army'—of something like thirty-five, I believe—had been recruited up to several times that figure, and all over the island firearms, ancient and modern, had been taken down and made ready for use. Von Spee's sailors and marines would have had many a ridge-to-ridge skirmish on their hands before they completed the conquest of the Falklands.

"The coming of Sturdee put an entirely different face on things," continued the Captain, smartly side-stepping the flying "grummet" which had been flicked across his path from out of a howling pack of flannelled "snotties" deep in the throes of hockey on the opposite side of the quarter-deck. "'When are the Huns coming?' was still the question on every tongue; but it was now put anticipatively rather than apprehensively. They had not long to wait.

"I shall never forget that morning they appeared. It was scarcely twenty hours from the time we had dropped anchor, and most of the ships of the squadron were rushing those odd and ends of cleaning up, overhauling, revictualling, and the like that always follow arrival in port. The Cornwall, with some repairs on one of her engines to be effected, was at six hours' notice, and the Bristol, for similar reasons, at somewhat longer. Only the Kent was ready to put to sea at once.

"I was in my bath when a signal reading 'Raise steam for full speed with all despatch' was handed me, and it did not need another signal, which arrived a few minutes later, to tell me that, by some amazing stroke of 'joss,' the enemy was near at hand. How near I did not dream until the guns of the old Canopus began to boom. Luckily, I was already shaved" (I liked that little touch), "but, even so, my finishing dressing and breakfasting within twelve minutes was a very creditable performance of its kind. I can't say much for the toilet I made, but the breakfast was a good hearty one, with porridge, eggs, and marmalade. With an action in the offing, and no knowing when you are going to have time to eat again, it is only common sense to fortify against an indefinite fast.

"By the time I reached the bridge the topmasts of an armoured and a light cruiser were visible, slipping along above the headland which cut off the harbour from the open sea. The events of the next few hours were to etch the profile of the latter ship indelibly upon my memory, for it was the Leipzig, coming up with the Gneisenau to destroy the Port Stanley Wireless Station. From the foretop of the Canopus they were able to see the Huns clearing for action; and the Glasgow and the Bristol, both of which were in the inner harbour, also had a clear view across the depressed neck of the peninsula. The other ships of the squadron saw no more than topmasts until they had raised steam and reached the open sea.

"Just how the Huns came to make the disconcerting discovery that there were modern battle cruisers concealed by the higher seaward end of the peninsula I learned from an officer who had been saved from the sinking Gneisenau, who told me the story in his guttural broken English. They had expected to find the Canopus at Port Stanley, he said, and perhaps the Cornwall and Carnarvon and other light cruisers; but anything of the class of the Invincible and Inflexible—'Mein Gott, Nein! Wen der Gunnery Ludenant sent word from der foredop down' (he sputtered) 'dot he zwei ships mit dreipodt madsts gesehen had, mein Kapdtin he say, "Nein, nein, es ist eempossibl. Ich will ein man mit der gut eyes up senden." Wen this man say, ya, he see zwei dreipodt madsts, mein Kapdtin, he say, "Der Teufel, now Ich must go quickt. Ein hour, zwei hour, we run, sehr schnell. Den komen aus der Inglish ships, und preddy soon Ich see dem komen mehr schell von uns." Den Ich say: "Mein Kapdtin, you must der mehr schnell gehen, or you must der fight machen." He say, "Ya, ya," und he mehr schnell try zu gehen. Nicht gut. No good. Den we up mit der Scharnhorst gekommen, und der Admiral, he say, "Nun will we der fight gemachen. Den we machen der fight. Nichts, no good. Kaput! Feenish!"'"

The Captain stopped at the windward end of the deck and let the breeze fan a brow that had grown red during his effort at literal rendition. A grin of pleased reminiscence sat on his face. "My word, but it must have given the Hun a jolly good jolt, that first sight of those 'dreipodt madsts!'" he explained finally, as he put on his cap and fell into step beside me again.

"If Von Spee ever had any time for arrière pensée before the sea closed over him," he resumed, "he must have reproached himself bitterly for not pushing on in force and attacking us in the harbour before we had steam up. If his whole squadron had come up as the Gneisenau and Leipzig did, they could undoubtedly have given us a very unpleasant hour or two while we were raising steam. We would have polished them off in the end, of course, but they would have done us a deal more harm than by the tactics they did follow. Again, there is a chance that, if the two armoured cruisers had pressed the attack alone—as they eventually were forced to do—they might have inflicted enough damage to our light cruisers to have made the escape of all three (instead of only one) of theirs a possibility. However, Von Spee's star of good fortune, which had been at its zenith at Coronel, was now sinking to near the horizon, and it was ordained that at the Falklands he should meet an enemy who was both faster and heavier armed than he, under conditions of sea and light which favoured him no whit.

"The battle of the Falklands was really won in the harbour of Port Stanley. It was all a question of how soon we could get out. If we could reach the enemy in anything like full force there was little doubt of the result. A delay of an hour or two, however, might have easily resulted in their scattering so effectually that the running down of the last of them would have been a matter of months, and months, too, marked with great losses of, and greater delays to, the merchant shipping of two hemispheres. Nothing short of the truly splendid efforts of the engine-room and stokehold personnel of Sturdee's ships would have given their gunners their chance to win the battle of the Falklands.

"Of the Cornwall's achievement in this respect I am especially proud. With one of the engines partially dismantled, we would have been doing all that was expected of us if we had been under full steam in six hours. Indeed, that was the very notice we had gone under, in order to do the overhauling desired. And now let me tell you what happened. It was ten minutes after eight when the signal to raise steam for full speed was received, and before half-past ten she was steaming out of the harbour. We could have got under weigh some minutes earlier than we did but for having to let the Invincible and the Inflexible, which had been lying inshore of us, pass out ahead. And before the day was over the old Cornwall, with the heartiest lot of lads that ever swung a scoop throwing coal under her boilers, covered a wide stretch of the South Atlantic at a speed a good knot or two better than she had averaged on her trial trip, or at any other time since then.

"There was one trivial but amusing little incident in connexion with the departure of the battle cruisers which stands out particularly clearly among my otherwise rather jumbled memories of those two hours of rush and hurry. We had been leading our usual hand-to-mouth existence in the matter of food for some weeks previous to this, and one of the things we had most looked forward to our call at Port Stanley for was revictualling. We were losing no time in getting provisions