Brown on Resolution by C.S. Forester — Read

But while Brown was crawling up the steep side of Resolution, and while he was asleep on the projecting saddle of rock, many things had happened. Tremendous news had reached Ziethen from the wireless stations on the American mainland; the whole ether of the Eastern Pacific had been in a chattering turmoil, for von Spee had struck his first blow upon the ring of enemies which had closed in upon him. Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock had encountered him, with two weak armoured cruisers against two powerful ones. He could have refused battle; he could have fallen back on a slow battleship which was wallowing along after him two hundred miles away, but he had refused to lose touch with an enemy who had already proved so elusive. He had gone boldly into action, hoping to do von Spee enough damage to cripple him, but he had not been so fortunate as had been Charybdis in her battle with Ziethen. Good Hope and Monmouth had sunk with all hands under the guns of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and von Spee was now for a brief space master of all the Southern Pacific coast. The nitrate ships, vital to the manufacture of British explosives, were cowering in Chile ports while von Spee, with all the prestige of victory, was lording it down the coast and an exasperated Admiralty in London was hurriedly searching for the wherewithal to close the gap which von Spee had hewn in the ring they had flung round him. In the last desperate matter of national life or death von Spee's victory was unimportant -- what were two obsolete armoured cruisers to a Navy which could put thirty Dreadnoughts into line? -- but to the life of a Cabinet it was supremely important. With Emden still loose in the Indian Ocean sinking ships every day, with Ziethen's whereabouts unknown, so that at any moment a fresh series of depredations might clamour for public attention, and with von Spee triumphant in the Pacific, the Cabinet's prestige might well be so shaken as to ensure its fall; and the results of such an overturn were incalculable. Well was it, indeed, that Ziethen in her damaged condition had not dared to let loose her wireless and announce the destruction of Charybdis. Once let her repair herself so that she could move about and evade pursuit, and she would be emboldened to proclaim her victory; the streets of London would be full of posters: "Another Naval Disaster in the Pacific," and the Cabinet might come crashing down. That is what Captain von Lutz realized as he read the stream of wireless messages, and it was visualizations of this sort which fired him with impatience as he supervised the heeling of the ship and hastened below to inspect the achievements of the ship's smith and artificers who were preparing the plates which were to close the yawning hole in Ziethen's side. Not a moment was to be lost, although in all conscience Kapitan zur See von Lutz could see no cause for delay. Twelve hours from dawn would see those plates in position, Ziethen out once more in the Pacific, blazoning the destruction of Charybdis to all the world, and privately informing the German secret agent in Peru of her need for coal and of the rendezvous whither a collier should be sent.

Even the news that the captured English sailor had escaped and taken a rifle with him did not disturb Captain von Lutz's state of pleased anticipation; the escape of the sailor could do no harm -- von Lutz wondered why the sailor had bothered to arm himself seeing that they would not trouble to pursue him -- and the Captain contented himself with putting into prison the kindly sickbay steward and the marine sentry of the upper deck, for purely disciplinary reasons.