As he rounded the Horn, Dame Fortune tempted him, and he made what proved to be a fatal error. He stopped a British collier and took all her coal. This delayed him for three days. Meanwhile, a fleet of Britain's mightiest battle cruisers had arrived at the Falklands. He still might have run by them unnoticed had he not determined to shell and destroy the wireless station on the Falklands. Thus he stumbled into that nest of battle cruisers. He tried to run, but they caught and sank him. That day the British had their sea giants, the _Indefatigable_, the _Invincible_, the _Indomitable_, and along with them a number of other battle cruisers, that later were to fight gallantly at Jutland, and then find their way to rest on the floor of the North Sea. Only one of Von Spee's ships, the light but fleet cruiser _Dresden_, showed her heels to the British leviathans and slipped back around Cape Horn, But the Fates were merely playing with the poor _Dresden_, and a few days later she was sunk by the more powerful British cruiser _Kent_ off San Juan Fernandez, Robinson Crusoe's island, in the Pacific. She was lying in neutral waters and should have been sheltered by the laws of war. Her captain signalled to the commander of the _Kent_: "We are in Chilean territory." "My orders are to sink you on sight," replied the _Kent_, "and no matter where you are." The captain of the _Dresden_ blew up his ship, and with his officers and crew swam ashore. The island was not quite so deserted after this shipwreck as it was in Robinson Crusoe's day! That in brief was the story of the plucky Von Spee and his gallant men. Hence this dreary waste of waters off the Falklands was sacred to us. We hove to, and from my quarter-deck I presided over a brief memorial service above the watery graves of our comrades and their ships. First I told my boys the story of my friend Count von Spee and his men, and every one of us knew that we, too, might soon be on our way to join them. But with the difference that we might not even have a chance to fight it out. On German ships, the captain is also the chaplain. Every Sunday aboard the _Seeadler_ we had our hour of prayer and song. When we had "guests" aboard from enemy ships, we invited them to join with us in the worship of the Great Ruler of the Waves. Our service followed the ritual of no particular creed. It was as simple as we simple seamen could make it. The table which bore the ship's Bible was draped not only with our German flag but also with the flags of all the Allied nations whose ships we had captured and under whose colours our prisoners had sailed. I wanted to make our prisoners feel that the service was as much theirs as it was ours, and that we did not feel ourselves any more a chosen people before the Altar of God than any other people.