The Morning Post of Thursday published a vigorous account of
the naval action by an officer who took part in it. It is well worth reading, but we have room to quote only a few lines. At the end of his narrative the writer says :---
" That was all. Remains only little details, only one of which will I tell you. The most romantic, dramatic, and piquant episode that modern war can ever show. The 'Defender,' having sunk an enemy, lowered a whaler to pick np 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 p lease, pops his Britannic Majesty's submarine Et,' opens his conning tower, takes them all on board, shuts up again, dives, and brings them home two hundred and fifty miles ! Is not that magnificent? No novel would dare face the critics with an episode like that in it, except, perhaps, Jules Verne; and all true!"
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