For all that, it was still a rank unequal fight; and Captain Crouch was even more perturbed as to what would be the fate of the light cruisers under the heavy gun-fire of the "Moltke," the "Derfflinger," the "Blücher" and the "Seydlitz," than he had been anxious about himself and the ship that he commanded.
"By thunder!" he exclaimed. "They're as game as bantams. I never saw the like of it! They've speed enough, it's true; but if it comes to a square fight, they won't be able to keep above water for half-an-hour at the most."
It seemed, indeed, that the light-cruiser squadron was purposely courting death. Seven ships were now in sight: the "Southampton," "Nottingham," "Birmingham," "Lowestoft," "Arethusa," "Aurora" and "Undaunted," besides Commodore Tyrwhitt's destroyer flotillas. These ships would have proved far more than a match for the lighter German men-of-war, but the presence of the four "Dreadnoughts" put a very different aspect on the situation. And yet, the "Arethusa" and her sisters tore onward, at full steam ahead, making straight into the very jaws of a formidable and powerful foe
"I'm thinking," said Captain Crouch to Jimmy, "I'm thinking the 'Arethusa' must have something up her sleeve."
She had. She knew that she was backed up by some of the finest ships that were ever launched, the monarchs of the sea. And presently, from the north, the sudden report of a great gun smote the desolation of the Dogger Bank with a mighty thunder-clap which was like the bursting of the skies. And a little after, there hove into sight upon the northern sky-line, the "Tiger" and the "Lion," and, in their wake, the "Princess Royal," the "Indomitable" and the "New Zealand." The Titans were come to pick up the gauntlet thrown by the Giants.
[CHAPTER XXVII--The Battle of the Dogger Bank]
The German Emperor had styled himself "The Admiral of the Atlantic"--a title that rested largely upon the power and seeming invincibility of such battle-cruisers as the "Seydlitz," and the "Goeben."
For all that, the dominion of the Western Ocean--as, indeed, of all the High Seas from the Gulf of Mexico to the Sea of Japan--had been settled generations ago, before ever the first ship of the Prussian Navy was launched, when Sir Francis Drake sailed to the Spanish Main and the guns of Nelson's wooden, three-decked ships thundered in the Bay of Aboukir.
The German press and people may have claimed at the outset of the war that the steel ships of modern navies had never been put to the test, and Britain had once again to prove that she was Mistress of the Seas. In this sweeping announcement an important fact was forgotten: namely, that it was Britain herself who had invented, designed and launched the very first ironclad that ever put to sea. And what England had invented, England, in all probability, knew how to use.
There was no reason to suppose that Great Britain had fallen in any way behind the other nations in the art of naval construction. So much skill, science and money had been expended in the naval dockyards of the country that Englishmen had every reason to believe that, when the tragedy of a universal war fell like a thunderbolt upon the whole civilized world, the British Navy would not be found wholly unprepared.