“Scarcely, however, had we started when, from out of the mist and across our front, in furious pursuit came the first cruiser squadron of the town class, the Birmingham, and each unit a match for three like the Mainz, which was soon sunk.  As we looked and reduced speed they opened fire, and the clear bang-bang of their guns was just like a cooling drink.

“To see a real big four-funneler spouting flame, which flame denoted shells starting, and those shells not at us but for us, was the most cheerful thing possible.  Once we were in safety, I hated it.  We had just been having our own imaginations stimulated on the subject of shells striking.

“Now, a few minutes later, to see another ship not three miles away, reduced to a piteous mass of unrecognizability, wreathed in black fumes from which flared out angry gusts of fire like Vesuvius in eruption, as an unending stream of hundred-pound shells burst on board it, just pointed the moral and showed us what might have been.

“The Mainz was immensely gallant.  The last I saw of it it was absolutely wrecked.  It was a fuming inferno.  But it had one gun forward and one aft still spitting forth fury and defiance like a wild cat.

“Then we went west, while they went east.  Just a bit later we heard the thunder of the enemy’s guns for a space.  Then fell silence, and we knew that was all.

A MARVELOUS RESCUE

“The most romantic, dramatic, and piquant episode that modern war can ever show came next.  The Defender, having sunk an enemy, lowered a whaler to pick up its swimming survivors.  Before the whaler got back, an enemy’s cruiser came up and chased the Defender, which thus had to abandon its small boat.

“Imagine their feelings, alone in an open boat without food, twenty-five miles from the nearest land, and that land an enemy’s fortress, with nothing but fog and foes around them, and then suddenly a swirl alongside, and up, if you please, hops His Britannic Majesty’s submarine E-4, opens its conning tower, takes them all on board, shuts up again, dives and brings them home, 250 miles.”

THREE BRITISH CRUISERS SUNK

On Tuesday morning, September 22, the British cruisers Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue were torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine in the North Sea.  Each of the vessels carried a crew of about 650 men, and the total of the death roll was about 1,400.

The three cruisers had for some time been patrolling the North Sea.  Soon after 6 o’clock in the morning the Aboukir suddenly felt a shock on the port side.  A dull explosion was heard and a column of water was thrown up mast high.  The explosion wrecked the stokehold just forward of amidships:  and tore the bottom open.

Almost immediately the doomed cruiser began to settle.  Except for the watch on deck, most of the crew were asleep, wearied by the constant vigil in bad weather, but in perfect order the officers and men rushed to quarters.  The quick-firers were manned in the hope of a dying shot at the submarine, but there was not a glimpse of one.