"With the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_ Sturdee had sufficient force to be able to dispense with the _Defence_, which was, I believe, sent to African water to join a force that was gathering there on the off-chance that the Germans slipped through the net that was being flung off South America. For scouting purposes, the _Bristol_ and the _Kent_--both of which had foregathered with us at the 'Base'--were added to our 'punitive expedition,' which finally got under weigh for the Falklands on November 28. Steaming in a formation best calculated to sweep a wide range of seas, we held our southerly course for nine days, sighting, so far as I recall, no ship of any description except those of our own force. On the eighth day we weathered a heavy blizzard, but it was out of a clear dawn that the low, rounded hills of the Falklands--so suggestive in many respects of the Orkneys and the north of Scotland--took shape the following morning. We dropped anchor in the double harbour of Port William and Port Stanley at nine o'clock of the forenoon of December 7. Before another twenty-four hours had passed Von Spee--hurrying as though to a rendezvous--had made his appearance, and we were raising steam to go out and even up Craddock's account with him." II. THE BATTLE OF THE FALKLANDS The Captain had come for a breath of fresh air on the quarter-deck at the end of a grey winter's day, and it was the memories called up by the resemblance of the low, rounded, treeless hills which ringed the Northern Base to some other hills which he had good reason to carry a vivid mental picture of that set him talking of the Falklands. "They're very much like these," he said, "those wind-swept hills around Port Stanley; indeed, I know of few other parts of the world so far apart geographically that have so much in common topographically and climatically. Their people, too, are a good deal like the northern Scots and Orcadians, with a dry sense of humour that usually manifests itself at your first meeting with them, when they tell you that the Falklands have two seasons, the cold and the snowy. The latter, they tell you,--because the snow stops up the chinks and keeps out the wind--is rather the warmer of the two. They are a sturdy, resolute lot, too, and we found that, quite expecting the coming of the German fleet and with no sure knowledge that British naval help would arrive in time, they had made all preparations to fight the enemy to the limit of their very primitive resources.