We and another ship in our squadron came across two German cruisers. We routed one and started on the second, but battle cruisers soon finished her off. Another then appeared, and after we had plunked two broadsides into her she slid off in flames.
Every man did his bit, and there was a continuous stream of jokes. We penciled on the projectiles, "Love from England," "One for the Kaiser," and other such messages. The sight of sinking German ships was gloriously terrible, funnels and masts lying about in all directions, and amidships a huge furnace, the burning steel looking like a big ball of sulphur. There was not the slightest sign of fear, from the youngest to the oldest man aboard.
ENGLAND'S SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR, FIELD MARSHAL EARL KITCHENER.
(From the Painting by Angelo.)
GEN. VON BISSING,
Recently Made Military Governor of Belgium to Succeed Field Marshal von der Goltz.
(Photo from Ruschin.)
But it remained for a naval Lieutenant, whose name is not given, to describe, in a letter to a friend, one of the most remarkable incidents of the war, an incident which might have occurred in the imagination of Jules Verne or of H.G. Wells in his youth. He wrote:
The Defender having sunk an enemy, lowered a whaler to pick up her swimming survivors; before the whaler got back an enemy's cruiser came up and chased the Defender, and thus she abandoned her whaler. Imagine their feelings—alone in an open boat without food, twenty-five miles from the nearest land, and that land the enemy's fortress, with nothing but fog and foes around them. Suddenly a swirl alongside and up, if you please, pops his Britannic Majesty's submarine E-4, opens his conning tower, takes them all on board, shuts up again, dives, and brings them home, 250 miles!