From the leader of the flotilla came the answering pendant, each of the destroyers acknowledging the signal in turn. Enemy torpedo-boats were threatening an attack, and the British destroyers were to beat off the hornets that had the audacity to attempt to hurl themselves within torpedo-range of the battle-cruisers.
"Now for it," thought Aubyn, as he left the bridge and took up his station at the after 4-in. gun.
Swift as was the "Lion" the speed of the destroyers was greater. Forging ahead they left the battle-cruisers well on the starboard quarter. Heavy projectiles, passing handsomely over the short masts of the "Livingstone" and her consorts "straddled" the "Lion," some falling short, others ricochetting from the water two hundred yards in her wake.
The contest between the rival destroyer flotillas was of short duration. Apparently the German boats had no intention of joining action. It was merely a manoeuvre on their part to screen their already severely damaged battle-cruisers by means of dense columns of smoke.
In a sense they were successful, for under cover of the pall of black vapour the larger German ships altered course and steered in a northerly direction, but as the torpedo-boats drew off Terence discerned for the first time one of the enemy battle-cruisers.
She was listing heavily to port. Flames were bursting from her amidships, her funnels had disappeared and two legs of her tripod mast. Yet in spite of her damaged condition she was endeavouring to crawl out of line, slowly shaping a course to the nor'-nor'-west. Still firing as she wallowed in her death-agony, she was being marked for special attention by the "Indomitable," which, under the admiral's orders, had hauled to port to complete the work of destruction.
"Hurrah! The 'Bluecher's' done for!" shouted the torpedo-gunner of the "Livingstone."
Terence could hardly believe his eyes. Was that battered wreck the same vessel that a few weeks before he had seen pouring death and destruction into the peaceful town of Scarborough?
He brought his glasses to bear upon the ill-fated raider. In spite of her enormously thick armour huge rents were plainly visible in her sides. One of her heavy gun-turrets had been blown clean away. 'Tween decks the greater part of her was a glowing furnace. It seemed a marvel how the crew could maintain even the feeblest fire, yet, under the influence of morphia supplied by their officers, half-dazed men still worked the remaining effective guns with the ferocity of madmen.
Then the "Tiger," showing scars of honourable wounds, but still vitally intact, came up, hurling shell after shell into the doomed vessel.