the lot of the sole survivor of a naval disaster is always wretched. The one thing which counts in the eyes of English naval officers is the good opinion of their brethren of the sea; those of the _Glasgow_ could not tell until they had tested it what would be the opinion of their colleagues in the Service. It was very kind, very sympathetic; so overflowing with kindness and sympathy were those who now learned the details of the disaster, that the company of the _Glasgow_, sorely humiliated, yet full of courage and hope for the day of reckoning, never afterwards forgot how much they owed to it. At home men growled foolishly, ignorantly, sank to the baseness of writing abusive letters to the newspapers, and even to the _Glasgow_ herself, but the Service understood and sympathised, and it is the Service alone which counts. CHAPTER XII THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW” PART II.—CORONEL TO JUAN FERNANDEZ (Nov. 1st, 1914, to March 14th, 1915) We left the British cruiser _Glasgow_ off the River Plate, where she had arrived after her escape, sore at heart and battered in body, from the disaster of Coronel. The battleship _Canopus_ remained behind at Port Stanley to defend the newly established coaling-station at the Falkland Islands. Her four 12-inch guns would have made the inner harbour impassable to the lightly armoured cruisers of Admiral von Spee had he descended before the reinforcements from the north arrived; and the colliers, cleverly hidden in the remote creeks of the Islands, would have been most difficult for him to discover. It was essential to our plans that there should be ample stores of coal at the Falklands for the use of Sturdee’s punitive squadron when it should arrive, and every possible precaution was taken to ensure the supply. As it happened, von Spee did not come for five weeks. He was at his wits’ end to find coal, and was, moreover, short of ammunition after the bombardment of Tahiti and the big expenditure in the Coronel fight. So he remained pottering about off the Chilean coast until he had swept up enough of coal and of colliers to make his journey to the Falklands, and to provide for his return to the Lair which he had established in an inlet upon the coast.