The _Botha_ challenged, and an unfamiliar reply winked at them out of the night; the next instant British and French were pouring a heavy fire into the enemy. For a few minutes a grim little fight ensued. The Allies rapidly overhauled the raiders, and set the darkness ablaze with flashes of gunfire and blazing wreckage flying broadcast from shell bursting on impact. A running fight between torpedo craft is like a battle between scorpions; whichever gets a sting home first rarely has need to strike again. None of the German torpedoes found their mark, but the _Morris_, emerging from a smoke screen flung out by the fleeing enemy, cut off a German destroyer of a large type and torpedoed her at 500 yards range. She blew up and sank almost immediately, heeling over amid clouds of steam and vanishing stern first. In the meanwhile, _Botha’s_ main steampipe had been severed by a stray shell and she immediately commenced to lose her way through the water. Her commander, realising that if he was to finish his “cup of tea with the Hun” he must needs drink it quickly, fired both torpedoes at the leading boats, and, putting his helm hard over, rammed the fourth boat in the line cleanly amidships. His speed had dropped considerably, but it sufficed to drive the knife-edged bows of the _Botha_ clean through, cutting the enemy completely in half. _Botha_ then swung round and attempted to repeat the coup on the next astern; the Hun succeeded in eluding the _Botha’s_ crippled onslaught, but fell a victim to the French destroyers. She lay disabled and ablaze, and they closed and pounded the flaming wreck with torpedo and gun fire as a man grinds a dead snake under his heel. _Morris_ by this time had relinquished the pursuit, having lost the quarry in the smoke and mist; she returned to the scene of action, and took her lame sister in tow while the French destroyers circled round in the grey dawn picking up prisoners. From statements made by these, it appears that no less than eighteen torpedo craft had sallied forth for the raid. They were unhesitatingly attacked and rather badly mauled by two British and three French destroyers and fled (as one of the British officers picturesquely described it) like scalded dogs. The adventures of the remaining fifteen were by no means terminated when they quitted French waters, leaving three of their number behind. A squadron of the R.N.A.S. bombing machines proceeding up the coast on business sighted the homing German flotillas and fell upon them--or rather, suffered their bombs to do so. They reported having completely thrown the enemy into disorder and scattered them in all directions. A squadron of enemy sea-planes that had gone out at dawn to look for the wanderers then encountered the escort fighters of the bombing machines, and in a very short time had their numbers reduced by four. Of these, three were accounted for by one British pilot.