Page:The Invasion of 1910.djvu/166

 As Von der Bendt—whom you will doubtless remember when he was in the 3rd Horse Grenadiers at Bromberg, and who is also on the Prince's staff—said that night as he walked the deck, 'Where would we be if, despite our precautions, the English had contrived to get wind of our intentions, and half a dozen destroyers came tearing up out of the darkness, and in among our flotilla? Our own particular future would then probably lie under the water instead of on it.' I laughed at his croakings, but I confess I looked rather more intently at our somewhat limited horizon.

"About two in the morning the moon rose. Her light was but fitful and partial on account of a very cloudy sky, but I received rather a shock when her first rays revealed a long grey line of warships with all lights out, and with the darker forms of their attendant destroyers moving on their flanks, slowly crossing our course at right angles. As it turned out, they were only our own escorts, ordered to meet us at this point, and to convoy us and the other portions of the XIIth Corps, which were coming out from Rotterdam and other Dutch ports to join us. In a few minutes after meeting the ironclads, a galaxy of sparkling points of light approaching from the northward heralded their arrival, and by three o'clock the whole fleet was steaming due west in many parallel lines. Four battleships moved in line ahead on each flank, the destroyers seemed to be constantly coming and going in all directions, like dogs shepherding a flock of sheep, and I fancy there were several other men-o'-war ahead of us. The crossing proved entirely uneventful. We saw nothing of the much-to-be-dreaded British warships, nor indeed of any ships at all, with the exception of a few fishing-boats and the Harwich-Antwerp boat, which, ablaze with lights, ran through the rear portion of our flotilla, luckily