CHAPTER IX
HOW THE “SYDNEY” MET THE “EMDEN”
Forward, each gentleman and knight!
Let gentle blood show generous might
And chivalry redeem the fight!
The Luck of the Navy is not always good. There are wardrooms in the Grand Fleet within which to mention any Joss except of the most devilish blackness may lead to blasphemy and even to blows. One can sympathise. Those who sped on May 31st, 1916, across 400 miles of sea and who, though equipped with all the paraphernalia of fire-directors, spotting-officers, range-fingers, control instruments, grizzled gun-layers and tremendous wire-wound guns, failed to get in a single shot at an elusive enemy, are dangerous folk to chaff. If to them had been vouchsafed the great chance which came to the Salt of the Earth and the Fifth B. S. there would not now be a German battleship afloat! Still, in face of blazing examples of bad Joss such as this, I will maintain that there are pixies sitting up aloft who have a tender regard for the Royal Navy and who, every now and then, ladle out to it toothsome morsels of unexpected, astounding, incredible Luck.
For how else can one explain the action at the Falkland Islands? There was sheer luck in every detail of it, luck piled upon luck. Sturdee with his two battle-cruisers raced through 7,000 miles of ocean, from Plymouth to Port Stanley, and not a whisper of his coming sped over the wireless to von Spee. Yet hundreds knew of Sturdee’s mission—even I knew before he had cleared the English Channel. During five weeks, from the Coronel battle until December 7th, the Falkland Islands were exposed almost helpless to a raid by von Spee’s victorious squadron. Yet he delayed his coming until December 8th—the day after the Invincible and Inflexible had arrived to gobble him up. As if these two miracles were not sufficient—a month of silence in those buzzing days of enemy agents and wireless telegraphy, and von Spee’s arrival off Port Stanley at the moment most dangerous for him and most convenient for us—the Fates worked for the Navy yet another. They gave to Sturdee upon December 8th, 1914, perfect weather, full visibility, and a quiet sea in a corner of ocean where rain and fog are the rule and clear weather almost a negligible exception. The Falkland Islands do not see half a dozen such days as that December 8th in the whole circuit of the year. Von Spee came and to Sturdee were granted a long southern summer day, perfect visibility, a limitless ocean of space, and a benign easy swell to swing the gunsights kindly upon their mark. It was a day that gunners pray for, sometimes dream of, but very rarely experience in battle.
Less conspicuously but not less benignantly did the kindly Fates work up the scene for the destruction of the Emden. They made all their preparations in silence and then switched up the curtain at the moment chosen by themselves. In the Falkland Islands action Luck interposed to perfect the Navy’s long-laid plans and to add to the scheme those artistic touches of which man unaided is incapable. But the Sydney-Emden action was fortuitous, quite unplanned, flung off at a moment when Luck might have seemed to be wholly on the side of the raider. The Emden had destroyed 70,000 tons of shipping in seven weeks and vanished after each exploit upon an ocean which left no tracks. She seemed to be as elusive and dangerous as the Flying Dutchman. But perhaps her commander, von Müller, a most ingenious and gallant seaman, had committed that offence, which the Athenians and Eton boys call hubris, and had neglected to pay due homage for the good fortune which was poured upon him in plenty. For the Fates wearied of their sport with him and with us, withdrew their mantle of protection, and suddenly delivered the Emden to the Sydney with that artistic thoroughness which may always be seen in their carefully planned work. Luck is no bungler, but Luck is a most jealous mistress. If Sturdee and Glossop are wise they will sacrifice their dearest possessions while there is yet time. The Invincible is at the bottom of the North Sea and the Inflexible was mined in the Dardanelles. The Sydney is a pretty little ship and I should grieve to see her suffer for her good luck of three years ago.
Take a chart of the Indian Ocean and draw a line from Fremantle in Australia to Colombo in Ceylon. The middle point of this line will be seen to lie about fifty miles east of the Cocos-Keeling Islands. Now draw another line from Cocos to the Sunda strait, a line which will be seen to bisect at right angles the Fremantle-Colombo line. After this exercise in Euclid examine that point without parts and without magnitude, fifty miles east of Cocos, where the tracks intersect. It is a very interesting point, for upon the tropical night of November 8th, 1914, it was being approached by two hostile naval forces each of which was entirely ignorant of the nearness of the other. Coming up from Australia bound for Colombo steamed a fleet of transports under the charge of Captain Silver of H.M. Australian light cruiser Melbourne. Upon the left of Captain Silver, and nearest to the Cocos Islands, was Captain Glossop in the sister ship Sydney, and away to the right was a Japanese light cruiser. Upon the line from the Sunda strait to the Cocos Islands was steaming the famous raider Emden, with an attendant collier, bound upon a mission of destruction there. The Emden crossed the head of the convoy about three hours before it reached the point of intersection of the two tracks, and went on to demolish the cable and wireless station on the Islands. Meanwhile, wholly unconscious of the scene-setting upon which the Fates were busy, the convoy sailed on, crossed the Emden’s track and cut that vessel off from any chance of escape to the east. To the west the ocean stretches unbroken for limitless miles. At half-past six in the morning the Emden appeared off the Cocos Islands and the watching wireless operators at once sent out a warning to all whom it might concern that a foreign warship was in sight. It greatly concerned Captain Silver of the Melbourne, who ordered Captain Glossop to proceed in the Sydney to the Islands in order to investigate. The Sydney was nearest to the Islands, was a clean ship not three weeks out of dock, was in trim for the highest possible speed and, though largely manned by men in course of training, was in charge of experienced officers “lent” by the Royal Navy to the Australian Fleet Unit.
HOW THE “SYDNEY” MET THE “EMDEN.”
In the old sailing-ship days it was more common than it is now for fighting ships to pass close to one another without detection. Whole fleets used then to do it in a way which now seems always unbelievable. The classical example is that of Napoleon and Nelson in June, 1798. On the night of June 30th-July 1st, Napoleon with a huge fleet of transports, escorted by Admiral Brueys’ squadron, crossed the Gulf of Candia and reached Alexandria on the afternoon of the 1st. Nelson, who had been at Alexandria in search of his enemy, left on June 29th, and sailed slowly against adverse winds to the north. Though the French and British fleets covered scores of miles of sea they passed across one another, each without suspicion of the presence of the other. Nelson was very short of frigates. It is not remarkable that the British convoy and the Emden on the night of November 8th, 1914, should so nearly have met without mutual detection; what is wonderful is that the Emden should have chosen the day and hour for raiding the Cocos Islands when a greatly superior British force was barely fifty miles distant and placed by accident in a position which cut off all prospects of escape. It was a stroke of Luck for us which exactly paralleled the occasion of von Spee’s raid a month later upon the Falkland Islands.
By seven o’clock Glossop and the Sydney were ready to leave upon their trip of investigation—they had no knowledge of what was before them—and during the next two and a quarter hours they steamed at twenty knots towards the distant cable station. In the meantime the Emden had sent a boat ashore and the work of destruction of the station was completed by 9.20 a.m. Everything fitted exactly into its place, for the Fates are very pretty workmen. The Emden knew nothing of the Sydney’s coming, but as Glossop sped along his wireless receivers took up the distress calls from Cocos. He learned that the enemy warship had sent a boat ashore—and then came interruptions in the signals which showed that the wireless station had been raided. Naval officers do not get excited—they have too much of urgency upon which to concentrate their minds—but to those in the Sydney must have come some thrills at the unknown prospect. Their ship and their men were new and untried in war. Their guns had never fired a shot except in practice. Before them might be the Emden or the Königsberg or both together. They did not know, but as they rushed through the slowly heaving tropic sea they serenely, exactly, prepared for action.
The light cruiser Sydney, completed in 1913 for the Australian Unit, is very fast and powerful. She is 5,600 tons, built with the clipper bows and lines of a yacht, and when oil is sprayed upon her coal furnaces can steam at over twenty-five knots. She bears upon her deck eight 6-inch guns of the latest pattern, one forward, one aft, and three on either beam, so that she can fire simultaneously from five guns upon either broadside. Her lyddite shells weigh one hundred pounds each. She was, and is, of the fast one-calibre type of warship which, whether as light cruiser, battle cruiser, or heavy battleship, gives to our Navy its modern power of manœuvre and concentrated fighting force. Speed and gun-power, with the simplicity of control given by guns all of one size, are the doctrines upon which the New Navy has been built, and by virtue of which it holds the seas. The Sydney was far more powerful than the Emden, whose ten guns were of 4.1-inch, firing shells of thirty-eight pounds weight. The German raider had been out of dock in warm waters for at least three and a half months, her bottom was foul, and her speed so much reduced that in the action which presently began she never raised more than sixteen knots. In speed as in gun-power she was utterly outclassed.
Let us visit the Sydney as she prepares for action on the morning of the fight just as she had prepared day after day in practice drill at sea. Before the foremast stands the armoured conning tower—exactly like a closed-in jam-pot—designed for the captain’s use; forward of the tower rises the two-storeyed bridge, the upper part of which is the station of the gunnery control officer; upon the mast, some fifty feet up, is fitted a spotting top for another officer. This distribution of executive control may look very pretty and scientific, but Glossop, who had tested it in practice, proposed to fight on a system of his own. If a captain is cooped up in a conning tower, with the restricted vision of a mediæval knight through a vizard, a gunnery lieutenant is perched on the upper bridge by the big range-finder, and another lieutenant is aloft in the spotting top, the difficulties of communication in a small cruiser are added to the inevitable confusion of a fight. So the armoured jam-pot and the crow’s nest aloft were both abandoned, and Glossop placed himself beside his Gunnery Lieutenant Rahilly upon the upper bridge with nothing between their bodies and the enemy’s shot except a frail canvas screen. Accompanying them was a lieutenant in charge of certain instruments. At the back of the bridge—which measured some ten feet by eight—stood upon its pedestal the principal range-finder with a seat at the back for the operator. This concentration of control upon the exposed upper bridge had its risks, as will presently appear, but is made for simplicity and for the rapid working both of the ship and of her guns. Another lieutenant, Geoffrey Hampden, was in charge of the after control station, where also was fitted a range-finder. When a ship prepares for action the most unhappy person on board is the Second in Command—in this instance Lieutenant-Commander John F. Finlayson (now Commander)—who by the rules of the Service is condemned to safe and inglorious, though important duties in the lower conning tower. Here, seeing little or nothing and wrapped like some precious egg in cotton wool, the poor First Lieutenant is preserved from danger so that, if his Chief be killed or disabled, he at least may remain to take over command.
From the upper fore bridge of the Sydney we can see the guns’ crews standing ready behind their curved steel screens and note that as the ship cuts through the long ocean swell the waves break every now and then over the fo’c’sle and drench the gun which stands there. At 9.15 land is sighted some ten miles distant and five minutes later a three-funnelled cruiser, recognised at once as the Emden, is seen running out of the port. Upon the Sydney a bugle blows, and then for twenty minutes all is quiet orderly work at Action Quarters. To the Emden the sudden appearance of the Sydney is a complete surprise. Her destruction party of three officers and forty men are still ashore and must be left behind if their ship is to be given any, the most slender, chance of escape. Captain von Müller recognises the Sydney at once as a much faster and more heavily gunned ship than his own. His one chance is to rush at his unexpected opponent and utilise to the utmost the skill of his highly trained gunners and the speed with which they can work their quick-firing guns. If he can overwhelm the Sydney with a torrent of shell before she can get seriously home upon him he may disable her so that flight will be possible. In rapid and good gunnery, and in a quick bold offensive, may rest safely; there is no other chance. So out he comes, makes straight for the Sydney as hard as he can go and gives her as lively a fifteen minutes as the most greedy of fire-eaters could desire.
When the two cruisers first see one another they are 20,000 yards distant, but as both are closing in the range comes quickly down to 10,500 yards (six land miles). To the astonishment both of the Captain and Gunnery Lieutenant of the Sydney, who are together looking out from the upper fore bridge, von Müller opens fire at this very long range for his small 4.1-inch guns and gets within a hundred yards at his first salvo. It is wonderful shooting. His next is just over and with the third he begins to hit. At the long range the Emden’s shells fall steeply—at an angle of thirty degrees—rarely burst and never ricochet from the sea. They whine overhead in torrents, plop into the sea on all sides, and now and then smash on board. One reaches the upper fore bridge, passes within a foot of Lieutenant Rahilly’s head, strikes the pedestal of the big range-finder, glances off without bursting, cuts off the leg of the operator who is sitting behind, and finishes its career overboard. If that shell had burst Glossop and his Gunnery Lieutenant, together with their colleague at the rate-of-change instrument, must have been killed or seriously wounded and the Second in Command would have been released from his thick steel prison. Not one of them was six feet distant from where the shell struck in their midst. The range-finder is wrecked and its operator killed, but the others are untouched. A few minutes later two, possibly three, shells hit the after control, wound everyone inside, and wipe that control off the effective list.
But meanwhile the officers of the Sydney and their untried but gallant and steady men have not been idle. Their first salvo fired immediately after the Emden opened is much too far, their second is rather wild and ragged, but with the third some hits are made. The Sydney had fortunately just secured her range when the principal range-finder was wrecked and the after control scattered, and Gunnery Lieutenant Rahilly is able to keep it by careful spotting and rate-of-change observations. Glossop, who has the full command given by superior speed, manœuvres so as to keep out to about 8,000 yards, to maintain as nearly constant a rate of change as is possible, and to present the smallest danger space to the enemy. The Emden’s first effort to close in has failed, and now that the Sydney’s 100-pound shells begin to burst well on board of her the Emden’s one chance upon which von Müller has staked everything has disappeared. During the first fifteen minutes the Sydney was hit ten times, but afterwards not at all; the Emden was hit again and again during the long-drawn-out two hours of the hopeless struggle. After twenty minutes the Emden’s forward funnel went and she caught fire aft. Her steering gear was wrecked and she became dependent upon the manipulation of her propellers, and the inevitable falling off in speed to about thirteen knots. During the early critical minutes of the action the Sydney had the Emden upon her port side, but all her casualties were suffered upon the starboard or disengaged side due to the steepness with which the German shells were falling. Once she was hit upon the two-inch side armour over the engine room and the shell, which this time burst, left a barely discernible scratch. Another shell fell at the foot of a starboard gun pedestal in the open space behind the shield, burst and wounded the gun’s crew but left the gun unhurt except for a spattering of a hundred tiny dents. The electric wires were not even cut. It is remarkable that during the whole of the action no electric wires in any part of the Sydney were damaged. As I have told both gun controls of the Sydney were hit during the first few minutes though only the after one was put out of action; the Emden, less fortunate, had both her controls totally destroyed and all the officers and men within them killed.
After the lapse of about three-quarters of an hour the Emden had lost two funnels and the foremast; she was badly on fire aft and amidships, so that at times nothing more than the top of the mainmast could be seen amid the clouds of steam and smoke. Her guns, now occasionally firing, gave out a short yellow flash by which they could be distinguished from the long dark red flames of the Sydney’s bursting lyddite. Once she disappeared so completely that the cry went up from the Sydney that she had sunk, but she appeared again, blazing, almost helpless. Glossop, who had been circling round to port, then drew in to a range of 5,500 yards—which in the absence of the range-finder was wrongly estimated at under 5,000—and determined to try a shot with a torpedo. It was a difficult shot as the torpedo gunner was obliged to set his gyroscope to a definite angle and then wait until the rapidly turning Emden came upon his bearing. But in spite of the difficulties it was very good; the torpedo ran straight for its mark and then stopped short at the distance of 5,000 yards for which it had been set. The torpedo crews, naturally enough, wanted forthwith to let off all their mouldies, just to show the gunners how the business should be done with, but the hard-hearted Glossop forbade. The moment after the one had been fired he swung the ship round to starboard, opened out his range, and resumed the distressful game of gun-pounding. The Emden also went away to starboard for about four miles and then von Müller, finding that his ship was badly pierced under water as well as on fire, put about again and headed for the North Keeling Island, where he ran aground. The Sydney followed, saw that her beaten enemy was irretrievably wrecked, and went away to deal with the Emden’s collier—a captured British ship Buresk—which had hovered about during the action but upon which Glossop had not troubled to fire. The Emden fired no torpedoes in the action, for though von Müller had three left his torpedo flat was put out of business early in the fight.
Though the Emden was beaten and done for, the gallantry and skill with which she had fought could not have been exceeded. She was caught by surprise, and to some extent unprepared, yet within twenty minutes of the Sydney’s appearance upon the sky line von Müller was pouring a continuous rain of shell upon her at over 10,000 yards range and maintaining both his speed of fire and its accuracy until the hundred-pound shots bursting on board of him had smashed up both his controls, knocked down his foremast, and put nine of his ten guns out of action. Even then the one remaining gun continued to fire up to the last. The crew of the Sydney, exposed though many of them were upon the vessel’s open decks—a light cruiser has none of the protection of a battleship—bore themselves as their Anzac fellow-countrymen upon the beaches and hills of Gallipoli. At first they were rather ragged through over-eagerness, but they speedily settled down. The hail of shell which beat upon them was unceasing, but they paid as little heed to it as if they had passed their lives under heavy fire instead of experiencing it for the first time. Upon Glossop and his lieutenants on the upper bridge, and in the transmission room below, was suddenly thrown a new and urgent problem. With the principal range-finder gone and the after-control wrecked in the first few minutes, they were forced to depend upon skilful manœuvring and spotting to give accuracy to their guns. They solved their problem ambulando, as the Navy always does, and showed that they could smash up an opponent by mother wit and sea skill when robbed by the aid of science. It is good to be equipped with all the appliances which modern ingenuity has devised; it is still better to be able at need to dispense with them.
I love to write of the cold fierce energy with which our wonderful centuries-old Navy goes forth to battle, but I love still more to record its kindly solicitude for the worthy opponents whom its energy has smashed up. Once a fight is over it loves to bind up the wounds of its foes, to drink their health in a friendly bottle, and to wish them better luck next time. When he had settled with the collier Buresk, and taken off all those on board of her, Glossop returned to the wreck of the Emden lying there helpless upon the North Keeling Island. The foremast and funnels were gone, the brave ship was a tangle of broken steel fore and aft, but the mainmast still stood and upon it floated the naval ensign of Germany. Until that flag had been struck the Sydney could not send in a boat or deal with the crew as surrendered prisoners. Captain Glossop is the kindliest of men; it went against all his instincts to fire at that wreck upon which the forms of survivors could be seen moving about, but his duty compelled him to force von Müller into submission. For a quarter of an hour he sent messages by International code and Morse flag signals, but the German ensign remained floating aloft. As von Müller would not surrender he must be compelled, and compelled quickly and thoroughly. In order to make sure work the Sydney approached to within 4,000 yards, trained four guns upon the Emden, and then when the aim was steady and certain smashed her from end to end. The destruction must have been frightful, and it is probable that von Müller’s obstinacy cost his crew greater casualties than the whole previous action. These last four shots did their work, the ensign came down, and a white flag of surrender went up. It was now late in the afternoon, the tropical night was approaching, and the Sydney left the Emden to steam to Direction Island some fifteen miles away and to carry succour to the staff of the raided cable and wireless station. Before leaving he sent in a boat and an assurance that he would bring help in the morning.
Although the distance from Direction Island, where the action may be said to have begun, to North Keeling Island, where it ended, is only fifteen miles the courses followed by the fighting vessels were very much longer. They are shown upon the von Müller-Glossop plan, printed on page [193]. The Emden was upon the inside and the Sydney—whose greatly superior speed gave her complete mastery of manœuvre—was upon the outside. The Emden’s course works out at approximately thirty-five miles and the Sydney’s at fifty miles. The officers and men who are fighting a ship stand, as it were, in the midst of a brilliantly lighted stage and may receive more than their due in applause if one overlooks the sweating engineers, artificers, and stokers who, hidden far below, make possible the exploits of the stars. At no moment during the whole action, though ventilating fans might stop and minor pipes be cut, did the engines fail to give Glossop the speed for which he asked. His success and his very slight losses—four men killed and sixteen wounded—sprang entirely from his speed, which, when required, exceeded the twenty-five knots for which his engines were designed. When, therefore, we think of Glossop and Rahilly, who from that exposed upper bridge were manœuvring the ship and directing the guns, we must not forget Engineer Lieutenant-Commander Coleman and his half-naked men down below, who throughout that broiling day in the tropics nursed those engines and toiled at those fires which brought the guns to fire upon the enemy.
True to his promise Glossop brought the Sydney back to the Emden at eleven o’clock on the morning of November 10th, having borrowed a doctor and two assistants from Direction Island, and then began the long task—which the Navy loves only less than actual battle—of rescue and care for the sufferers by its prowess. North Keeling Island is an irregular strip of rock, boulders and sand almost entirely surrounding a large lagoon. It is studded with cocoanut palms and infested with red land-crabs. An unattractive spot. The Emden was aground upon the weatherside and the long rollers running past her stern broke into surf before the mainmast. Lieutenant R. C. Garsia, going out to her in one of the Sydney’s boats, was hauled by the Germans upon her quarter-deck, where he found Captain von Müller, whose personal luck had held to the last, for he was unwounded. Von Müller readily gave his parole to be amenable to the Sydney’s discipline if the surviving Germans were transshipped. The Emden was in a frightful state. She was burned out aft, her decks were piled with the wreck of three funnels and the foremast, and within her small space of 3,500 tons, seven officers and 115 men had been killed by high-explosive shell and splinters. Her condition may be suggested by the experience of a warrant officer of the Sydney who, after gravely soaking in her horrors, retailed them in detail to his messmates. For two days thereafter the warrant officers’ mess in the Sydney lost their appetites for meat: one need say no more! The unwounded and slightly wounded men were first transferred to the boats of the Sydney and Buresk, but for the seriously wounded Neil-Robertson stretchers had to be used so that they might be lowered over the side into boats. This had to be done during the brief lulls between the rollers. By five o’clock the Emden was cleared of men and Captain von Müller went on board the Sydney, which made at once for the only possible landing place on the island in order to take off some Germans who had got ashore. To the surprise of everyone it was then discovered that several wounded men, including a doctor, had managed to reach the shore and were somewhere among the scrub and rocks. Night was fast coming on, the wounded ashore were without food and drink—except what could be obtained from cocoanuts—and were cut off from all assistance except that which the Sydney could supply. The story of how young Lieutenant Garsia drove in through the surf after dark—at the imminent hazard of his whaler and her crew—hunted for hours after those elusive Germans, was more than once hopelessly “bushed,” and finally came out at the original landing place, is a pretty example of the Navy’s readiness to spend ease and risk life for the benefit of its defeated enemies. In the morning the rescue party of English sailors and unwounded Germans, supplied with cocoanuts and an improvised stretcher made of bottom boards and boathooks, at last discovered the wounded party, which had not left the narrow neck of land opposite the stranded Emden. Lieutenant Schal of the Emden, who was with them, eagerly seized upon the cocoanuts and cut them open for the wounded, who had been crying for water all night and for whom he had not been able to find more than one nut. The wounded German doctor had gone mad the previous afternoon, insisted upon drinking deeply of salt water, and so died. The four wounded men who remained alive were laboriously transferred to the Sydney and the dead were covered up with sand and boulders. “A species of red land-crab with which the ground is infested made this the least one could do.” The reports of Navy men may seem to lack grace, but they have the supreme merit of vivid simplicity. That short sentence, which I have quoted, makes us realise that waterless crab-haunted night of German suffering more vividly than a column of fine writing.
THE “SYDNEY-EMDEN” ACTION.
All was over, and the packed Sydney headed away for her 1,600-mile voyage to Colombo. To her company of about 400 she had added 11 German officers and 200 men, of whom 3 officers and 53 men were wounded. The worst cases were laid upon her fo’c’sle and quarter-deck, the rest huddled in where they could. It was a trying voyage, but happily the weather was fine and windless, the ship as steady as is possible in the Indian Ocean, and the Germans well behaved; von Müller and Glossop, the conquered and conqueror, the guest and the host, became friendly and mutually respecting during those days in the Sydney. I like to think of those two, in the captain’s cabin, putting their heads together over sheets of paper and at last evolving the plan of the Sydney-Emden action which is printed here. Von Müller did the greater part of it, for, as Glossop remarked, “he had the most leisure.” A cruiser skipper with 400 of his own men on board and 200 prisoners, is not likely to lack for jobs. To the von Müller-Glossop plan I have added a few explanatory words, but otherwise it is as finally approved by those who knew most about it.
Some single-ship actions remain more persistently in the public memory and in the history books than battles of far greater consequence. They are easy to describe and easy to understand. One immortal action is that of the Shannon and the Chesapeake; another is that of the Sydney and the Emden. It was planned wholly by the Fates which rule the Luck of the Navy, it was fought cleanly and fairly and skilfully on both sides, and the faster, more powerful ship won. I like to picture to myself the Sydney heading for Colombo, bearing upon her crowded decks the captives of her bow and spear, her guns and her engines, not vaingloriously triumphant, but humbly thankful to the God of Battles. To her officers and crew their late opponents were now guests who could discuss with them, the one with the other, the incidents of the short fierce fight dispassionately as members of the same profession, though serving under different flags, just as Glossop and von Müller discussed them in the after cabin under the quarter-deck when they bent their heads over their collaborated plan.