Stories of the Ships

by Lewis R. Freeman

"I've never had any patience, sir, with all that has been said and written about Von Müller being a sportsman. That reputation was gained wholly through the sportsmanship of the Sydney's officers who, because they'd given the Emden a licking in a fair give-and-take fight, didn't think it was quite the proper thing to speak ill of her captain, even if it was the truth.

"And one other thing, sir, while I'm speaking of this incident. Every time I hear any one talk about negotiating with the Huns I tell them, that story of Von Müller's bluff about his flag. He pretended not to understand our signals just because it served his purpose not to understand them. But when our guns began to talk he had no difficulty in translating their language. Well, sir, the Huns are all alike. They never will understand any language but that of guns until their bully streak is knocked out of them with guns. It's a dirty job, sir, but that's the only way to finish it."

The lad's fine blue eyes were flashing, and his face red with excitement, and he took out a handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his brow before resuming his narrative.

"It was getting too late in the day to start rescue work on the Emden," he went on more quietly, "and so we did the best we could for her for the present by sending in a boat, manned by prisoners from the Buresk, with food and water, and a message to the effect that we would return early in the morning. Then we put out to sea, for we thought we still had to reckon with the Königsberg turning up at any moment, and didn't want her to surprise us as we had surprised the Emden.

"Crossing the track of the battle, we sighted and picked up three Hun seamen, who claimed to have been blown from the deck of the Emden by the explosion of one of our shells, none of them much the worse for their experience. Indeed, the fact that they were not in worse shape rather led us to suspect that they had jumped overboard to avoid the explosion of our shell rather than as a direct consequence of an explosion.

"I don't exactly remember whether it was one of these chaps, or one of the English-speaking prisoners from the Buresk, who, by blurting out something about how lucky were his mates who got ashore before the fight started, gave us our first inkling that the Emden had sent a landing party to Direction Island to destroy the Wireless station. There were three officers and forty men, he told us, and this we later learned to be the truth.

"What he did not tell us—quite possibly because he did not know of it—was the fact that, besides being armed with rifles, this party also carried three machine guns. It was only by chance that our failure to reckon with this latter fact did not get us into serious trouble. Indeed, I think it is more than likely that I would not be here talking to you now but for the happy fact that the little schooner Ayesha lying in Direction Harbour offered a chance of escape too promising for the officer in command of the party to resist.

"The rounding up of this lot, of course, had the call over everything else, and at first the Captain appeared to be considering putting back to Direction at once and landing in the night. Lucky, indeed, it was for us that we didn't, for that—as we learned later from the Wireless-station people—was just what the Germans had expected and prepared for. Had we gone in in the night we would have found the only landing-place covered by machine guns, and we would probably have stepped off into an ambush that would have wiped the lot of us out in a minute or two. Landing at dawn, however, we found our birds flown, and I, for one, was jolly glad to hear it after they had told us what a resolute fellow the German officer leading the party was, and how determined he had been to make a resistance. This chap, by the way, was Lieut. Mucke, who later found his way back to Germany by way of Turkey. When I read, three or four months later, of how well he had used those same machine guns he had mounted to receive us against the Arabs in fighting his way up the coast of the Red Sea, I realised the extent to which we had been asking for trouble in landing armed only as we were. Not expecting any resistance, we had no machine guns, and I think there were several others who, like myself, had been given only revolvers. Since the Sydney's lucky star was in the ascendant for the whole show, however, no harm came of it.