enemy, like a hussar-attack. We got away at the start magnificently and led the field, so all the enemy's firing was aimed at us for the next ten minutes. When we got so close that the débris of their shells fell on board we altered our course and so threw them out in their reckoning of our speed, and they had all their work to do over again. Humanly speaking, the captain, by twisting and turning at the psychological moment saved us; actually I feel that we were in God's keeping those days.

"After ten minutes we got near enough to fire our torpedo, and then turned back to the Arethusa. Next our follower arrived just where we had been and fired his torpedo, and, of course, the enemy fired at him instead of at us; what a blessed relief! After the destroyers came the Fearless, and she stayed on the scene. Soon we found that she was engaging a three-funneler, the Mainz; so off we started again, now for the Mainz, the situation being that the crippled Arethusa was too tubby to do anything but be defended by us, her children.

"The Mainz was immensely gallant. The last I saw of her, absolutely wrecked below and aloft, her whole midships a fuming inferno, she had one gun forward and one aft still spitting forth fury and defiance like a wildcat mad with wounds. Our own four-funnel friend recommenced at this juncture with a couple of salvos, but rather half-heartedly, and we really did not care a d―, for there, straight ahead of us, in lordly procession, like elephants walking through a pack of dogs, came the Lion, Queen Mary, Invincible, and New Zealand, our battle-cruisers, great and grim and uncouth as some antediluvian monsters. How solid they looked! How utterly earthquaking: We pointed out our latest aggressor to them, whom they could not see from where they were. They passed down the field of battle, with the little destroyers at their left, and destroyers on their right, and we went west, while they went east. Just a little later we heard the thunder of their guns for a space, and then all was silence, and we knew that was all."

Heligoland, off which this battle was fought, lies thirty miles from the German coast, and is probably the most strongly fortified small spot on the face of the earth. It is an island only one-fifth of a square mile in area, equipped with probably $10,000,000 worth of long-range guns, and was believed to be capable of sending to the bottom of the sea any hostile fleet venturing within fifteen miles of the range of its guns. Naval and military strategists had agreed that it was doubtful if all the navies in the world acting together

could batter Heligoland into submission. In a time of peace it was the guardian of Germany's main artery of commerce, the way to Hamburg, the sentry that protected German fishermen, but in this war it became the key to all the elaborate German naval plans. Heligoland was a second Gibraltar. At the time of this battle great cliffs in its sides had concrete emplacements for hundreds of guns besides which just below lay a German fleet. The English knew it was impossible for their ships to pass Heligoland, the passage being defended by ten rows of contact-mines sunk at various depths. Inside these were fleets of torpedo-boats and destroyers, all placed ahead of the battle-fleet. On the island were 364 mounted guns, of which 142 were of the 42-centimeter disappearing type. Any British warship coming within sight of Heligoland would have been speedily blown to pieces. No ship could have withstood a salvo from a score of great cannon, each capable of hurling a steel explosive-filled shell weighing nearly a ton.

It was late on August 27, 1914, off the west coast of Africa, that the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse was sunk by the British cruiser High Flyer. This German merchant cruiser, which was of 14,000 tons, and armed with ten fourinch guns, had interfered with traffic between England and the Cape for three weeks. She was one of the few German armed auxiliary cruisers which succeeded in getting to sea at the beginning of the war. Before she sank her survivors were all landed. Formerly a regular liner plying between New York and Bremen, she was built in 1897 at a cost of between $3,000,000 and $4,000,000, was 626 feet long, of 66 feet beam, and 14,350 gross tonnage. She had an average speed of 23 knots and was fitted to carry an armament of eight 5.9 guns, four 4.7 guns, and fourteen machine-guns. She was the first vessel to have suites de luxe, consisting of parlor, bedroom, and bath, costing $1,000 for the passage. The innovation proved a success, so that succeeding ships also had sumptuous accommodations, which soon ran the passage price up as high as $2,000 until a new limit was reached with a rate of $5,000 for an imperial suite on the Vaterland and Imperator. Soon after the war the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse had taken the record for the eastbound

passage from the Lucania, of the Cunard Line, making the passage in five days and seventeen hours. She had a narrow escape from destruction in the Hoboken wharf fire of June, 1900. By being towed out into the Hudson she escaped serious injury. On August 9, 1910, Mayor Gaynor of New York was shot while on board this ship, just as he was starting for a vacation in Europe. In 1913 she was converted into a third-class steerage ship, her luxurious fittings being removed. She sailed on her last voyage from New York on July 21, 1914, and arrived at Bremen on July 28, the day Austria declared war against Serbia.

On September 14 occurred a duel between the Carmania, a British converted liner formerly a Cunarder running to New York, and a German ship of like nature and about equal force, named the Cap Trafalgar. The antagonists met off the east coast of South America, and had a stubborn fight. For an hour and three-quarters they exchanged hard knocks. The battle was something of a reminder of the old form of duels between ships at sea. The Carmania began the action at 9,000 yards, fire from both ships being maintained at various ranges, but never within 3,000 yards. British gunners made hits on the hull, at or near the waterline, while the German projectiles crashed into boats and upper works. The Carmania had nine men killed and twenty-six wounded; the German ship probably suffered greater losses. She was in flames before the action was half an hour in progress, and capsized before she sank. The men who survived got away in a collier.

On October 17, occurred the sinking by the British of four German destroyers known as S-115, S-117, S-118, and S-119. The official report said the British loss was one officer and four men wounded, and that thirty-one German survivors were made prisoners. The senior officer of the light cruiser Undaunted was Captain Cecil H. Fox who, on board the Amphion, had taken part in the first naval action of the war. His next adventure came when the Amphion was sent to the bottom by a mine. The explosion of the first mine knocked him insensible, but he recovered so as to be able to leave the ship three minutes before she went down under shock of a second explosion. He was

afterward appointed to new destroyer, the Faulkner, which had been under construction for Chile when war was declared. Only a few days before this action off the Dutch coast, Fox was transferred to the Undaunted, the second light cruiser of a new class, the first having been the Arethusa. The British destroyers were of the "L" class, parts of the 1911-1912 output, formidable vessels of 35-knot speed, armed with three 4-inch guns and four torpedo-tubes, in pairs, discharging 21-inch torpedoes. The German destroyers were older boats, carrying only two 24-pounder

guns, and not only slower, but there was no comparison between the accuracy of their shooting and that of the British craft. The destruction of the British cruiser Hawke by a German submarine had taken place on October 15. The sinking of four German destroyers two days afterward adjusted the balance as between the two navies, at least from the British point of view. The loss of life, being some 300 men in each case, was about the same, but the loss of an obsolescent cruiser like the Hawke was thought to be less serious to England than that of four destroyers to Germany.

When the German Admiral von Spee, with the German Pacific Squadron, left Kiaochow early in August, he had succeeded in collecting seven vessels from the China and Australian stations. One of these, the Emden, was detached for commerce-raiding in the Indian Ocean, while the light cruiser Karlsruhe, noted for its speed, was to become a privateer in the South Atlantic. Spee kept with him two armored cruisers, the Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst, and three light cruisers, the Dresden, Leipzig, and Nürnberg, the first two sister-ships, both launched in 1906, with a tonnage of 11,400 and a speed of at least 23 knots. They carried 6-inch armor, and mounted eight 8.2-inch, six 5.9inch, and eighteen 21-pounder guns. The Dresden was a sister-ship of the Emden-3,540 tons with a speed of 241⁄2 knots, and ten 4.1-inch guns. The Nürnberg was slightly smaller, 3,350 tons; her armament was the same, and her speed was about half a knot quicker. Smaller still was the Leipzig, 3,200 tons, with the same armament as the two others, and a speed of over 22 knots, but not shown on the map.

This squadron set itself to prey upon British commerce routes, remembering that the British Navy was short in cruisers of the class best fitted to patrol and guard the great trade highways. Admiral von Spee himself sailed for the western coast of South America, finding coaling and provisioning bases on the coast of Ecuador and Colombia, and in the Galapagos Islands. The duties of neutrals were either imperfectly understood or slackly observed by some of the South American States at the beginning of the war, and so the German admiral seems to have been permitted the use of wireless-stations which gave him valuable information as to the enemy's movements.

Early in August, a small British squadron had set sail to protect the southern trade routes thus menaced. It was commanded by Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, a capable and popular sailor, who had served in the Soudan and at the relief of Peking, and had distinguished himself in the work of saving life at the wreck of the Delhi. He had in his squadron, when formed, a twelve-year-old battleship, the Canopus, two armored cruisers, the Good Hope and the Monmouth, the light cruiser Glasgow, and an armed liner,