In the Coronel action the _Glasgow_, exposed to the concentrated fire of the _Leipzig_ and _Dresden_ for an hour, and to the heavy guns of the _Gneisenau_ for some ten minutes, did not lose a single man. There were four slight wounds from splinters, that was all. But in her long fight with the _Leipzig_ alone, assisted by the powerful batteries of the _Cornwall_, the _Glasgow_ suffered two men killed, three men severely wounded, and six slightly hurt. Such are the strange chances of war. After Coronel, though they had seen two of their own ships go down and were in flight from an overwhelming enemy, the officers and men were wonderfully cheerful. The shrewder the buffets of Fate the stiffer became their tails. But after the Falklands, when success had wiped out the humiliation of failure, there came a nervous reaction. Defeat could not depress the spirit of these men, but victory, by relieving their minds from the long strain of the past months, made them captious and irritable. Perhaps their spirits were overshadowed by the prospect of the weary hunt for the fugitive _Dresden_. * * * * * By wondrous accident perchance one may Grope out a needle in a load of hay. [Illustration: THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW.”] Four German cruisers had been sunk, but one, the _Dresden_, had escaped, and the story of the next three months is the story of a search—always wearisome, sometimes dangerous, sometimes even absurd. The Straits of Magellan, the islands of Tierra del Fuego and of the Horn, and the west coast of the South American spur are a maze of inlets, many uncharted, nearly all unsurveyed. The hunt for the elusive _Dresden_ among the channels, creeks, and islands was far more difficult than the proverbial grope for a needle in a load of hay. A needle buried in hay cannot change its position; provided that it really be hidden in a load, patience and a magnet will infallibly bring it forth. The _Dresden_ could move from one hiding place to another, no search for her could ever exhaust the possible hiding-places, and it was not positively known until after she had been run down and destroyed where she had been in hiding. That she was found after three weary months may be explained by that one word which explains so much in naval work—coal. The _Dresden_ after her flight from the Falkland Islands action was short of coal; von Spee’s attendant colliers, _Baden_ and _Santa Isabel_, had been pursued and sunk by the _Bristol_ and the armed liner _Macedonia_, and she was cast upon the world without means of replenishing her bunkers. This was, of course, known to her pursuers, so that they expected, and expected rightly, that she would hang about in some secluded creek until her dwindling supplies drove her forth upon the seas to hunt for more. Which is what happened.