Captain Luce had already selected a secret base, where he hoped to be able to coal in shelter outside territorial waters. His collier had been ordered to follow as soon as permitted, and he headed off to inspect the barren rocks, uninhabited except by a lighthouse-keeper, which were to be his future link with home. His luck held, for the first ship he encountered was a big English steamer bound for Rio with coal for the Brazilian railways. In order to be upon the safe side, he commandeered this collier also, and made her attend him to his base. There, to his relief, he found that shelter from the surf could be found, and that it was possible to use the desolate spot as a coaling base and keep the supply ships outside territorial waters. He used it then and afterwards; so did the other cruisers, _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_, which came out to him, so also did that large squadron months later which made of this place a rendezvous and an essential storehouse on the journey to the Falklands and to the end of von Spee. We were always most careful to keep on the right side of the Law. I will not give to this base of the _Glasgow_ its true name; let us call it the Pirates’ Lair, and restore to it the romantic flavour of irresponsible buccaneering which I do not doubt that it enjoyed a century or so earlier. In the _Glasgow’s_ day it mounted a lighthouse and an exceedingly inquisitive keeper whom German Junkers would have terrorised, but whom the kindly English, themselves to some extent trespassers, left unharmed to the enjoyment of his curiosity. He, lucky man, did not know that there was a war on.