aboard, and at the moment the signal to raise steam was received a lighter containing, among other things, a large cask of beer and a lot of salt pork had just moored alongside. We were really in great need of the salt pork, and—well, there seemed to be a considerable desire for the beer also. However, when the Devil drives, or a reckoning is to be settled with the Hun, one can't wait for such incidentals as food and drink. Knowing that we had enough aboard to keep going on until the game was played out, I ordered the lighter to cast off and turned my attention to more pertinent matters. I recalled later that I heard the winch grinding once or twice after I gave the order, but, seeing the lighter floating away with the tide presently, thought no more about it for the moment.

"Carried hither and thither by the conflicting harbour currents, the lighter was half a cable's length or so off our port bow when the battle cruisers, spouting smoke like young volcanoes, came charging out to take up the chase of the Hun, and, by a strange chance, it was lounging indolently square athwart the course of the Flagship. The sharp bows of the Invincible shore it through like a knife, and her propellers, with those of the Inflexible, quickly reduced boat and cargo to bobbing bits dancing in their bubbling wake.[A]

"It really hurt me to see that good food and drink snatched almost out of our mouths, as it were, but I tried to put on a brave front and turn the matter off as a joke. 'Beer and pork sausage,' I remarked to one of my officers who had just come up to the bridge to report; 'the battle cruisers seem to have a good appetite for Hun diet this morning. I only hope they'll have as good luck gulping down the Huns themselves.'

"'It's only "sausage" they put their teeth in, I'm glad to say, sir,' he replied with a grin. 'The men managed to hoist the beer aboard somehow before casting off the lighter, and as I came along just now I heard some one ordering that the cask be put down in a "syfe plyce wher' it won't be 'oled if th' 'Un 'its us."'

"'My word!' said the Captain, with the same look on his face that it had worn on another occasion when he had told me of the 'banquets' that had been served on the Carmania when the Cornwall had foregathered with her at a certain mid-Atlantic rendezvous after the former had sunk the Cap Trafalgar. 'My word! but we did enjoy that beer when the time came to drink it. Yes, they shared and shared alike with the officers. Good old pirate law as to loot and salvage, you know.'

"The Kent, which was at five minutes' notice, was the first ship to get under weigh, probably with orders to keep the enemy in sight but not, of course, to try to engage them. The Glasgow was the next out, and then the Carnarvon. The Cornwall was ready to follow close on the heels of the latter, but, as I have told you, had to wait for the battle cruisers, which were now under weigh. We went out not far astern of the Inflexible, and the Bristol, which had been on long notice in the inner harbour, was last, at a considerable interval.

"The battle cruisers, with their turbines, worked up to full speed a great deal more rapidly than the ships with reciprocating engines, and, heading straight down the wake of the retreating Germans—now showing their fore-shortened silhouettes in 'Line Ahead' on the south-western horizon—they quickly drew away from all but the Glasgow. The latter, not long out of the dry dock and swiftest of the lot in any event, had passed the Kent and was holding a southerly course, evidently with the intention of keeping the Hun light cruisers in sight and reporting their movements.

"It took something like two hours after the British ships were out to convince Von Spee that all his efforts to go 'mehr schnell' were going to be of no avail. There was nothing left for him to do but to 'der fight gemachen.' In this he had two alternatives—to fight with all of his ships, or to fight a delaying action with a part of them and give the others a chance to escape. His choice was the one that any other sailor as gallant and able as Von Spee had proved himself to be would inevitably have taken. He plumped to fight with the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and let the Nürnberg, Leipzig, and Dresden make the most of their chances of scattering to safety. His signal, as we learned it later from prisoners, was substantially this: 'Light cruisers will make every endeavour to escape to South American ports. Armoured cruisers will engage enemy, and endeavour to delay.'

"It was just about noon that I saw the tower-like, smoke-crowned silhouettes of the German ships gradually begin to lengthen, and when they held steady more or less beam-on I knew that the turn of eight points meant that Von Spee had made his decision. As the dark profiles began to draw apart—the two longest heading to port and the three shortest to starboard—I realised at once what that decision was. The armoured cruisers were going to try to draw the pursuit to the south, while the light cruisers sought safety by 'starring' on divergent courses to the south and south-west.

"I think there will be no harm in my telling you that in all the possible contingencies we had discussed under which we might meet the enemy, there was none which roughly approximated to the conditions imposed upon us by the fact that he had unexpectedly come upon us in harbour—surprising us no less than himself—and forcing us to tumble out in pursuit of him in much the same order as a farmer and his family sallying forth following an alarm in their hen roost. What we had generally agreed would happen was that we—ourselves spread over a wide expanse of sea in 'Line Abreast'—would sight the enemy steaming in similar formation, and in that event it was understood that our battle cruisers should attend to the two German armoured cruisers, while the rest of us took on such of his light cruisers as we could most readily bring to action. Though already scattered over many miles of sea, our problem was really only that of conforming this 'elastic' general plan to present conditions.

"The battle cruisers altered course instantly to continue the chase of the enemy armoured cruisers, but the Admiral, doubtless realising that, scattered as we were, each of the rest of us (already conversant with his general instructions) would be his own best judge as to where he could be most useful, left us to pick our own quarries. I made up my mind at once to go after the light cruisers, and, signalling 'Come on, Kent' (the Captain of the Kent was my junior, and therefore subject to my orders in a case of this kind), headed off in the direction of what were still little more than three dark blurs on the south-westerly horizon. The Glasgow, which was a long way ahead to port, also decided (in view of instructions) in favour of going after the light cruisers, and, altering course sharply, passed astern of the battle cruisers and converged with the Kent and Cornwall in the chase. The Carnarvon, which for some reason was not steaming her best, and had been left a good distance astern, held on after the battle cruisers. The Bristol, which had been delayed in getting out of harbour, had been ordered to look after some steamers which had been following Von Spee, and which we believed to carry coal and provisions. We afterwards learned that one of them had a cargo of potatoes, and as potatoes