underground towns, twenty feet below the surface, all roofed in with
steel railway sleepers. No wonder that many of the inhabitants fled to
Morogoro and Tabora. What a wicked thing of the Englander to shell an
"undefended" town! The search-lights and the huge gun positions and the
maze of trenches, barbed wire and machine-gun emplacements hewn out of
the living rock, of course, to the Teuton mind, do not constitute
defence.

But you must not think that we have had it all our own way in this
sea-warfare here. For in Zanzibar harbour the masts of H.M.S. _Pegasus_
peep above the water--a mute reminder of the 20th September, 1914. For
on that fatal day, attested to by sixteen graves in the cemetery, and
more on an island near, a traitor betrayed the fact that our ship was
anchored and under repairs in harbour and the rest of the fleet away. Up
sailed the _Königsberg_ and opened fire; and soon our poor ship was
adrift and half destroyed. A gallant attempt to beach her was foiled by
the worst bit of bad luck--she slipped off the edge of the bank into
deep water. But even this incident was not without its splendid side;
for the little patrol tug originally captured from the enemy, threw
itself into the line of fire in a vain attempt to gain time for the
_Pegasus_ to clear. But the cruiser's sharp stern cut her to the
water-line and sank her; and as her commander swam away, the
_Königsberg_ passed, hailed and threw a lifebuoy. "Can we give you a
hand?" said the very chivalrous commander of this German ship. "No; go
to Hamburg," said our hero, as he swam to shore to save himself to fight
again, on many a day, upon another ship.