All accounts of the action agree upon the excellent conduct of the men and boys on board _Sydney_. A letter published in _The Times_ gives us many evidences of this. “The hottest part of the action for us was the first half-hour. We opened fire from our port guns to begin with. I was standing just behind No. 1 port, and the gun-layer (Atkins, 1st class Petty Officer) said, ‘Shall I load, sir?’ I was surprised, but deadly keen there should be no ‘flap,’ so said, ‘No, don’t load till you get the order.’ Next he said, ‘_Emden’s_ fired, sir.’ So I said ‘All right, load, but don’t bring the gun to the ready.’ I found out afterwards that the order to load had been received by the other guns ten minutes before, and my anti-‘flap’ precautions, though they did not the slightest harm, were thrown away on Atkins, who was as cool as a cucumber throughout the action.” It was the boys’ quarters on board that suffered most from _Emden’s_ fire. The same writer says: “Our hits were not very serious. We were ‘hulled’ in about three places. The shell that exploded in the boys’ mess deck, apart from ruining the poor little beggars’ clothes, provided a magnificent stock of trophies. For two or three days they kept finding fresh pieces.” They were probably consoled for the lost wardrobe by this treasure of souvenirs. “There are lots of redeeming points in the whole show. Best of all was to see the gun’s crew fighting their guns quite unconcerned. When we were last in Sydney we took on board three boys from the training ship _Tingira_, who had volunteered. The captain said, ‘I don’t really want them, but as they are keen I’ll take them.’ Now the action was only a week or two afterwards, but the two out of the three who were directly under my notice were perfectly splendid. One little slip of a boy did not turn a hair, and worked splendidly. The other boy, a very sturdy youngster, carried projectiles from the hoist to his gun throughout the action without so much as thinking of cover. I do think for two boys absolutely new to their work they were splendid.”[D] [D] The (slightly modified) plan of this action is reproduced by the kind permission of the Editor of the _Times_. CHAPTER XI THE CAREER OF VON SPEE