The afternoon came, and with its advent the mist, which had kept the guns of Helgoland's forts out of action, had cleared off the calm waters of the North Sea. By the time the sun had set only floating wreckage gave evidence that here brave men had fought and died. By evening the respective forces were in their home ports, being treated for their hurts. The Germans had lost the _Mainz, Koeln_, and _Ariadne_, and the _Strassburg_ had limped home. The loss in destroyers and other small craft in addition to that of the _V-187_ was not known. The loss on the British side had not entailed that of a large ship, but the _Arethusa_ when she returned to her home port was far from being in good condition, and some of the smaller boats were in the same circumstances. Admiral von Ingenohl was committed more strongly than ever, as a result of this engagement, to the belief that the best policy for his command would be to keep his squadrons within the protection afforded by Helgoland and that the most damage could be done to the enemy by picking off her larger ships one by one. In other words, he again turned to the policy of attrition. He immediately put it into force. On the 3d of September the British gunboat _Speedy_ struck a mine in the North Sea and went down. It was only two days later that the light cruiser _Pathfinder_ was made the true target of a torpedo fired by a German submarine off the British eastern coast, and she, too, went to the bottom. But the British immediately retaliated, for the submarine _E-9_ sighted the German light cruiser _Hela_ weathering a bad storm on September 13 between Helgoland and the Frisian coast. A torpedo was launched and found its mark, and the _Hela_ joined the _Koeln_ and _Mainz_. Up to this point the results of attrition were even, but the Germans scored heavily during the following week. On September 22 the three slow British cruisers _Cressy, Hogue_, and _Aboukir_ were patrolling the waters off the Dutch coast, unaccompanied by small craft of any kind, when suddenly, at half past six in the morning, the _Aboukir_ crumpled and sank, the victim of another submarine attack. But the commander of the _Hogue_ thought she had been sunk by hitting a mine, and innocently approached the spot of the disaster to rescue such of the crew of the _Aboukir_ as were afloat. The work of mercy was never completed, for the _Hogue_ itself was hit by two torpedoes in the next few moments, and she joined her sister ship. The commander of the _Cressy_, failing to take a lesson from what he had witnessed, now approached, and his ship was also hit by two torpedoes, making the third victim of the German policy of attrition within an hour, and Captain Lieutenant von Weddigen, commander of the _U-9_, which had done this work, immediately became a German hero. * * * * * CHAPTER XXXIV BATTLES ON THREE SEAS