The battle cruisers, whose presence it was desired to conceal until the latest moment, poured oil upon their furnaces and, veiled in clouds of the densest smoke, awaited the rising of the pressure gauges. In the outer harbour the light cruisers collected, and from her immovable position upon the mud-banks the old _Canopus_ loosed a couple of pot shots from her big guns at the distant German at a range of six miles. Admiral Graf von Spee and his merry men laughed—they knew all about the _Canopus_. Then, when all was ready, the indomitable _Glasgow_, the _Kent_ (own sister to the sunken _Monmouth_), and the armoured _Carnarvon_ issued forth to battle. In the words of an eye-witness, later a prisoner, “The Germans laughed till their sides ached.” A few more minutes passed, and then, from under the cover of the smoke and the low fringes of the harbour, steamed grandly out the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_, cleared for action, their huge turrets fore and aft and upon either beam bristling with the long 12-inch guns, their turbines working at the fullest pressure, the flag of Vice-Admiral Sturdee fluttering aloft. There was no more German laughter. Von Spee and his officers and men were gallant enemies, they saw instantly the moment the battle cruisers issued forth, overwhelming in their speed and power, that for themselves and for their squadron the sun had risen for the last time. They had come for sport, the easy capture of the Falkland Islands, but sport had turned upon the instant of staggering surprise to tragedy; nothing remained but to fight and to die as became gallant seamen. And so they fought, and so they died, all but a few whom we, more merciful than the Germans themselves at Coronel, plucked from the cold sea after the sinking of their ships.