"Although we hadn't studied silhouettes at that stage of the game to anything like as much as we've had a chance to since, that trio of smoke-stacks marked her for a Hun, and probably the _Emden_ or _Königsberg_. Just which it was we never knew for certain till after we'd put her out of action and picked up the crew of the collier that accompanied her. "Just before I went aloft I heard one of the officers make an offer of a pound to the Boy that was first to sight the enemy. I didn't come under that rating myself, but it occurred to me instantly that it would never do to let all that money go unearned. So I leaned over, broke the news to a pukka Boy who was aloft with me, and told him to sing it out. He got the quid all right, and, for a long time at least, he got all credit and kudos of actually being the first to sight the _Emden_. When I finally told the Captain about the way it really happened, he laughed and said it served me right for trying to dabble in 'high finance.' I never understood quite what he meant, but always fancied 'high' had some reference to me being aloft, and 'finance' referred to the quid. "The first sign of life I saw on the _Emden_ was when she started blowing her syren. This, although we did not know it at the time, was an attempt to call back the party she had sent ashore to destroy the wireless station. Luckily for that lot there was no time for them to come off. The _Emden_ did not, as I have read in several accounts of the action, attempt to close immediately, but rather headed off in what appeared to be an endeavour to clear the land and make a run of it to the south'ard. It was only when her skipper saw that the converging course we were steering was going to cut him off in that direction that he took the bull by the horns and tried to shorten the range to one at which his four-point-ones would have the most effect. "There is no use denying that we were taken very much by surprise when the enemy fired his ranging shot at 10,500 yards, for we had hardly expected him to open at over seven or eight thousand. Still more surprising was the accuracy of that shot, for it fell short only by about a hundred yards, and went wobbling overhead in a wild ricochet.