"'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.'