"After the first shot," wrote another _Gloucester_, "our lads were quite happy, and they kept firing as quickly as possible. One chap near swallowed his 'chew of 'baccy' when the first shot fell short. The next one he spat on for luck, and it took half the _Breslau's_ funnel away. He repeated the operation on the next shot, which cleared her quarter-deck and put her after-gun out of action. Then he began to smile."[90] This interchange of compliments lasted nearly five-and-twenty minutes. The _Breslau_ fired heavily, but, though her gunnery was good, she had nothing bigger than a 4-inch gun, and the _Gloucester_ was so well handled by her captain--W. A. H. Kelly, M.V.O.--that every salvo arrived just after she had left the spot where it arrived. At last the big _Goeben_ turned slowly round and approached the plucky little British cruiser and opened fire, but without effect. As a single shot from her heavy guns would have put the _Gloucester_ out of action, and probably sunk her, she withdrew in accordance with her instructions. The _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ eventually arrived at Constantinople, where the farce of a sale to Turkey was carried out; but they left behind a good deal of the prestige of the German Navy and a new phrase for our bluejackets' vocabulary--the "_Goeben_ glide"--that is, to "skedaddle rather than fight". About five German cruisers were known to be in the Atlantic, and a considerable force of both our own and the French cruisers set to work to "round them up". The _König Wilhelm der Grosse_, a big armed mercantile cruiser of 14,000 tons and ten 4-inch guns, was "bagged" by the _Highflyer_ off the Oro River on the West African coast on 26th August. She had sunk three of our merchantmen, and was holding up a couple more when the _Highflyer_ hove in sight. The German, a much faster vessel, was made fast to a captured collier, from which she was coaling, which enabled the _Highflyer_, which dated from 1900, to get within range with her heavier guns. "If all British ships shoot as straight as the _Highflyer_," said the captain of _König Wilhelm der Grosse_, "I shall be sorry for our poor fellows in the North Sea." Nearly a month later the _Carmania_, a big armed liner, sank the _Cap Trafalgar_, a similar vessel--which was disguised as a "Castle" liner with grey hull and red funnels--off the Island of Trinidad to the eastward of Rio de Janeiro.