With the _Dresden_ in the Pacific, all von Spee's future squadron was now at least in the same ocean, and both the _Nürnberg_ and _Leipzig_, by stealthy degrees, were approaching the German admiral--the former, during September, having cut the cable between Bamfield in British Columbia and the Fanning Islands, and the latter having sunk the British steamer _Bankfield_ off Peru, while en route to England with 6,000 tons of sugar; the oil tank _Elsinore_; and the steamer _Vine Branch_, outward bound from England to Guayaquil. Whether, in the long run, it would not have been to Germany's advantage for these cruisers to have played their lone hands on the commercial trade routes; to have followed the example of the _Emden_ and _Karlsrühe_ rather than to have formed a fighting squadron, is a matter for argument. Coronel was their justification. The Falkland Islands saw their end. It was finally in the neighbourhood of Easter Island that they united with von Spee, who had in his turn eluded both the China and Australian squadrons, sinking a small French gunboat off Papeete, and bombarding the town on September 22d. By this time, the _Glasgow_ had been reinforced in {50} Brazilian waters by Sir Christopher Cradock in the _Good Hope_ and Captain Brandt in the _Monmouth_, with the armed liner _Otranto_ in attendance; and they, too, after similar secret coaling, were making their way round Cape Horn into the Pacific. Time after time they had heard, faint and far, the wireless calls of the _Dresden_ and her colliers--they had even, on more than one occasion, quite unsuspectingly, been within a comparatively few miles of her--but they had never found her and were but slowly able to divine her intention of joining von Spee. That this admiral, with the _Scharnhorst_ and the _Gneisenau_, was making his way eastward was now probable, and the old battleship _Canopus_ was in consequence on her way to strengthen Cradock with her 12-inch guns. Up to the last, however, all were uncertain of the enemy's exact whereabouts and strength; and this was the position when, on the last day of October, 1914, the _Glasgow_ was detached to run into Coronel--not unknown to von Spee, who had instantly ordered the _Nürnberg_ to hover outside and watch her movements.