It was this attitude which was largely responsible for the fact that, although there were upwards of the three or four score officers and men who had taken part in the sinking of the _Emden_ still in her, I spent several days in the _Sydney_ before I found any one who appeared to consider that stirring action as anything other than the mustiest of ancient history, and, as such, of no conceivable interest at a time when every thought was centred upon the vital present and the pregnant future rather than upon the irrevocably buried past. And in the end it was more by luck than deliberate design that the two actors in the historic drama which I had set myself the task of learning something of at the first hand came to tell me of the parts they had played. That they were the two who had had what were perhaps more comprehensive opportunities for observation than any others was my sheer good fortune. It was toward midnight of a day of light-cruiser "exercises" that I first stumbled upon the trail which I had hitherto sought vainly to uncover. With all hands at "Night Defence" stations and steaming at half speed through the almost impenetrable blackness, we were groping blindly for an uncertainly located target in an endeavour to reproduce the conditions under which enemy destroyers might be expected to be encountered in the darkness. Suddenly the sharp bang of a small calibre gun sounded, followed by the shriek of a speeding projectile, and presently the glare of a down-floating star-shell shed its golden-grey radiance over the misty surface of the sea. Instantly the unleashed searchlight beams leapt to a distant little patch of rectangular canvas gliding along through the luminous fog on our port beam, and the fraction of a second later--following the red flame-stabs and the thunderous crashes of a broadside--it disappeared in the midst of ghostly green-white geysers of tossing spray. It was while--flash-blinded and gun-deafened--I fumbled about on the deck of the signal bridge for the "ear-defender" that the nervous jerk of my head had flirted loose, that I heard a quiet voice speaking in the darkness beside me as a hard hand brushed mine in the search. "You'll find, sir, that cotton wool's a good sight better than one of them patent ear protectors," it said. "I suppose it was one of them 'Mallet-Armours' that you plug in. I had a pair of that kind when we went after the _Emden_, and they kicked out just like yours did at the first salvo. You can bet I was deaf as a toad before we finished polishing her off.