Now it must be realised that the operation of ramming one of a line of destroyers, dashing through pitch darkness at between twenty and thirty knots, is an exceedingly delicate one. An initial miscalculation of a few degrees of helm, a few revolutions of the propellers more or less, spell failure. Failure may, and probably does, mean being rammed by the next boat in the enemy line. The _Swift_ missed, but shot through the line unscathed. She turned like a hawk upon a quarry and, in turning, neatly torpedoed another boat in the line. Again she dashed at the leading boat, which once more eluded her, and, without firing another shot, made off into the darkness at full speed with the _Swift_ in pursuit. On first sighting the enemy, the _Broke_, commanded by Commander Edward R. G. R. Evans, C.B., was steaming about three hundred yards astern of _Swift_. Upon the latter altering course to ram the leader, the _Broke_ launched a torpedo at the second boat in the line, which hit her, and then opened fire with every gun that would bear. The five enemy boats, stoking furiously for full speed, emitted a dull glow from every funnel which lit their upper-works and enabled the captain of _Broke_ to decide upon his tactics. Altering course away from the enemy for a moment to gain impetus for the blow, he swung round to port and rammed the third boat at full speed, fair and square abreast the after funnel. Locked together thus the two boats fought a desperate and literally hand-to-hand conflict. The _Broke_ swept the enemy’s decks at point-blank range with every gun from four-inch to pom-pom and maxim. Lumps of coal and bowls of cocoa are mentioned among the miscellany of objects that hurtled through the darkness. In the meanwhile the remaining two destroyers in the German line poured a devastating fire upon the _Broke_. The foremost guns’ crews were reduced from eighteen men to six, but Midshipman Donald A. Gyles, R.N.R., in charge of the forecastle, though wounded in the eye, kept all foremost guns in action, himself assisting the depleted crews to load. While he was thus employed, a number of frenzied Germans swarmed up over the _Broke’s_ forecastle out of the rammed destroyer, and finding themselves amid the blinding flashes of the forecastle guns, swept aft in a shouting mob. The midshipman, amid the dead and wounded of his guns’ crews and half-blinded by blood, met the rush singlehanded with an automatic revolver; he was grappled by a gigantic German who attempted to wrest the weapon from him. Cutlasses and rifles with fixed bayonets being among the equipment of the foremost guns’ crews in anticipation of just such events as were now taking place, the German was promptly bayoneted by Able Seaman Ingleson. The remainder of the invaders, with the exception of two who lay down and feigned death, were driven over the side. The two exceptions were subsequently made prisoners and taken below.