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.
When we 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 the Emden, and the splendid chivalry and heroism of the Emden's commander. 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 the Alabama. 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; the Emden parted 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 the Emden, 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.