only the little knot of figures on her forebridge knew: the admiral{49} and flag captain, the navigator and officer-of-the-watch, muffled in duffle coats and moving mysteriously about the glow-worm arc of light from the binnacle and charttable.
It
{49}
One by one the long black shapes slid through the outer defences, ebon shadows in a world of shades. The voices of the leadsmen in the chains blended their mournful intermittent chant with the rush of water past the ship’s side; to all but the ears of the watchful figures on the bridges the sound was swallowed by the dirge of the funnel stays and halliards in the cold wind heralding the dawn.
The red and green lights on the gate-marking vessels winked and bobbed in the swell caused by the passage of the grim host. It passed with incredible swiftness; and before the troubled waters began to quiet, the escorting destroyers came pelting up astern, heralded by the rush and rattle of spray-thrashed steel, funnels glowing, and the roar of their fans pouring out from the engine-room exhausts. Night and the mystery of the darkness enfolded them. The gates closed upon their churning wakes and the tumult of their passing. Dawn glimmered pale behind the hills and broadened slowly into day; it found the harbour{50} empty, save for small craft. Beyond the headlands, beyond the mist-enshrouded horizon, the battle cruisers were abroad, unleashed.
{50}
Once clear of their protecting minefields, the battle cruisers moved south at high speed, with their smoke trailing astern in broad zig-zags across a grey sky. At intervals they altered course simultaneously and then swung back to their original path, flinging the grey seas asunder from each gaunt, axe-headed bow as they turned.
They scarcely resembled ships, in their remorseless, purposeful rush under the lowering sky. The screening T.B.D.’s spread fan-wise on their flanks were dwarfed to insignificance beside these stupendous destroyers with the smoke pouring from their huge funnels, and nothing to break their stark nakedness of outline but the hooded guns. Men lived on board them, it is true: under each White Ensign a thousand souls laboured out each one its insignificant destiny. They were entities invisible like mites in a cheese; but the ships that bore them were instruments, visible enough, of the triumphant destiny of an empire.
As far as the eye could reach, the battle cruisers were
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