[THE STORY OF THE SYDNEY]
[I. The Signalman's Tale]
It may be that it is because, since the outbreak of the war, the British sailor has constantly been riding the crest of the wave of great events, that he is so prone to regard even the most dramatic and historic actions in which he has chanced to figure as little or nothing removed from the ordinary run of his existence, as only a slightly different screening of the regular grist of the mill of his daily service. Thus, I once heard a young officer describing a night destroyer action in which he had played a notable part as having been "like a hot game of rugger, only not quite so dirty," and another assert that his most vivid recollection of a day in which he had performed a deed of personal daring that had carried his name to the end of the civilised world was of how "jolly good" his dinner tasted that night.
It was this attitude which was largely responsible for the fact that, although there were upwards of the three or four score officers and men who had taken part in the sinking of the Emden still in her, I spent several days in the Sydney before I found any one who appeared to consider that stirring action as anything other than the mustiest of ancient history, and, as such, of no conceivable interest at a time when every thought was centred upon the vital present and the pregnant future rather than upon the irrevocably buried past. And in the end it was more by luck than deliberate design that the two actors in the historic drama which I had set myself the task of learning something of at the first hand came to tell me of the parts they had played. That they were the two who had had what were perhaps more comprehensive opportunities for observation than any others was my sheer good fortune.
It was toward midnight of a day of light-cruiser "exercises" that I first stumbled upon the trail which I had hitherto sought vainly to uncover. With all hands at "Night Defence" stations and steaming at half speed through the almost impenetrable blackness, we were groping blindly for an uncertainly located target in an endeavour to reproduce the conditions under which enemy destroyers might be expected to be encountered in the darkness. Suddenly the sharp bang of a small calibre gun sounded, followed by the shriek of a speeding projectile, and presently the glare of a down-floating star-shell shed its golden-grey radiance over the misty surface of the sea. Instantly the unleashed searchlight beams leapt to a distant little patch of rectangular canvas gliding along through the luminous fog on our port beam, and the fraction of a second later—following the red flame-stabs and the thunderous crashes of a broadside—it disappeared in the midst of ghostly green-white geysers of tossing spray. It was while—flash-blinded and gun-deafened—I fumbled about on the deck of the signal bridge for the "ear-defender" that the nervous jerk of my head had flirted loose, that I heard a quiet voice speaking in the darkness beside me as a hard hand brushed mine in the search.
"You'll find, sir, that cotton wool's a good sight better than one of them patent ear protectors," it said. "I suppose it was one of them 'Mallet-Armours' that you plug in. I had a pair of that kind when we went after the Emden, and they kicked out just like yours did at the first salvo. You can bet I was deaf as a toad before we finished polishing her off.
"I was watching the whole of that show, sir, from just where you're standing now," the voice went on after the lost "defender" had been found and replaced, "and it was just behind you that the shell that sheared off our range-finder and killed the range-taker passed on through the screen and into the sea. It was either that shell or the fragment of another (I could never quite make sure which) that cut off and carried away one half of a pair of prism glasses hanging there, leaving the other just as good as ever. We still have the remnant in our mess as a memento."
Flash and roar and that spectral upheaving of foam-fountains in the converging rays of the searchlights crowded most other things out of the next hour or two, and it was only when the night-firing was over and we were headed back for our anchorage in the cold light of the early dawn that I discovered that it was a young signalman who had been standing watch beside me during the exercises. Keen and alert he looked in spite of the sleepless night behind him, and it was easy to believe him when he told me that his had been the honour of being the first man in the Sydney to sight the "strange ship" which subsequently turned out to be the long-sought-for Emden.
"It was just the luck of my chancing to be on watch with a good pair of glasses," he said modestly; "but that was by no means the limit of my luck in connexion with the Emden show. When we went to 'Action Stations,' I was ordered to come up here and do nothing but keep an eye on the collier that had been standing-by the Emden at first, but which got away under full steam just as soon as it was plain we were going to give her 'whats for.' I carried out orders all right as far as keeping an eye on the collier was concerned, but my other eye, and my mind, were on the Emden ring of the circus. I don't really suppose there was another man on the Sydney who had as little to do, and therefore as much time to see what was going on, as I did. But that wasn't the end of my luck, for I was one of the party that went ashore the next morning to round up the Huns that had landed on Direction Island, and then, after that, I was in the first boat that went to bring off prisoners from the Emden. So you see I had a fairly good-all-round kind of a 'look see.' My training as a signalman made it natural for me to jot down things as I saw them, and I think that I still have a page of memorandum where I made notes during the fight of what time some of the things happened. If you'd like to see it, sir——"
Then I knew that I at last had the sort of story I had been looking for in prospect, and before going below for my cup of ship's cocoa as a preliminary to turning in I had arranged for a yarn in the first Dog Watch that evening. It was indeed good luck to hear the account of the historic action from one who, besides having had such exceptional opportunities for seeing the various phases of it, also appeared to be well educated and a trained observer.