But the British won through. The three
block-ships were sunk. The submarine used as a torpedo blew up the
bridge joining the mole to the land; and the smoke screen worked fairly
well. Still, the tornado of German shells was almost more than flesh
and blood could stand. Meanwhile the old _Vindictive_ ran alongside
the mole and dropped her eighteen special gangways bang against it. In
a moment her forlorn hope--her whole crew was one great forlorn
hope--swarmed on to the mole, over the splintering gangways, while her
guns roared defiance at the huge German batteries. The ground swell
made the _Vindictive_ roll and racked her breaking gangways terribly.
The storm of German shells and the hail of machine-gun bullets seemed
almost to be sweeping everything before them. An officer awaiting his
turn on deck asked, "What are all those men lying down for?" and was
answered, "All dead, Sir"; killed before they had started. Several
gangways were smashed to pieces, the men on them falling between the
_Vindictive_ and the mole. The Germans on the mole fired furiously to
keep the storming party back.
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