It is no pleasure to write what I have to set down here, for I am quite frank to confess that the story of the _Emden_, according to the first accounts that were published of it, in connexion with the classic exploit of Lieutenant Mucke in escaping from Cocos Island in a small sloop and ultimately reaching Constantinople by way of Arabia, stirred my imagination as few episodes of the war have done. The time is long past, however, when the German has a right to expect anything further in the way of chivalrous reticence in the recording of his deeds and misdeeds. What I am setting down here was told me by an officer of the _Sydney_ who boarded the beached _Emden_, and was also entrusted with the task of rounding up and bringing off the men from the latter that had jumped overboard and made their way to the beach of North Keeling Island. As regards the battle itself, no one in the _Sydney_ has anything but admiration for the pluck and skill with which the _Emden_ fought a losing battle against a faster and more heavily gunned ship. But perhaps the one thing which they do hold most heavily against Von Müller personally is for the characteristically Prussian way he tried to bluff them, after he had run his ship aground, into allowing him to leave his flag flying when the _Emden_ had been put completely out of action and was out of the running for good and all. I have already written of this historic incident in considerable detail as it appeared to a signalman of the _Sydney_ who had unusually favourable opportunity for observing just what transpired, so that it will suffice here merely to summarise it and record that this man's version is fully borne out by what was subsequently told me by officers. When the _Sydney_ returned to the grounded _Emden_ after pursuing and sinking the latter's collier, it was seen that the German Naval ensign was still flying at her maintopmast. Nothing in the nature of a white flag was displayed anywhere upon her. After making three times the signal, "Do you surrender?" and each time receiving only an evasive reply, or none at all, the Captain of the _Sydney_ had reluctantly to give the order to reopen fire. The three broadsides which were required to convince Von Müller that his bluff would not go down are estimated to have killed sixty men in the _Emden_ and to have caused a number of others to jump over into the surf. These lives were nothing more or less than a sacrifice on the altar of Von Müller's Prussian pride, and under the circumstances he was just as blood-guilty for causing them to be snuffed out in a typically Hunnish attempt to "put one over" on the ship that had beaten him and make the report of his defeat read better in Potsdam as if he had ordered them to be mown down by the guns of the _Emden_.