ad stopped the mail steamer _Galician_. The greater speed
of the German vessel was of no advantage to her, for she had been caught
in the act of coaling. What then transpired was not a fight, for in
armament the two were quite unequal. She soon sank under the
_Highflyer_'s fire, her crew having been rescued by her colliers.

The next duel took place between the _Carmania_ and _Cap Trafalgar_,
British and German converted liners, respectively. They met on September
14,1914, in the Atlantic off South America. In view of the fact that at
the beginning of the war these two ships had been merchantmen and had
been armed and commissioned after the outbreak of hostilities, this
engagement was something of the nature of those between privateersmen in
the old days. In speed, size, and armament they were about equal. For
nearly two hours they exchanged shots between 3,000 and 9,000 yards, and
markmanship was to determine the victory. The shots from the _Carmania_
struck the hull of the other ship near the water line repeatedly, and
the British commander was wise enough to present his stern and bow ends
more often than the length of the _Carmania_'s sides. At the end of the
fight the German ship was afire and sank. Her crew got off safely in her
colliers, and the British ship made off because her wireless operator
heard a German cruiser, with which the _Cap Trafalgar_ had been in
communication, signaling that she was hastening to the liner's aid.

Only two days before this the British cruiser _Berwick_ captured the
converted liner _Spreewald_ in the North Atlantic, where she had been
trying to interrupt allied commercial vessels.

Germany kept up her policy of attrition by clever use of submarines and
mines. The British battleship _Audacious_, while on patrol duty off the
coast of Ireland in the early days of the war, met with a disaster of
some sort and was brought to her home port in a sinking condition. The
rigors of the British censorship almost kept the news of this out of the
British papers and from the correspondents of foreign papers. It was
reported that she had struck a mine, that she had been torpedoed, and
that she had been made the victim of either a spy or a traitor who
caused an internal explosion. The truth was never made clear. Rumors
that she had gone down were denied by the British admiralty some months
later, when they reported her repaired and again doing duty, but this
was counteracted by a report that one of