A few minutes before 8 o’clock all was ready.  Two bluejackets and a naval Lieutenant stood with the flag, awaiting the signal.  The first gun of the royal salute from the Psyche boomed out across the bay.  Then slowly, to the booming of twenty-one guns, the flag was hoisted to the summit of the staff, the officers, with drawn swords, silently watching it go up.  With the sound of the last gun it reached the top of the flagstaff [Transcriber:  original ‘fliagstaff’] and fluttered out in the southeast trade wind above the tall palms of Upolo.

There was a sharp order from the officer commanding the expedition, and the troops came to the royal salute.  The national anthem—­never more fervently sung—­and three rousing cheers for King George followed.

Then came the reading of the proclamation by Col.  Logan, the troops formed up again, and, to the music of the, band of the Fifth Regiment, marched back to quarters.

How the Cressy Sank

By Edgar Rowan of The London Daily Chronicle.

MUIDEN, Holland, Sept. 23.—­(Dispatch to The London Daily Chronicle.)—­When the history of this war comes to be written we shall put no black borders, as men without pride or hope, around the story of the loss of the cruisers Aboukir, Cressy, and Hogue.  We shall write it in letters of gold, for the plain, unvarnished tale of those last moments, when the cruisers went down, helpless before a hidden foe, ranks among the countless deeds of quiet, unseen, unconscious heroism that make up the navy’s splendid pages.

It is easy to learn all that happened, for the officers want chiefly to tell how splendidly brave the men were, and the men pay a like tribute to the officers.  The following appears to be a main outline of the disaster: 

The three cruisers had for some time been patrolling the North Sea.  Soon after 6 o’clock Tuesday morning—­there is disagreement as to the exact time—­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 stokehole just forward of amidship and, judging by the speed with which the cruiser sank, tore the bottom open.

Almost immediately the doomed cruiser began to settle.  Except for the watch on deck, most of her crew, were asleep, wearied by constant vigil in bad weather, but in perfect order officers and men rushed to quarters.  Quickfirers were manned in the hope of a dying shot at a submarine, but there was not a glimpse of one.  Of the few boats carried when cleared for action, two were smashed in recent gales and another was wrecked by the explosion.

The Aboukir’s sister cruisers, each more than a mile away, saw and heard the explosion.  They thought the Aboukir had been struck by a mine.  They closed in and lowered boats.  This sealed their own fate, for while they were standing by to rescue survivors, first the Hogue and then the Cressy was torpedoed.