ounds of
international law--the humane sea-usages that spared women and children
and stricken wounded--the decivilized German set up the banners of a
stark piracy, an ocean anarchy, to whose lieutenants the sea-wolves of
an earlier age were but feeble enervated weaklings.

Piracy, gloried in and undisguised, faced us. Well and definite! We had
known piracy in the long years of our sea-history: we had dealt with
their trade to a full settlement at yard-arm or gallows. The course of
our seafaring was not to be arrested by even the deep roots and deadly
poison of this not unknown sea-growth: we had scaled the foul barnacles
and cut the rank weeds before in the course of sea-development. If our
ways had become peaceful in the long years of unchallenged trading, our
habits were never less than combatant throughout a life of struggle with
storm and tide. Not while we had a ship and a man to the helm would we
be driven from the sea; our hard-won heritage was not to be delivered
under threat or operation of even the most surpassing frightfulness.
Jealousy for our seafaring, for our name as sailors, forbade that we
should skulk in harbour or linger behind the nets and booms. Our work,
our livelihood, our proud sea-trade, our honour was on the open sea. Our
pride was this--that, in our action, we would be followed by the
seafarers of the world. It was for no idle vaunt we boasted our
supremacy at sea. If we could take first place of the world's seamen in
time of peace, our station was to lead in war. We put out to sea--the
neutrals followed. Had we held to port, German orders would have halted
the sea-traffic of the world. With no shield but our seamanship, no
weapon but the keenness of our eyes, no power of defence or assault
other than the swing of a ready helm, we met the pirates on the sea,
with little pretension in victory and no whining in defeat.

Challenged to stand and submit, the _Vosges_ answered with a cant of the
helm and hoist of her flag, and stood on her way under a merciless hail
of shot. Unarmed, outsped, there was little prospect of escape--only, in
an obstinate sea-pride, lay acceptance of the challenge. With decks
littered by wreckage and wounded, bridge swept by shrapnel, water making
through her torn hull, there was no thought to lay-to and droop the flag
in surrender. When, at length, the ensign was shot away, there were men
enough to hoist another. In hours their agony was measured, until, in
despair of