As Jellicoe closed in to get the strangle-hold his mighty battle fleet
had, in very truth, to go through fire and water: the racing ships,
their slashing bows and seething wakes; the pall of smoke, stabbed by
ten thousand points of fire, together making the devil's
colours--yellow, red, and black; the leaping waterspouts thrown up by
shells that missed; the awful crashings when the shells struck home;
the vessels reeling under well-aimed, relentless salvoes; the ships on
fire beyond the reach of human aid; the weirdness of the mist that
veiled these dreadful horrors, or made them ghastlier still, or
suddenly brought friend and foe together either to sink or swim; the
summer sea torn into the maddest storm by ships and shells; while,
through and round the whole of this inferno, there swelled and
thundered the stunning roar of such a giant fight as other navies had
never seen or even dreamt of. So deafening was this roar, and so
absorbing were the changes of the fight, that when a ton-weight shell
swept overboard every atom of the bridge aboard the leading ship of a
flotilla--with compass, chart-house, engine-room-telegraph, steering
wheel, and every soul on duty there--the men on "monkey's island," just
above the bridge, never knew their ship was even hit till she began to
run amuck and rammed another British vessel!
This was the battle into which Jellicoe had to fit his own vast force
of twenty-four dreadnoughts without checking Beatty, without letting
the Germans get a clear run home, and without risking the loss of his
own best battleships by making one false move.
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