For the most part, however, all on board every {63} vessel were hard at work getting ready for the search--a search that was still believed, of course, to be inevitable, no news of von Spee having reached the island. The _Glasgow_ and _Bristol_, in the inner harbour, were the first to coal, followed by the _Carnarvon_, who only finished at four o'clock the next morning, her collier, the _Trelawney_, then going to the _Invincible_. This was berthed beside her in the outer harbour of Port William, the _Inflexible_ keeping them company, with the _Kent_ and _Cornwall_ lying a little to the south, the _Kent_, with her steam up, acting as guardship. Further to seaward, beyond the mine barrage, was anchored the _Macedonia_, serving as a look-out vessel; while in the inner harbour were the _Bristol_ and _Glasgow_, with the old _Canopus_ still aground there. So the night passed. At various points in the islands, the volunteer sentries kept their watch; and it was from one of these, stationed on Sapper's Hill, above Port Stanley, that the first news of the approach of enemy vessels was received between seven and eight the next morning. The day had dawned clear, with a calm sea and a light breeze blowing from the northwest. From horizon to horizon, in the glowing sunlight, the sea stretched blue as the Mediterranean. It was such a day as, in the Falkland Islands, might for weeks together have been prayed for in vain; and, hidden in the harbour, lay such a fleet as von Spee, in his most depressed moments, was unlikely to have pictured. That he would find the _Canopus_ there he may have thought probable. That the _Glasgow_ and _Bristol_ might be there he had deduced from their wireless. {64} But that the giant battle-cruisers, _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_, lay quiet as death behind those painted hills--that this December morning was the last morning that he would ever look upon on earth--none had told him, and, for all his forebodings, he himself could never have guessed. But the stage was set again; the curtain had risen; the watcher on Sapper's Hill had heralded the last act. Let us look down for a moment with impartial eyes upon the chosen scene. Far to the south, resolved at last on action, but soon to pay the price of its strange hesitation, steamed the German squadron with its two colliers, the _Santa Isabel_ and the _Baden_. To the watcher on Sapper's Hill, at that early hour, only the foremost cruisers were as yet observable, faint smudges on the southern horizon--the _Gneisenau_ and the _Nürnberg_. Equally faint, but clear and at their mercy, must have seemed that spit of land to the observers on the _Gneisenau_, wholly unconscious, as they then were, of the brisk activities that lay behind it. Nor were the cruisers in the hidden harbour any more aware of what the day heralded for them. With the prospect before them of a voyage round Cape Horn, they were stirring with preparations, but not for immediate action.