vessel may lie for a time with little chance of
detection, and the _Emden's_ speed would have enabled her to reach some
such refuge very quickly.

The last act in the drama of the _Emden_ took place off the
Cocos-Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean....

It was to this desolate spot in the Indian Ocean that Captain Von Muller
brought his ship, in the early days of November; with him was one of his
captures, the _Buresk_, which was full of coal. The object of this visit
of the _Emden_ was the destruction of the important wireless station
that is established on the islands, and on the morning of November 9th,
the officials were unpleasantly surprised by the landing of an armed
boat's crew from a cruiser, which had come to an anchor, and which they
first imagined to be H.M.S. _Minotaur_. They were quickly undeceived by
the German officer in charge of the party, who informed them that their
operations from the wireless station had greatly hampered the movements
of the cruiser. One detachment of the Germans then rounded up all the
officials and their servants, placing them under a strict guard, while a
second party prepared to blow up the wireless installation and to smash
the instrument rooms of the cable office. This they did most thoroughly,
but the officials seem to have kept their heads in the most praiseworthy
manner, as, just as soon as they discovered that the enemy was upon
them, they sent out distress signals by wireless, and warned adjacent
stations by cable that they were about to be smashed up.

The landing party now blew up the wireless mast and the store in which
spare cable and cable gear was kept; a third explosion wrecked the
wireless hut, and completed the destruction of the installation. The
dynamo rooms and workshops were destroyed with flogging hammers and
axes, everything breakable, including clocks, being smashed to atoms.
Their next proceeding was to cut the shore ends of the submarine cables,
and this was done in full view of the prisoners. There are three cables
from the Cocos--to Perth, to Batavia, and to Rodriguez--and the pleasure
of the prisoners can be imagined when they saw the Germans spend much
hard labour in destroying a dummy cable. Eventually the Perth cable and
the dummy were cut, the others being left, presumably because the
Germans did not know that they existed.

The party from the _Emden_ had landed at 7.30 a.m., and by 9.20 their
mission of destruction was accomplished. At this t