"When the prisoners were searched on board the _Sydney_ several of them were found to be in possession of English sovereigns (one of them gave the Paymaster a bag containing over a hundred for safe keeping), which they claimed to be their own. It was not until they had been disembarked at Colombo that it turned out that one of them had confessed that among other things thrown into that fire on the quarterdeck of the _Emden_ was all the treasure she had seized from the British merchant ships she had sunk during her career as a raider. This included sixty thousand pounds in gold sovereigns and an unknown amount in bank notes. The latter were consumed, and the gold, after the bags had been burned away from it, was swept into the sea. It was in this way that the few stray coins picked up lingered behind in the gaping cracks opened up by shells bursting in the enclosed spaces under the quarterdeck." At this juncture a messenger came to summon my young friend to the signal bridge, but he lingered at the door long enough to say that he had fully made up his mind to go back to North Keeling Island after the war and have a try at raking up some of that scuttled treasure. "There's no sand where she was lying, sir; only hard coral reef that ought to catch the coins in the holes and prevent them from being washed away. My only fear is that the coral may grow over and cover it up before I am free to get out there. Do you know how fast a coral island grows, sir?" I replied that I was not sure about it, but that I seemed to have some kind of an impression that the coral insect couldn't erect much more than a thirty-second of an inch of island a year, adding that I didn't think that a few inches of coral could make much difference with a big heap of gold like that in any case. "Perhaps not, sir," he assented; "but all the same I'm hoping that it won't have had time to grow even _one_ inch before the war's over. The stuff's no use to a chap unless he can have it while he's young." II. NAVAL HUNNISM SOME INSIDE HISTORY FROM THE FALKLAND AND COCOS ISLAND BATTLES