Part 4 (1/2)

and did his best in his broken English to a.s.sure us everything was all right. ”Go sleep tranquil,” he said: ”I see this s.h.i.+p built--very strong.” But the whole performance was a horrid nightmare.

The next day was no better, but rather worse. About 6 p.m. there was a great crash, which alarmed all; it was due to the _Wolf_ cras.h.i.+ng into and completely smas.h.i.+ng part of the bridge of our s.h.i.+p. This was enough for the Germans. They decided to suspend operations, and at 7 p.m. the _Wolf_ sheered off, only just narrowly escaping cutting off the p.o.o.p of the _Igotz Mendi_ in the process. She had coaled six hundred tons in twenty-five hours, her decks, torpedo tubes, and guns being buried under great mounds of coal, as all hands were busy in the transference of coal from her prize to the _Wolf_. s.h.i.+fting the coal to her bunkers had to be done after the s.h.i.+ps had separated. If by good luck an Allied cruiser had appeared at this time, the _Wolf_ would have been an easy prey. The coaling process had severely damaged the _Wolf_, many of whose plates were badly dented. We had lost eighteen large fenders between the s.h.i.+ps, and the _Wolf_ was leaking to the extent of twelve tons an hour. The _Igotz Mendi_ had come off better. None of her plates were dented, she was making no water, and the only visible signs of damage to her were many twisted and bent stanchions on the port side that met the _Wolf_.

We had been allowed to send letters for Christmas--censored, of course, by the Germans--to our _Hitachi_ friends on the _Wolf_, and when the two s.h.i.+ps were alongside we were allowed to speak to them, though conversation under such conditions was very difficult, as one minute our friends would be several feet above us and the next below us with the rolling of the s.h.i.+ps; and the noise of the coaling, shouting of orders, and roaring of the water between the s.h.i.+ps was deafening. There did not seem much point in censoring letters, as the prisoners on the _Igotz Mendi_ and the _Wolf_ were allowed to talk to each other a day or so after the letters were sent, and although a German sentry was on guard while these conversations were going on, it was possible for the prisoners to say what they liked to each other, as the sentry could only have caught an occasional word or two.

I have since been asked why the prisoners and Spaniards on the Spanish s.h.i.+p did not attack the prize crew and seize the s.h.i.+p when we were not in company with the _Wolf_. It sounds quite simple, but it must be remembered that although the prize crew was certainly a small one, they were well supplied with arms, bombs, and hand grenades, while the prisoners and Spaniards had no arms at all, as they had all been taken away by the Germans. Further, an attack of this kind would have been far worse than useless unless its absolute success could have been definitely a.s.sured. There were very few young and able men among the prisoners, while the German prize crew were all picked men, young and powerful. The working crew of the s.h.i.+p was composed of Spaniards and other neutrals, including a Greek and a Chilian. It would have been absolutely necessary to have secured the allegiance and support of every one of these. The plan of seizing the s.h.i.+p, which sounds so simple, was discussed among us many a time, but it was in reality quite impracticable. What would our fate have been if we had tried--and failed? And what of the women and children on board?

CHAPTER VIII

RUMOURS AND PLANS

We had been encouraged by the Germans to think--they had in fact definitely told us--that the _Igotz Mendi_ with us on board was to be sent to Spain when the Germans released her. This news greatly rejoiced the Spaniards, who had naturally become very depressed, more especially as they knew that if no news were received of them for six weeks after the date on which they were due at Colombo a requiem ma.s.s would, according to Spanish custom, be said for them at their churches at home.

On December 29th, all of which and the previous day, together with many succeeding days, were spent in transferring our cargo coal to our bunkers, the Germans on our s.h.i.+p and on the _Wolf_ ostentatiously bade each other good-bye, and letters from prisoners on the _Wolf_ were brought to us to post in Spain when we landed. The idea of the _Wolf_ remaining out till the war was over in six months was abandoned, and we were told the _Wolf_ would now go home to Germany. Why we were told this--the first time we had been informed of the _Wolf's_ plans--we never knew, except that it might have been an excuse to keep dragging us over the seas, for the _Wolf_ would never have allowed us to get ash.o.r.e before she reached Germany. Now that we know that the Germans always intended taking us to Germany, it is obvious that it was quite immaterial to them if they told us their plans. They wished to keep us, and having told us of their future plans, it is plain they could not afford to release us.

But at that time we really began to think we were going to be landed in Spain, and the news raised the spirits of all of us. I remember Lieutenant Rose telling the American Captain one day during a meal that he could now keep his eyes directed to a Spanish port! Those who had been learning Spanish before now did so with redoubled energy, and some of us even marked out on a pocket atlas our railway route from Bilbao or Cadiz--for the Spanish Captain thought it most likely we should be landed at one of those ports--through Spain and France. We even got information from the Spaniards as to hotels, and railways, and sights to see in Spain. It seemed as if the end of our cruise, with our freedom, were really in sight, especially as the Captain had told some of us on December 16th that in six weeks our captivity would be over. Some of us, however, still inclined to the belief that the Germans would release the s.h.i.+p and order her back to Java or Colombo or Calcutta; while others believed we should ultimately be landed in Dutch Guiana or Mexico, two of the few neutral countries left.

On the last day of the year a rumour went round the s.h.i.+p that we should be taken far north--about 60 N.--to a point from which the _Wolf_ could get to Germany before we could reach Spain. That, in the opinion of most of us, put an end to the prospect of landing in Spain. The Germans would run no risks of our giving information about the _Wolf_. But this scheme would have left uneliminated one very important risk. After the s.h.i.+ps would have separated, there was still a chance of the prize being intercepted by an Allied cruiser before the _Wolf_ got home, and if that had happened the _Wolf's_ goose would have been cooked indeed. So that Spain looked very improbable. I approached the Captain on the last day of the year and spoke to him on the point. He confirmed the rumour, and said we should be sent back and landed at a Spanish island, most probably Las Palmas. I made a vigorous, though I knew it would be quite a useless, protest against this scheme. I pointed out that the s.h.i.+p, which by then would be almost empty, was not a suitable one in which to carry women and children into the North Atlantic in mid-winter gales, and that people who had spent many years in the tropics would not be able to stand such weather, unprovided as they were with winter clothing (although the Commander of the _Wolf_ had certainly sent over some rolls of flannelette--stolen from the _Hitachi_--for the ladies to make themselves warm garments!). Also that in case of distress we could call for no help, as our wireless would only receive and not send messages.

The Captain brushed these complaints aside, saying the s.h.i.+p was in good trim and could stand any weather, that it would only be intensely cold on a very few days, that arrangements would be made that we should suffer as little from the cold as possible, and that there was very little likelihood of our being in distress.

I then pointed out to him that our own Government prohibited our women from travelling through the submarine zone at all, but that he proposed to send them through it twice and to give us a double dose of the North Atlantic at the very worst time of the year. He replied that going north we should go nowhere near the submarine zone, that he was just as anxious to avoid submarines as we were, and that when we parted far up in the North Atlantic, the _Igotz Mendi_ would be given a ”submarine pa.s.s,” guaranteeing her safety from attack by the U boats, and special lights to burn at nights. I replied that I failed to see the use of a ”submarine pa.s.s,” as U boats torpedoed at sight, and would not trouble to ask for a pa.s.s. He replied by asking me if I had ever heard of a neutral boat being torpedoed without warning. I answered that I had heard of such being done many times, and reminded him that the _Igotz Mendi_ was painted the Allied grey colour and therefore would not be recognized as a neutral, but regarded by the U boats as an enemy s.h.i.+p.

The Captain became very angry--the only time he ever lost his temper with me--and ended the interview by saying that he was carrying out the orders of the _Wolf's_ Commander, and had no choice but to obey. This was undoubtedly true, and though Lieutenant Rose told us many lies concerning our destination, we always felt he was acting in accordance with instructions from his senior officer in so doing. We all recognized that we were lucky in that he, and not the Commander of the _Wolf_ or any other officer of the Imperial Navy, was in charge of us. He admitted, however, that it was particularly hard luck on my wife and myself being captured like this, just as we had retired from a long period of work and residence in the Far East. This news of the _Wolf's_ intentions angered us all, and we all felt that there was very little chance of ever seeing land again, unless an Allied cruiser came to our aid. We regarded this plan of the Germans as a deliberate one to sink us and the s.h.i.+p when they had got all they wanted out of her, and I told the Captain that my wife and I would prefer to be shot that day rather than face such a prospect of absolute misery, with every chance of death alone putting an end to it.

New Year's Day! With the dawn of 1918 we looked back on the last few months of its predecessor and what they had meant and brought to us all.

What would the New Year bring forth? Liberty, or continued captivity; life, or death at sea? On New Year's morning we wished each other good luck and a Happy New Year, but with the news of our captors' intentions given us on the preceding day our prospects were the reverse of rosy.

The two s.h.i.+ps had parted on the evening of the 30th, both going north, and we did not see the _Wolf_ again till the morning of January 4th. She was then seen to be overhauling a s.h.i.+p on the horizon. We followed at a short distance, and before long saw a s.h.i.+p in full sail. The _Wolf_ approached her, spoke to[3] her, and, to our intense astonishment, released her. It seemed too good to be true that the _Wolf_ would leave any s.h.i.+p she met quite unmolested, but so it was--for a short time. It was between ten and eleven when the _Wolf_ and her prize proceeded on their original course and the sailing s.h.i.+p crossed our course astern.

About 1.30 p.m., however, we changed our course and turned about. We were all mystified as to what was going to happen, until we saw a sail on the horizon. The _Wolf's_ purpose was evident then. She was going back to destroy the s.h.i.+p whose existence she had forgiven in the morning. Imagine the feelings of the crew of her prey; seeing the _Wolf_ bearing down on her in the morning, their suspense as to their fate and that of their s.h.i.+p, their joy at their release, and--here was the _Wolf_ again! What would their fate be now? The _Wolf_ did not leave them long in doubt. She came up to her prize about 5 p.m. She was a four-masted barque in full sail, in ballast from the Cape to South America, and made a beautiful picture as she lay bathed in floods of golden light from the setting sun. Before dark, however, preparations had begun to remove her officers and crew and provisions, and this was completed in a few hours.

We were invited by the Germans to stay up and see the end. They told us a searchlight would be thrown on the s.h.i.+p, that we might better see her go down. Stage effects, with a vengeance! But they were not carried out--it was a too dangerous proceeding, as the enemy regretfully realized. We waited up till past eleven and saw lights flitting about the doomed s.h.i.+p, as the Germans sailors were removing some things, making fast others, and placing the bombs to blow her up. But none waited up for the end, which we heard took place after midnight. The s.h.i.+p first canted over, her sails resting on the water, righted herself and then slowly disappeared. It was a beautiful moonlight night for the commission of so dark a deed. The Germans afterwards told us that when the _Wolf_ first spoke the barque she gave her name _Storobrore_ and said she was a Norwegian s.h.i.+p, and so was released. The Germans had afterwards discovered from the _Wolf's_ s.h.i.+pping register that she was the _Alec Fawn_ and British owned before the war, and therefore to be destroyed.

The Germans told us that on the barque they had seen some English newspapers, and in them was some news of the two men who had escaped from the _Wolf_ near Sunday Island. One of them had died while swimming ash.o.r.e; the other, after some weeks alone on the island, had been picked up by a j.a.panese cruiser. The news this man was able to give was the first that the outside world had known about the _Wolf_ for many months, and the Germans realized that their enemies would be looking out for them and trying to prevent their return to Germany. This man would also be able to give an exact description of the _Wolf_, the names of the s.h.i.+ps she had captured before his escape, and the probable fate of other vessels since missing. This, we felt, would bring at least a little comfort to our relatives, who might conclude we were on the raider and not hopelessly lost, as they must have feared.

We had hoped our captors might have put us all on the sailing s.h.i.+p and sent us off on her to South America, as the _Wolf_ would have been well away and out of danger before we could have got ash.o.r.e. But they did not entertain any such idea. Some of us requested that the lifeboats of the sailing s.h.i.+p might be sent over to our s.h.i.+p, as we had only two lifeboats, a couple of small dinghies, and an improvised raft made of barrels and planks lashed together and surrounded by iron uprights and ropes--not sufficient for sixty-five people; but the Germans would not send us these lifeboats, as they said they were leaky!

The question of baggage had to be again reconsidered. It was evident we should be able to save very little, perhaps not even a handbag, if the s.h.i.+p were sunk by the Germans and the prisoners put into the lifeboats.

However, we ourselves packed in a handbag our most precious treasures we had brought from Siam. But in case it was impossible to save even so little, we collected the most valuable of our letters and papers and had them sewn up in sailcloth by a German sailor to put in our pockets. The King of Siam had conferred a decoration on me before I left; this was carefully packed and sewn up. I was determined to save this, if nothing else, though it seemed hopeless to expect to save some much-treasured parting presents and addresses presented to me by my Siamese friends.

Earlier in my service the King of Siam had conferred another decoration on me, and I was carrying with me His Majesty's Royal Licence for this, signed by him, and also King George V.'s Royal Licence with his Sign-Manual, giving me permission to accept and wear the decoration.

Both of these doc.u.ments, together with others highly valued which I was also determined to save, were secured in water-tight cases, ready to be put in my pockets at the last moment.

On January 8th, when the two s.h.i.+ps stopped, the Captain went on to the _Wolf_ and brought back with him charts of the North Atlantic and North Sea. We wondered if this would be his farewell visit to and our farewell acquaintance with the _Wolf_, but we remained in company of the _Wolf_ for the next few days, and at 7 p.m. on the 10th she again came alongside in the open sea and coaled from us till 4 p.m. on the next day. Conditions were slightly better than on the previous occasion, and the Commander of the _Wolf_ was evidently of opinion that they would never again be more favourable, but they were still quite sufficiently unpleasant. More fenders were lost and the _Wolf_ was further damaged, and this time our s.h.i.+p also sustained some damage. Some of her plates had been badly dented and she was leaking about a ton and a half an hour. The great uproar caused by the winches going all night, the periodic emptying of ashes dragged in iron buckets over the iron decks, the s.h.i.+fting of coal from the bunkers immediately underneath our cabins, and the constant b.u.mping of the s.h.i.+ps made sleep quite out of the question once more, and we were very glad indeed when the _Wolf_ sheered off. On this occasion the way in which she came alongside and sheered off was a beautiful piece of seamans.h.i.+p. Not many landsmen, I imagine, have seen this done in absolutely mid-ocean, and not many have been on a s.h.i.+p so lashed alongside another. It was a wonderful experience--would that some friendly hydroplane had seen us from aloft! The two s.h.i.+ps lashed together would certainly have presented a strange scene, and could have meant only one thing--a raider and her prize.

On the 11th we again saw and spoke to our _Hitachi_ friends on the _Wolf_--the last opportunity we had of speaking to them. They all looked well, but thin. They told us they had been informed that we were going to Spain, and that the _Wolf_ with them on board was _not_ going to Germany. Some of them believed this, and were comparatively joyful in consequence. But it was only another case of German lies. On the next day we crossed the Equator, and then for some days we saw the _Wolf_ no more.

About this time I experienced a little trouble with one of the German sailors. Most of them were courteous and kindly disposed, but one, a boorish, loutish bully, who served us with drinks at table, was a painful exception to this. His name was Fuchs: we sometimes called him Luchs, by mistake, of course! But Fuchs did not think so--he strongly objected to the other name! He had only one eye, and a black shade where the other one should have been. To train his moustache to resemble that of the All-Highest, he wore some apparatus plastered over it, reaching nearly to his eyes and secured behind his ears, so that his appearance was the reverse of prepossessing! I complained to him once about not serving me properly. He waited outside the saloon and cursed me afterwards. ”I a German soldier,” he said, ”not your steward!” I told him that if he had any reason to complain of what I had said or done he should report me to his Captain, and that if he had not done so by six that evening I should report him for insolence. Needless to say, he said nothing to the Captain, so I reported him. The Captain at once thanked me for doing so, called him up at once, and gave him a good wigging. I had no more trouble with him afterwards.

On January 14th I approached the Captain and asked him if the Germans on the _Wolf_, when they got to Germany, would have any means of finding out whether we on the _Igotz Mendi_ had safely arrived in Spain. He replied that they would. I then asked him whether, if we were all lost on the _Igotz Mendi_ on her return voyage to Spain, the German Government would inform the British Government of our fate. He replied that would certainly be done. I further asked him whether we might send letters to the _Wolf_ to have them posted in Germany in the event of our not arriving in Spain. Most of us had to settle up our affairs in some way, in case we might be lost at sea, and wished to write farewell letters to our home people. Some of us, it will be remembered, had already taken some steps in this direction before we were sent on to the _Wolf_, as we thought it possible the _Wolf_ might become engaged with a hostile cruiser. We ourselves had to write a farewell letter, among others, to our daughter, born in Siam, from whom we had been separated except for short periods of furlough spent in England, for twelve years.