CHAPTER IIITHE TRIUMPH OF THESYDNEY

3THETRIUMPHOFTHESYDNEY

Nor wonder, nor fear,When death stared us near,Could you read in one face of all our crew,Each to his post and orders true.John Le Gay Brereton.

Nor wonder, nor fear,

When death stared us near,

Could you read in one face of all our crew,

Each to his post and orders true.

John Le Gay Brereton.

Whenwe are all at peace again–when the Great War is a thing of yesterday and tales of its thousand fights have passed into the history and folk-lore of the nations that took part in it–then, I think, perhaps Germany may be glad to forget about the hundreds of women and children slaughtered by her runaway warships in bombarding defenceless English coast towns without warning, by her midnight Zeppelins with bombs that were dropped on peaceful villages and unfortified towns, by the torpedoes fired by her dishonoured submarines into helpless passenger steamers; but she will find consolation and some healing for her pride in remembering the brilliant exploits of theEmden, and the splendid chivalry and heroism of theEmden'scommander. She will talk of Karl von Müller, and rightly, much as we talk of Drake and Hawkins, or as the Americans talk of that daring privateer Paul Jones, and of Captain Semmes and theAlabama. But his enemies were the first to pay tribute to his gallantry and welcome him into the glorious company of their traditional sea-heroes; for such courage as his naturalises an alien even in the land of his enemy, and, for all the harm he did us, we have nothing but the friendliest admiration of von Müller, because he harried and fought us with clean hands and was always a gracious and honourable as well as a fearless foe.

At the outbreak of the war, the German Admiral von Spee was at Kiao-Chau with his China squadron of some half-dozen vessels. He lost no time in putting to sea, bent on preying upon and, as far as might be, stopping the ocean-trade of Britain and France and their Allies. Before long he seems to have decided to set von Müller free to follow his own devices; theEmdenparted company with the Admiral and thereafter, playing a lone hand, proved a more resourceful and more dangerous marauder than all the rest of von Spee's fleet put together. For three months it cruised about the Pacific and the Indian Oceans and was the terror of the seas. To-day it would be sighted off Borneo, and whilst the Australian and New Zealand fleets, called by wireless, were scouring the China Sea for it, it would unexpectedly appear off the Caroline Islands or in the Bay of Bengal. It left its mark on the harbour works of Madras, shelled the fort there and set the oil-tanks ablaze, and was gone into the unknown again before any pursuer could be put on its track. And all the while its gallant captain was making sudden dashes into those ocean highways where the merchant traffic was thickest, taking toll of our traders with the gayest good humour and always with the strictest consideration for the lives of his victims.

Our experts assured us that this game could not last; sooner or later von Müller would have to put into port somewhere for coal and stores, news of his whereabouts would be flashed to the ships in chase of him and they would be waiting in readiness for him when he came out, and there would be an end of him. It sounded so simple and true, but von Müller knew a trick worth two of that. His practice was to bear down upon his quarry, make her heave to by sending a shot across her bows, then board her and help himself to what he needed in the way of coal and other stores, transfer the crew and passengers to theEmden, and sink his abandoned prize with a bomb or with a well-aimed shell or two. After he had repeated this proceeding so many times that he had more prisoners aboard than he could comfortably accommodate, he dumped them all on the next merchantman he overhauled and allowed it to go free with them. He was so good a sailor, and knew the sea and the ways of the sea so well, that, instead of making his captures one by one, he occasionally contrived to round up four or five at a time, shepherded them into suitable proximity, went through them in succession, helped himself liberally from their cargoes, collected all the passengers and crews on one of them, which he politely set at liberty, and swiftly sunk the remainder and was off again about his business. He had a sense of humour, and that invariably goes with humanity. One of the ships he stopped was a small affair with no particularly valuable cargo, so he relinquished it intact, jestingly making a present of it to the wife of the captain, who was making the voyage with her husband. History does not say whether the owners subsequently confirmed the gift. He discovered that there were women among the passengers on another ship, and, genially apologising for causing them any discomfort, withdrew and let his catch go again. Many such stories were rumoured about him, and even if some were legendary the fact that it occurred to his enemies to tell them sufficiently indicates the character of the man. His luck and his daring and his courtesy made a sort of popular hero of him even in the British Isles and Australasia, but the damage he was doing to our shipping was so serious that it became more and more imperative that his career should be ended. By an ingenious ruse he sunk a French destroyer and a Russian cruiser at Penang; and, to say nothing else of our Allies' losses, he had destroyed over 74,000 tons of British shipping, the total value of which has been estimated at upwards of £2,000,000, before he was brought to bay, and put up a good fight, but was beaten.

THE HORSE LINES AT ABASSIA, EGYPT.

THE AUSTRALIAN REMOUNTS DEPOT AT ABASSIA.Over 1,000 horses are in lines here and about andalso ready for transport to any part of the world.

OUR TROOPS IN EGYPT.Cavalry galloping out into the desert.

His little cruiser could make a speed of twenty-four knots, and so long as he kept out at sea he was able to show his pursuers a clean pair of heels. Possibly his three months of immunity had rendered him a little over-confident; anyhow, it occurred to him that he might increase the difficulties of the chase by destroying the wireless plant on Keeling Cocos Island, and at 6 o'clock on the morning of the 9th November he carried out his intention. He sent an armed launch ashore, towing two boats containing forty men, three officers, and four maxims. They effected a landing without trouble in a quarter of an hour; the officers behaved with the correctest courtesy towards the officials and damaged nothing but the wireless installation, which they very efficiently reduced to ruins. But it happened that an hour earlier the approach of theEmdenhad been detected, and the wireless operator had immediately flung a warning into the air and an urgent appeal to theSydney, which was believed to be somewhere in the vicinity. This belief was so well founded that as the expeditionary force from theEmdenwere returning to their boats, after completing their mission, a dense smoke was seen on the horizon, and breaking through it theSydney, coming under full steam, hove rapidly into sight.

Captain von Müller was as quick to observe it, recognised that there was no escape, and instantly prepared for action. Leaving his landing party to look after themselves, he steamed for the open sea, and his men on shore with equal promptitude commandeereda schooner that lay at anchor in the bay, hastily provisioned it, cut the cable, made a dash for liberty and got away.

As soon as she was clear of the island theEmdenopened fire on theSydneyand at first made excellent practice, but theSydneyanswered by pouring in such an accurate and deadly fire that the enemy's three funnels were shot away, some of his guns silenced, and all the speaking-tubes smashed, so that the captain had difficulties in transmitting his orders, and his firing began to fall off considerably. If there were pluck and determination enough on theEmden, there was at least as much of both on her antagonist. For three months theSydneyhad been kept waiting for this hour, with her crew spoiling for a fight, and now they had got what they had been waiting for, and officers and men alike were keen to render a good account of themselves. Before theSydneyleft the harbour she was named after, three boys came aboard from the training shipTinguaand offered themselves as volunteers for service in any capacity. The captain thought they were too young and did not want to take them, but they were so desperately bent on going that he yielded and let them have their way. Two of them were now attached to the officers of the gun crew, and throughout the action with theEmdenthey were as eager and as perfectly cool as the hardiest seaman of them all. One of these youngsters was told off to help in carrying ammunition to the guns, and he went briskly, capably to and fro on his job, with the enemy's shells bursting around and overhead, and never even seemed to think of attempting to take cover. The fearful joy of battle possessed him as it possessed the rest of the crew. The cheerfulness and reckless ardour of them all were amazing; nobody thought of danger; nobody thought of anything except that they were at grips with the enemy at long last and did not mean to let him go.

It was a short, sharp, heroic combat; there was no flinching on either side; but theSydney'sguns were the more powerful and her gunners the better marksmen. She was very little damaged and her only loss was three men killed and fifteen wounded; but theEmdenwas so terribly punished that her decks became a very shambles; there were over two hundred killed and wounded, and the finish came when the whole after-part of the vessel burst into flames. TheSydneyat once ceased firing, and von Müller threw up the sponge and smartly beached his ship to save it from sinking. The Britishers ashore and rescue parties in theSydney'sboats assisted to get the wounded out of the blazing wreck, and, acceptingthe inevitable with his customary good grace, the German captain surrendered. But Captain Glossop, theSydney'scommander, knew how to respect a brave enemy and refused to deprive his beaten foe of his sword. It was characteristic of von Müller that when one of his officers, smarting under the sense of defeat, accused theSydneyof continuing to fire after the white flag had been shown, he called the remnant of his forces together and repeated the charge to them, only to repudiate it indignantly, saying that no white flag had ever been hoisted on his vessel.

He and the Kaiser's kinsman, Prince Franz Joseph Hohenzollern, with the rest of the captured German officers and men, were sent as prisoners of war to Australia, and the most romantic and one of the most momentous episodes in the war at sea came to a fitting conclusion when the vast crowd which gathered at Sydney Harbour to welcome with storms of cheering the triumphant Captain Glossop and his men, broke into a generous ovation for the hero of theEmdenas his conquerors brought him in.

The Indian and Pacific Oceans were now swept completely clear of all enemies, except for the small German fleet that was still groping about precariously off Chili, and on the 8th December a British squadron drew this fleet into an engagement and totally destroyed it; but the significance of theSydney'sdashing victory was not merely that it removed the last serious menace from the ocean trade routes of the Empire–it created the profoundest impression throughout India, and did more to restore confidence among our Indian fellow-subjects in the eventual triumph of British arms than the hurling back of the German hordes from before the walls of Paris or the greater successes of our Navy in the North Sea.

WITH OUR TROOPS IN EGYPT.The 6th Hamakai (New Zealand) Regiment entrenchingat Ismalin on the banks of the Suez Canal.

AN AUSTRALIAN SCOUT IN THE EGYPTIAN DESERT.

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