friend the _Kent_, were in at her death, which was not very glorious. I will tell her story in its proper place. So ended that most dainty operation, the wiping out of the German Pacific Squadron and the cleaning up of the Mess of Coronel. Throughout, our sailors had to do only with clean above-water fighting. There were no nasty sneaking mines or submarines to hamper free movement; the fast ship and the big gun had full play and did their work in the business-like convincing fashion which the Royal Navy has taught us to expect from it. * * * * * [For what follows I have none but German evidence, yet am loth to disbelieve it. I cannot bring myself to conceive it possible that the dull Teutonic imagination could, unaided by fact, round off in so pretty a fashion the story of the Falkland Islands. My naval friends laugh at me. They say the yarn is wholly impossible.] More than a year afterwards some fishermen upon the barren Schleswig coast observed a little water-worn dinghy lying upon the sand. She was an open boat about twelve feet long, too frail a bark in which to essay the crossing of the North Sea. Yet upon this little dinghy was engraved the name of the _Nürnberg_! Like a homing pigeon this frail scrap of wood and iron had wandered by itself across the world from that far-distant spot where its parent vessel had been sunk by the _Kent_. It had drifted home, empty and alone, through 7,000 miles of stormy seas. I like to picture to myself that Odyssey of the _Nürnberg’s_ dinghy during those fourteen months of lonely ocean travel. Those who know and love ships are very sure that they are alive. They are no soulless hulks of wood or steel or iron, but retain always some spiritual essence distilled from the personality of those who designed, built, and sailed them. It may be that in her dim blind way this fragment of a once fine cruiser, all that was left of a splendid squadron, was inspired to bring to her far-away northern home the news of a year-old tragedy. So she drifted ever northwards, scorched by months of sun and buffeted by months of tempest, until she came at last to rest upon her own arid shores. And the spirits of German sailors, which had accompanied her and watched over her during those long wanderings, must, when they saw her ground upon the Schleswig sands, have passed to their sleep content. CHAPTER IX HOW THE “SYDNEY” MET THE “EMDEN” Forward, each gentleman and knight! Let gentle blood show generous might And chivalry redeem the fight!