On the 3d of September the British gunboat Speedy struck a mine in the North Sea and went down.  It was only two days later that the light cruiser Pathfinder was made the true target of a torpedo fired by a German submarine off the British eastern coast, and she, too, went to the bottom.  But the British immediately retaliated, for the submarine E-9 sighted the German light cruiser Hela weathering a bad storm on September 13 between Helgoland and the Frisian coast.  A torpedo was launched and found its mark, and the Hela joined the Koeln and Mainz.  Up to this point the results of attrition were even, but the Germans scored heavily during the following week.

On September 22 the three slow British cruisers Cressy, Hogue, and Aboukir were patrolling the waters off the Dutch coast, unaccompanied by small craft of any kind, when suddenly, at half past six in the morning, the Aboukir crumpled and sank, the victim of another submarine attack.  But the commander of the Hogue thought she had been sunk by hitting a mine, and innocently approached the spot of the disaster to rescue such of the crew of the Aboukir as were afloat.  The work of mercy was never completed, for the Hogue itself was hit by two torpedoes in the next few moments, and she joined her sister ship.  The commander of the Cressy, failing to take a lesson from what he had witnessed, now approached, and his ship was also hit by two torpedoes, making the third victim of the German policy of attrition within an hour, and Captain Lieutenant von Weddigen, commander of the U-9, which had done this work, immediately became a German hero.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXIV

BATTLES ON THREE SEAS

So stood the score in the naval warfare in the North Sea at the end of the second month of the Great War.  But while these events were taking place in the waters of Europe, others of equal import had been taking place in the waters of Asia.  On August 23, 1914, Japan declared war on Germany and immediately set about scouring the East for German craft of all kinds.

Japan brought to the naval strength of the Allied powers no mean unit.  Hers was the only navy in the world which had seen the ultramodern battleships in action; the Russian navy which had had the same experience was no more.  Eight of her first-class battleships were, at the time of her entrance into the Great War, veterans of the war with Russia.  The Fugi, Asahi, Kikasa, and Shikishima had gone into the former war as Japanese ships, and the remaining four had gone into it as Russian ships, but had been captured by the Japanese.  These were the Hizen, Sagami, Suwo, and Iwami.  Their value was not great, for the Fugi had been launched as far back as 1896.  Nevertheless