There had been two previous attempts at the attack, capable of being pushed home if weather and other conditions had served. The night of the 22nd offered nearly all the required conditions, and at some fifteen miles off Zeebrugge the ships took up their formation for the attack. _Vindictive_, which had been towing _Iris_ and _Daffodil_, cast them off to follow under their own steam; _Intrepid_, _Iphigenia_, and _Thetis_ slowed down to give the first three time to get alongside the Mole; _Sirius_ and _Brilliant_ shifted their course for Ostend; and the great swarm of destroyers and motor craft sowed themselves abroad upon their multifarious particular duties. The night was overcast and there was a drift of haze; down the coast a great searchlight swung its beams to and fro; there was a small wind and a short sea. [Sidenote: The _Vindictive_ heads for the Mole.] [Sidenote: The wind helps make a smoke-screen.] From _Vindictive's_ bridge, as she headed in towards the Mole with her faithful ferry-boats at her heels, there was scarcely a glimmer of light to be seen shorewards. Ahead of her, as she drove through the water, rolled the smoke-screen, her cloak of invisibility, wrapped about her by the small craft. This was a device of Wing-Commander Brock, R.N.A.S., "without which," acknowledges the Admiral in Command, "the operation could not have been conducted." The north-east wind moved the volume of it shoreward ahead of the ships; beyond it, the distant town and its defenders were unsuspicious; and it was not till _Vindictive_, with her bluejackets and marines standing ready for the landing, was close upon the Mole that the wind lulled and came away again from the south-west, sweeping back the smoke-screen and laying her bare to the eyes that looked seaward. [Sidenote: The star shells discover the ships and battle opens.] [Sidenote: The _Vindictive_ reaches the Mole.] There was a moment immediately afterwards when it seemed to those in the ships as if the dim coast and the hidden harbor exploded into light. A star shell soared aloft, then a score of star shells; the wavering beams of the searchlights swung round and settled to a glare; the wildfire of gun flashes leaped against the sky; strings of luminous green beads shot aloft, hung and sank; and the darkness of the night was supplanted by the nightmare daylight of battle fires. Guns and machine-guns along the Mole and batteries ashore woke to life, and it was in a gale of shelling that _Vindictive_ laid her nose against the thirty-foot high concrete side of the Mole, let go an anchor, and signed to _Daffodil_ to shove her stern in. _Iris_ went ahead and endeavored to get alongside likewise. [Sidenote: Captain Carpenter in the flame-thrower hut.]