Todd war diary, 3 August 1914-29 February 1916 / Arthur Todd - Page 276
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[Page 276]
[com]fortable night's rest in Fayal when a wireless message came from a ship giving her position and the information that she was on fire and in urgent need of assistance. It had been a common trick for German men-o'-war thus to lure our merchant ships to their destruction; but still, in case the call was genuine, we put to sea. Just on the chance that it was our friend the Karlsruhe, everything was got ready for action; but after four hours' steaming word came through that the fire was under control. What a sell for the Karlsruhe if it had been she and the Sydney had come to her assistance!
The ship then proceeded to Flores, made famous by Sir Richard Grenville [Translator's note: English captain of the Revenge who died in the Battle of Flores against the Spanish in 1591], steamed round it, and then turned her head south and west for Bermuda. The Azores, known to old geographers, and to sailors still, as the Western Isles, present a pretty picture from the sea. The land for the most part is undulating; all the hills and valleys are intensively cultivated, and every little farmlet has its old Dutch windmill. The scene was delightfully rustic, and a rest for eyes that for days had gazed on nothing but masses of storm-tossed sea. Flores however is wild and rugged, and the day we saw it we shall always remember as the wildest and stormiest in all the long Odyssey. With the ship's head turned south, the weather soon moderated and the sun became warm. Scuttles were opened, exercise became possible, and everyone's spirits rose. Rumours, born no-one knows where, that we were on our way home via Panama became common on the ship, and though no-one really believed in them