"I'm sorry I couldn't find one of the Emden's cat-o'-nine-tails," were my visitor's first words when he appeared at the door of the Captain's sea-cabin where I awaited him after tea; "but the fact is that the most of us have taken the best of our little remembrances of that show ashore for safe-keeping, and those 'dusters' were the things we prized more than anything else as showing the Hun up for the bully he really is.
"What did they use them for? Well, if you'd believe their story, it was to dust their togs after coaling ship. We brought back about twenty of them, with the rest of the salvage, and at first we were rather inclined to take it for straight when they said they used them for dusters. Then one of our prisoners got hold of more than his share of our beer one night, and became drunk and truthful at the same time. He confessed that they had been used on the men time and time again, just in ordinary routine, to keep them up to the mark on discipline. He also said that they had been used freely during the fight with the Sydney, and that when the lashes failed to give sufficient 'encouragement,' something more drastic was used. But I'll tell you about that in its place. But you see what real prizes those 'cats' were, sir, in the way of holding the Hun up to the light so you could see through him, so to speak. My 'cat' was a brand new one, but the most of the lot were black and stiff with blood.
"We'd been rather playing at war up to the time we fought the Emden," he went on, "having spent most of the opening months purifying the Marshalls, Carolines, New Britain, and New Guinea by cleaning the Huns out of them. There had been a few skirmishes ashore, but nothing at all at sea, nor did the prospects of anything of the kind seem any better in early November than they had been right along up to then. We missed our big fight when, with the Australia, Melbourne, and the French cruiser, Montcalm, we came within twenty-four hours of connecting with Von Spee's squadron when they swept through the South Pacific on their way to South American waters. With that gone, there didn't seem much to look forward to until we were sent to the North Sea, and we were rather hoping, when we set out from Australia with a convoy in the first week of November, that we might keep going right on to Europe.
"We knew, of course, that the Emden was still in business, but we also knew that any one ship had about as much chance of finding her in the Indian Ocean as you have of finding the finger-ring you lose in the coal bunkers. Certainly we didn't expect that going out in force with a convoy would be the means of bringing her to the end of her tether.
"The first and only word we had that a raider was in our vicinity was in the form of a broken message from the Cocos station, which never got further than 'Strange cruiser is at entrance of harbour——.' At that point the 'strange cruiser' managed to work an effective 'jam,' and it was not long before the Cocos call ceased entirely. Although we did not learn it till a couple of days later, this was caused by the destruction of the station by a landing party from the Emden under Lieut. Mucke.
"The escorting warships were the Sydney, her sister, the Melbourne, and a Japanese cruiser, larger and with bigger guns, but slower than we. The Jap, without waiting for orders from the Captain of the Melbourne, who was the senior officer of the convoy, dashed off at once, and was only recalled with difficulty. A message which the Japanese captain sent to account for his break was most amusing, 'We do not trust the skipper ship Emden,' it read, 'he is one tricky fellow, and must be watched.'
"As the job was one for a fast light cruiser, the choice was between the Sydney and Melbourne, and it was because the skipper of the Melbourne, who was the senior officer, did not feel that he had authority to leave the convoy that the Sydney had the call. We worked up to top speed quickly, and were soon tearing through the water headed for Cocos Island at over twenty-six knots an hour.
"I don't remember that there was any especial excitement in the Sydney that morning. We had dashed off on too many wild-goose chases already to feel that there was very much of a chance of finding our bird this time. In fact, I don't remember being as nervous at any stage of this Emden show as in a night attack we made upon Rabaul, in New Britain, where never a shot was fired. There had been some 'Telefunken' messages in the air during the night (undecipherable, of course), but that was only to be expected. Every one seemed even more inclined to crack jokes than usual, and that is saying a good deal. I remember especially that some of the officers were making very merry over the fact that Lieut. G—— prepared for action by going to the barber and having his hair cut, something that he didn't do very often.