Lieutenant X---- credits the German officers with doing the best they could in helping him transfer the wounded. "Shortly after I came over the side," he said, "I took the opportunity to tell Von Müller that we reckoned he had fought very well. To this he merely answered with a rather surly 'No,' and turned away as though to hide his chagrin. Presently, however, he came up to where I was standing, and, speaking in a rather apologetic tone, said: 'Thank you very much for saying that, but I was not satisfied. We should have done better. You were very lucky in shooting away all my voice-pipes at the beginning.' I do not remember whether or not I told him that this was hardly enough to balance his own luck in getting both our range-finders in the first five minutes. "The best of the whole lot of officers, however--indeed, the only one who showed anything like the spirit one would expect a British officer to display under similar circumstances--was Lieutenant ----, whom I encountered in connexion with my 'sweep' of North Keeling Island after the lot of Huns who landed there through the surf. I was a good deal puzzled to account for the sporting spirit of ---- on this occasion--until he chanced to tell me that his mother was English! I had this little Keeling Island roundup all to myself, and, grim as some features of it were, it had also its amusing side, and you may be interested in hearing something of it. "When we fired those last three broadsides into the _Emden_ a good many men either jumped or were blown into the water, and of these a score or more were carried to the beach by the surf. Most of these, as I found later, were wounded in one way or another, and having no food or water, their sufferings during the day and a half before help reached them were unspeakable. "From the _Emden_ the bodies of men--some of which appeared to have life in them--were visible on the beach above high-water mark, and just before we left the wreck for good I noticed a party setting off along the shore to the right. If I had only _failed_ to notice this move, my rescue party would have reached the poor wretches eight or ten hours earlier than it did, and probably have saved several more lives than we saved. The unfortunate delay was also largely due to my ignorance of the fact that North Keeling Island was a coral atoll.