"Two of the crews of starboard guns had been badly knocked about by the explosion of shells striking the deck at the end of their long high-angle flight. Among these was the chap I had seen apparently cooling his feet in a water-bucket. As a matter of fact, it was no foot at all he was dabbling, but only a maimed stump. The foot had been carried away by a shell fragment, and the brave chap, not wanting to be put on the shelf by going down to the Surgeon, had—all on his own—scooped up a canvas bucket full of salt water and was soaking his stump in it in an endeavour to stop the flow of blood. He was biting through his lip with the smart of the brine on the raw flesh as I came up, but as I turned and looked back from the ladder leading up to the bridge I saw him hobble painfully across the deck and climb back into his sight-setter's seat behind his gun. I have forgotten now whether it was another wound, or further loss of blood from this one, which finally bowled him over and put him out of the fight he wanted so much to see through to a finish.
"These I have mentioned were the several shots from the Emden which were responsible for our total casualties of four killed and eleven wounded. Of other hits, one took a big bite out of the mainmast, but not quite enough to bring it down. Another scooped a neat hollow out of the shield of the foremost starboard gun and bounced off into the sea, leaving two or three of the crew who had been in close contact with the shield half paralysed for a few moments from the sharp shock.
"Still another ploughed through a grating, two bulkheads and the Commander's cabin, and finally nipped into the sea, all without exploding. Next to the knocking out of the range-finders, perhaps our most troublesome injury was from a shell-hole in the fo'c'sle deck, through which the water from the big bow wave the Sydney was throwing up entered and flooded the Boys' Mess deck. By means of the water-tight doors we managed to confine the flooding to that flat only.
"There is no doubt that for the first fifteen or twenty minutes of the fight the Emden had the best of it. This was probably due mainly to her luck in putting both our range-finders out of action in what were practically her opening shots.
"It took her three ranging shots to find us, though, and, once we started, we did the same with her. Our first salvo fell beyond her, the next both short and wide, but two or three shells from the third found their mark. And we were no less lucky than the Emden with our first hits, for where she knocked out our gunnery control by disabling our range-finders, we did the same to her by shooting away the voice-pipes of her conning tower, from which Captain Von Müller directed the action.
"Just as soon as we started hitting the Emden she stopped hitting us. In fact, I don't think from then on to the end she dropped another shell aboard us. Going aft to see if a small cordite fire had been put out, I noticed the crew of one of the port guns—'p. 3,' I think it was, which was not in a position to train at that moment—amusing themselves by chalking messages on their shells. I don't remember all of them, as there was a good deal of a variety. One shell had 'Emden' on it, to make sure it would go to the right 'address,' I suppose. Another had 'Cheerio' and 'Good Luck' on it, and another simply 'Kaiser.' They were a proper lot of 'don't-give-a-hangs,' that crew.
"With the Emden's shell no longer bursting about our ears, I had a better chance to watch the effect of our fire upon her. I still have the page of memorandum on which I noted the time that a few things happened during the next hour. I will run through it so you can see just the way the show went. At ten o'clock the range was about 8000 yards, a distance which the Captain evidently reckoned our guns would do the most harm to the Emden, and hers the least to us. She was trying to close this for some time, but the Sydney was using her superior speed to keep her right there, so that, in a way, she was chasing us at this stage of the game.
"The effect of our fire upon the Emden first began to show just after ten, and at 10.4 I made a note that her fore funnel had disappeared. At 10.30 our lyddite caused a big explosion at the foot of her mainmast, making a fire which never was entirely got under control. At 10.34 her foremast, and with it the fore-control, collapsed under a hard hit and disappeared over the far side. At 10.41 a heavy salvo struck her amidships, sending the second funnel after the first, and starting a fierce fire in the engine-room. At 11.8 the third funnel went the way of the other two, and when I looked up from writing that down I saw that the fore-bridge had done the disappearing act.
"Almost immediately the Emden altered course and headed straight for the beach of North Keeling Island, which she had been rapidly nearing during the last hour. The Sydney fired her last salvo at 11.15, and then, the Captain seeing that the enemy was securely aground, turned away and started in hot pursuit of the collier.