The _Sirius_ lies in the surf some two thousand yards east of the entrance to Ostend Harbor, which she failed so gallantly to block; and when, in the early hours of yesterday morning, the _Vindictive_ groped her way through the smoke-screen and headed for the entrance, it was as though the old fighting-ship awoke and looked on. A coastal motor-boat had visited her and hung a flare in her slack and rusty rigging; and that eye of unsteady fire, paling in the blaze of the star-shells or reddening through the drift of the smoke, watched the whole great enterprise, from the moment when it hung in doubt to its ultimate triumphant success. [Sidenote: Unforeseen conditions add to the difficulties.] [Sidenote: German destroyers guard the coast.] The planning and execution of that success had been entrusted by the Vice-Admiral, Sir Roger Keyes, to Commodore Hubert Lynes, C.M.G., who directed the previous attempt to block the harbor with _Sirius_ and _Brilliant_. Upon that occasion, a combination of unforeseen, and unforeseeable, conditions had fought against him; upon this, the main problem was to secure the effect of a surprise attack upon an enemy who was clearly, from his ascertained dispositions, expecting him. _Sirius_ and _Brilliant_ had been baffled by the displacement of the Stroom Bank buoy, which marks the channel to the harbor entrance, but since then aerial reconnaissance had established that the Germans had removed the buoy altogether and that there were now no guiding marks of any kind. They had also cut gaps in the piers as a precaution against a landing; and, further, when towards midnight on Thursday the ships moved from their anchorage, it was known that some nine German destroyers were out and at large upon the coast. The solution of the problem is best indicated by the chronicle of the event. [Sidenote: A still sea and no moon.] It was a night that promised well for the enterprise--nearly windless, and what little breeze stirred came from a point or so west of north; a sky of lead-blue, faintly star-dotted, and no moon; a still sea for the small craft, the motor-launches and the coastal motor-boats, whose work is done close in shore. From the destroyer which served the Commodore for flagship, the remainder of the force was visible only as swift silhouettes of blackness, destroyers bulking like cruisers in the darkness, motor-launches like destroyers, and coastal motor-boats showing themselves as racing hillocks of foam. From Dunkirk, a sudden and brief flurry of gunfire announced that German aeroplanes were about--they were actually on their way to visit Calais; and over the invisible coast of Flanders the summer-lightning of the restless artillery rose and fell monotonously. [Sidenote: _Vindictive_ passes.]