The night lights are lit in Saloniki; its quays are blazing, its slopes are flaked with light; the highest mingle with the stars. Dark and silent, the cruiser takes up her sentry duty; the roadstead is fast asleep, and the cold gradually covers it with a new shroud. On board it seems as if everything slept too, but the eyes of the lookouts never close, and the flag of France can repose in peace. _Pointe Kassandra, 10 December; On the Fight in the Falklands._ What a fine revenge! The German squadron was sailing down the American coast. In this vast ocean she thought she had realized the ambition of the Kaiser: “The future of Germany is on the sea!” Admiral von Spee, the herald of Teutonic glory, was unfurling in the harbors of Chile the standard he said was invincible when a telegram from Berlin recalled him, probably to the North Sea, in order to add the strength of his cruisers to that of the fleet at Kiel. The _Scharnhorst_, the _Gneisenau_, and two small cruisers began to double Cape Horn. They cleared the spur of the American world. I myself long ago went through the tempests and frosts which must have enveloped the German squadron in these windy seas. She reached the Atlantic, and turned towards the north. On the map of the world the Admiral’s pencil had traced the routes leading to the Antilles, to the Azores, to the United States, to Ireland, and the northern latitudes of Norway, en route for the tunnel of the German _chenaux_. Protected by the luck which had followed him from China and Tsing-Tao, he expected no disaster. In the South Atlantic the British leopard had placed his paws on the Falkland Islands; he had been foresighted enough to store there immense reserves of coal. The _Scharnhorst_, the _Gneisenau_, and their companions, made for this valuable booty, which they counted on seizing and stripping; for the place is as lost on the ocean as a helpless vessel. The German sailors, as they approached, had all the pleasure of playing a legitimate bad turn on their enemies. But the wrath of Britain had launched on the sea great cruisers armed with _fouet_. Their orders were to discover these malevolent beasts, to chase and to scourge them to death. From the Mediterranean and from the English coasts, their greyhounds started on the merciless hunt, and swept the ocean as with a rake. Every time they put into port, they filled their magazines, they listened eagerly to the news of the world, and sailed ever farther south. When they learned that their game had turned along the American coast, they prepared for the grand hunt, assembled, and anchored in the Falkland Islands, in order to coal by night and lose no instant. How strange the fate of ships at sea! Twenty-four hours later, and the coaling would have been done! * * * * *