By this time British, Russian, Japanese, and French cruisers in the East were on the qui vive, as well as those belonging to the newly-formed fleet of the Australian Commonwealth, and it is to one of the Australian cruisers, the _Sydney_, that the honour of ridding the seas of the "wanted" _Emden_ belongs. On 9th November the raiding German arrived at the Cocos Keeling Islands, an isolated group in the Indian Ocean, and, landing a party of men, set about destroying the British wireless station. Luckily the operators were suspicious of the strange craft, and managed to get off a message which reached the cruisers _Melbourne_ and _Sydney_ in a somewhat broken condition. "Strange warship--off entrance" it ran. This was about seven in the morning, when they were 50 miles to the eastward of the islands, and in charge of a convoy. The _Melbourne_, as senior officer, ordered the _Sydney_ off at full speed to investigate. Before half-past nine the tops of the _Emden's_ funnels were made out close to the feathery palm tops denoting the position of the Cocos. She was 10 or 14 miles distant, but she "spotted" the _Sydney_, and very soon opened fire at a tremendous range. "Shortly after, we started in on her," wrote one of the _Sydney's_ officers.[92] "The Australian opened fire from her port guns. Before long a shot from the _Emden_ knocked out nearly the whole gun's crew of No. 2 gun on the starboard side." "There was a lot of 'Whee-oo, whee-oo, whee-oo'," continued the officer above quoted, "and the 'But-but-but' of the shell striking the water beyond, and, as the range was pretty big, this was quite possible, as the angle of descent would be pretty steep. Coming aft, I heard a shot graze the top of No. 1 Starboard. A petty-officer now came up limping from aft, and said that he had just carried an officer below (he was not dangerously hit) and that the after-control position had been knocked right out, and everyone wounded (they were marvellously lucky). I told him if he was really able to carry on to go aft to No. 2 Starboard and see there was no fire, and, if there was, that any charges about were to be thrown overboard at once. He was very game and limped away aft. He got aft to find a very bad cordite fire just starting. He, with others, got this put out. I later noticed some smoke rising aft, and ran aft to find it was but the remnant of what they had put out, but found two men, one with a pretty badly wounded foot, sitting on the gun-platform, and a petty-officer lying on the deck a little farther aft with a nasty wound in his back. I found one of the men was unwounded but badly shaken. However, he pulled himself together when I spoke to him, and told him I wanted him to do what he could for the wounded. I then ran back to my group.[93]