hurled themselves across. The men were burdened with Lewis guns, bombs, and demolition impedimenta; the scend of the swell caused the _Vindicitve_ to plunge heavily, and the brows rocked above a dizzy 30 feet drop, rising and falling as the ship rolled. Yet the landing was accomplished in the face of a gusty machine-gun fire that swept the face of the mole like the breath of Death.