Realise, if you can, the feelings of the officers and men of this small English cruiser lying isolated from the world in her Pirates’ Lair. Their improvised base, not far from the main trade routes, might at any moment have been discovered—as indeed it was before very long; it was the territory of a neutral country, a country most friendly then and afterwards, but bound to observe its declaration of neutrality. They knew that coal and store ships from England would be sent out, but did not know whether they would arrive. They were in wireless touch with the British representatives at Rio, Pernambuco, and Montevideo, but authentic news came in scraps intermingled with the wildest rumour. They, or rather their captain, had to sort the grains of essential fact from the chaff of fiction. As the month of August unfolded, their news of the war came chiefly from German wireless, and those of us who lived through and remember those early weeks of war also remember that the news from enemy sources had no cheerful sound. For some weeks they were free from anxiety for supplies, provided that their base could be retained, yet the future was blank. I do not think that they worried overmuch; the worst time they had lived through was during those few days in Rio before war broke out, and those days immediately afterwards, when they were seeking those corners of their Lair least exposed to gales and surf. Very often coaling was impossible; more often it was both difficult and dangerous. It may seem strange that for many weeks—until well into September—the _Glasgow_ heard nothing of Cradock and his West Indies Squadron. Yet it was so. Cradock in the _Suffolk_ had on August 5th met the _Karlsruhe_ coaling at sea, and signalled to the fast _Bristol_ to look after her. The _Bristol_ got upon the chase and fired a shot or two, but, speedy though she was, the _Karlsruhe_ ran away from her and was seen no more and heard of no more until she began her ravages upon steamers to the South of Pernambuco. Cradock, thinking she had gone north, and moreover having charge of the whole North Atlantic trade on its western side, became farther and farther separated from the _Glasgow_, and even went so far away as Halifax. Meanwhile the _Dresden_ slipped down and entered the _Glasgow’s_ sea area on August 9th, though her movements were not yet known. On the 13th Captain Luce learned that the _Monmouth_ was coming out to him under a captain who was his junior, so that upon himself would still rest the responsibility for the South Atlantic. He was now beginning to get some news upon which he could act, and already suspected that the _Dresden_ or the _Karlsruhe_, or both, had broken away for the south. He could hear the Telefunken wireless calls of the _Dresden_ to her attendant colliers from somewhere in the north a thousand miles away. During his cruises from the Lair he was always on the look out for her, and once, on the 16th, thought that he had her under his guns.