During the night
of October 14 the inhabitants of that island saw the flash and heard
the roar of an explosion miles out to sea, and for a number of
days later they picked up on their beach the wreckage of what must
have been a collier. As has been related in preceding paragraphs,
the _Nuernberg_ took part in that fight. The end of her career came
in the battle off the Falkland Islands, which will be dealt with
later.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXXV
THE GERMAN SEA RAIDERS
While British men-o'-war were capturing German merchant-men and
taking them to British ports, the German raiders which were abroad
were earning terrifying reputations for themselves because the
enemy merchantmen with which they came upon had to be destroyed
on the high seas, for there were no ports to which they could be
taken. Prominent among these was the _Koenigsberg_, a third-class
cruiser. When the war came she was in Asiatic waters and immediately
made the east coast of Africa her "beat." While patrolling it she
came upon two British merchant ships, and after taking from their
stores such supplies as were needed she sent them to the bottom.
On September 20, 1914, she made a dash into the harbor of Zanzibar
and found there the British cruiser _Pegasus_, which on account of
her age was undergoing a complete overhauling. She was easy prey
for the German ship, for besides the fact that she was stationary her
guns were of shorter range than those of her adversary.
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