All this, of course, happened in much less time than it takes to tell it. But the greatest surprise of all was still reserved for us. The brave captain was standing on his little bridge holding on like grim death to the rail. His crew stood, or rather lurched, about on the deck. At the moment when we ran past him at full speed he tore his hat off, waved it round his head, yelling like a Red Indian, and called for 'Three Cheers for the _Aud_,' to which his crew bawled an enthusiastic response. If at this moment I had had a couple of bottles of whisky by me on the bridge I would have willingly thrown them to the crew of the _Shatter_ out of gratitude for this ovation; for there can be no doubt that the conduct of the _Shatter_ crew at the very least made the battery officer uncertain of his ground. (I heard later that the battery, in response to a signal from our pursuer, was just about to fire at us while we were standing away from it, but did not do so because the cheers of the _Shatter_ crew seemed to indicate that we had been the victims of some mistake.) Of course, we answered the greeting of the _Shatter_ with cap-waving and a friendly 'Good-bye!' Düsselmann, in fact, ran up the signal, 'X.O.R.'--Thank you. To cap it all, I dipped my flag, as we left the most friendly Englishman I have ever met on the seas. None of us, I am certain, will ever forget this moment. It was not till afterwards that I heard from the crew that our lives hung once more in the balance. One of the crew had mistaken my order to dip the flag and was under the impression that I had said 'Tyske,' which was our pre-arranged signal for blowing up the ship. He was just about to break out the German naval ensign at the stern, and the chief engineer stood ready with the fuse, when the mistake was realised. So this little _entr'acte_ went off all right--at any rate so far as we were concerned. Not for the captain of the _Shatter_, however; for I heard some months later that the English Admiralty considered his conduct too 'gentlemanlike' and deprived him of his commission after a court-martial had sentenced him to imprisonment. The battery now lay a good mile astern, but we were still within range of its guns and our pursuer was close on our heels. We therefore had to make every effort to increase the distance, which was, of course, largely a question of correct steering. So the first mate took over the wheel, while the second mate worked the engine-room telegraph. Down below my brave stokers, half naked and with sweat literally pouring down, toiled at the glowing furnaces, while the others untiringly fetched baskets of coal from the bunkers. The engineers stood at their stations in the engine-room, ready each moment to carry out the orders as they came from the bridge. We were steaming with every ounce of pressure we could get.