Almost immediately Alec threw a grenade. It exploded within a couple of seconds of leaving the Sub's hand. When the smoke cleared away, the gun was deserted, save by the dead and dying. Three Huns who had escaped the death-dealing missile had promptly leapt through the embrasure into the sea. "By Jove, we've put a battery out of action," declared Smith breathlessly. "What luck!" "Luck, indeed," agreed Alec, pointing to the unexploded bomb. "If that beauty had gone up--but it didn't. What's doing now?" The two men made their way to the embrasure. It was just possible to squeeze between the steel shield and the granite face of the gun emplacement. Without, the scene beggared description. Although the 15-centimetre guns were silent, hundreds of smaller quick-firers and machine-guns were letting rip at what was certainly short range. Search-lights were swinging to and fro across the harbour, star-shells bursting high aloft turned night into day. From seaward shells were coming in showers knocking splinters from the Mole extension on which a Hun battery of six 88-millimetre guns was rapidly being put out of action. To the right of the embrasure at which the two British officers had taken up their post of observation could be discerned a string of canal barges, moored end to end with anti-torpedo nets between, while the line of obstruction terminated in a number of net defence buoys, their position hardly visible even in the strong artificial light. The while, sounds of conflict on the Mole were distinctly audible, although from where Seton and his companion stood it was impossible to see what was taking place. The crash of bombs and the rattle of machine-guns mingled with British cheers and German guttural shouts. Whatever was happening it was apparent that the landing-parties were making things particularly hot for Fritz on Zeebrugge Mole. Even as the two men looked the object of the Huns' shortened fire became visible, for, steaming at full speed towards the Mole-head, were the first of the British block-ships _Thetis_, _Intrepid_, and _Iphigenia_. Once more it was a case of the onlookers seeing most of the game. At the risk of being knocked out by a British shell--for the position of the now silent 15-centimetre guns was known to the attacking forces, although the actual bore of the guns was supposed to be but 10.5 centimetres--Seton and his companion stood enthralled at the spectacle of supreme valour. Literally into the jaws of Death came the _Thetis_, majestically, unswerving, and as steadily as if about to pick up moorings at Spithead. With her quick-firers replying to the storm of German shrapnel she held on, rounded the Mole-head, and passed within a cable's length of the battery in which Seton and Smith stood.