Part 21

We made ready to abandon the lifeboat. Our belongings required careful packing. We put rifles, machine guns, cartridges, and grenades in our canvas bags, wrapped our naval uniforms around these, and then rolled each bundle in a couple of blankets and tied it securely. A casual handling would not reveal the armament inside. Each of us took a pistol in one pocket and a hand grenade in the other. At eight o'clock we went aboard the schooner. Our manœuvres had been made carefully, and we had attracted no undue notice of the people who were suspicious of us.

Aboard, the captain received us hospitably, and we went around looking over what we expected to make our next prize of war. And a prize she was, just a year out of the shipyard and beautifully finished in every detail.

"Look at the saloon," I muttered to Leudemann as we wandered around, "think of what meals we will have here. No more hardtack with loose teeth to bite it. And look at those cabins. Won't those bunks be comfortable when it blows and rains? And what a fine big level deck to walk on, so different from the bottom of our lifeboat."

The schooner had two new motors capable of driving her along at a lively clip. They would enable us to cover a lot of the wide Pacific and run down many a copra-laden clipper.

The captain told us he had aboard a miscellaneous cargo of cloth, white shoes, helmets, silk underwear for the wives of planters and traders, silk stockings, and so on. He was provisioned for a cruise of six months, and had aboard large stores of preserved fruits and vegetables and six thousand pounds of fresh meat. I said to myself:

"Just what we want, by Joe."

Here was the perfect prize. What would our comrades marooned back there on Mopelia say when we turned up with this beautiful schooner in tip-top shape, with powerful motors, well-provisioned and all? Already we could hear the lusty cheers, as, with the German flag at our mast, we drew up and cast anchor off the coral reef. I looked up at the trim masts and spars and around at the freshly scrubbed woodwork of the deck and spoke silently to the schooner, calling her by a new name.

"Ho, there, _Seeadler-the-Second_! You'll like it as an auxiliary cruiser. We'll have a lot of fun together, by Joe."

I could hardly wait for her to raise anchor and set sail. But we had counted that brood of mental chickens before they had hatched, by Joe.

A steamer slid into port!

The skipper of our clipper who was standing next to me said he supposed she had brought over the proprietor of the island. The new arrival lowered a boat. In it were a military officer and four Indian soldiers. The boat rowed straight toward our ship. We surmised at once that they were coming for us. Having received the message sent by the suspicious half-breed and the white man that there were six Germans on the island, the authorities had sent a force of military police to arrest us. There had been some delay in this, as the only available boat on which to send the police was a cattle steamer, the _Amra_, and she could not raise anchor for some hours. She had arrived now right in the nick of time, had communicated with the shore, and been informed that we were aboard the schooner.

The storm had cleared during the early morning. The palm trees ashore were ablaze with the tropical sunshine. The water under us was of the deep blue that you see only in the South Seas. A brisk, refreshing wind blew from the west. The boat with the officer and four soldiers came rowing with long, powerful strokes. The Indians wore puttees and those funny little pants that leave the knees bare. They carried no arms other than bayonets. The officer had a sword and a revolver. We could easily have shot them down with our pistols, or thrown a hand grenade in their boat, or held them up at pistol point when they came aboard. Then we could have captured the ship and sailed away. The steamer would have been powerless in the face of our machine guns. There were mutterings among my men. They were full of fight. We should, they urged, make the capture and get away.

I passed an uncomfortable moment of indecision. Our uniforms were packed in our bundles, stowed below. We would have to fight off arrest and take the ship in the guise, not of naval soldiers but of civilians, and as civilians we would have to raise our weapons against soldiers. That not only went against the grain, but it went against the unwritten laws of the game. There are many sporting traditions that are carefully inculcated in every German naval officer. If we could have fought in our uniforms, it would have been as honourable naval men. In the end, the odds would be all against us and the chances were at least a hundred to one that we would be captured before getting back home. If we fought as naval men and were later captured, we would be entitled to the treatment due honourable prisoners of war. If we fought in citizen's clothes, we were nothing more than international bandits and as such almost sure to hang finally from a yard arm. They say that all is fair in love and war, but this does not alter the fact that there are things you can do that are not playing the game. Of course, each side has its spies, and a spy, if caught, expects no quarter and gets none.

But during the War of 1870, and during the late war, too, we Germans were most severe with franctireurs, civilians who sniped at soldiers. It has been one of our cardinal principles that war must be waged by uniformed soldiers. In the World War, both sides were charged with introducing new methods of warfare that were not in accordance with the ethics of the game. But you will recall that even Allied cargo and passenger ships armed with guns to fire on submarines made it a general rule to carry gun crews of uniformed marines to handle the guns.

"No," I said to my men, "in the uniforms of our country we can fight. As civilians we cannot. At any rate, we are not going to drop a bomb down there and kill that poor defenseless police officer and his men in those short pants! There would be neither fun nor glory in that."

My officers were with me, and the men also saw the point, but agreed with much reluctance. Certainly, none of us wanted to go to a British prison camp. But there seemed no help for it.

It was the twenty-first of September, just two days short of a month since our departure from Mopelia. The lieutenant and his four men in those short pants and bare knees came aboard. Followed by his men, he stepped up to me.

"I've got to arrest you," he began decently enough. "Who are you?"

"Allow me," I responded, "to introduce myself. I am Count Luckner, commander of the _Seeadler_. These men here are part of my crew."

"Are you Count von Luckner?"

"Yes."

He gazed around bewildered, frightened, and certainly nonplussed. I imagined I could see his legs shake. Apparently, he was digesting the fact that he and his men were practically unarmed and the certainty that we must be armed to the teeth.

"We have," I continued, "hand grenades and firearms enough to send you and your knee-pants army here to Kingdom Come, and if we were in uniform, you would be our prisoners. However, be that as it may, you have caught us in civilian clothes--but look here."

We took our weapons out of our pockets. I had had two of our men bring up our bundles. We cut them open and displayed the grenades, pistols, and machine guns. The lieutenant stared, still aghast in spite of my reassuring speech. The soldiers were funny. You could see the goose pimples on the skin below the lower edge of those short pants. They edged to the rail, evidently ready to tumble overboard. The captain of the schooner and his crew now knew what kind of guests they had welcomed aboard. They stood gaping.

"I must ask you to stand back a moment, Lieutenant," I exclaimed, "while I destroy my war material. Overboard with it all!" I called to my men.

Pistols, grenades, and machine guns dropped splashing into the water.

"And now, Lieutenant," I saluted, "at your service!"

"Right ho, Count," he replied, "you men have made a great name for yourselves on your cruise, and now you have played cricket with me. You will receive decent treatment. You have my word as a Briton for that." He emphasized the word "Briton."

Aboard the _Amra_ we heard a different tune piped. They had an old black stewardess aboard, a particularly bad-tempered scold. The moment she saw us her shrewish tongue began to wag.

"Just look at those Huns, and look at their muddy boots, soiling our clean deck. And then the black men are supposed to scrub it after them. These Huns should be painted black, and with tar. I'd rather be black than one of those Germans. Sinking ships with women and children is all they can do. I'd like to get a gun and shoot every one of them."

She certainly had been filled right up to her ear lobes with this war of frightfulness propaganda, and that old Jezebel knew how to do her bit of spiteful tongue-lashing. A ducking in cold water would have done her no harm. But we were prisoners now, and the berating of an ill-tempered old Melanesian woman was likely to be the smallest of our troubles.

I had no doubt as to what our first ordeal was to be. Unless the British had more recent news than we concerning our comrades whom we had left at Mopelia, which was not probable, we would be questioned as to the whereabouts of the _Seeadler_ and the remainder of her crew. I told my men that they should give the same reply to all interrogations, namely that I had bidden them to keep silent and that I would answer for all. That would prevent us from tripping one another up. We had taken care to throw away any notes or papers we had that gave any hint as to where we had gone ashore in the Society Islands. They could search us as much as they liked, but they would find nothing. One mischance, though, befell us. I was to learn in a few days that one of my comrades had dropped a notebook, which presently was found. In it he had a brief diary of the _Seeadler's_ voyage. I questioned the diarist who had kept the unfortunate record, and he told me that his notes about Mopelia were very sketchy. He remembered clearly that he had written we had captured the sailing ship _Manila_. After that was a single entry.

"Landed stores at Mopelia."

There his diary broke off. There was no mention of our having sunk the _Manila_ or of our having lost the _Seeadler_ at Mopelia or taken refuge on the island.

"And now," I said to my men as we came in sight of Suva, "you keep your mouths shut, by Joe. Let me do the lying. They've got us, but they must not get the boys back at Mopelia."

XXIX

JAILED IN FIJI WHILE THE OTHERS ESCAPE TO EASTER ISLAND

Our arrival as prisoners was the event of the year at Suva, the capital city of the Fiji Islands. Our capture was the only warlike happening that had come along in those parts to break the monotony of life in the dreary South Seas. The newspaper got out a lurid special edition filled with a harrowing account of the capture of the captain and a part of the crew of the desperate raider, the _Seeadler_. It gave the hour when we were expected to reach Suva. So a huge crowd, that is, a huge one as crowds go in Fiji, had gathered at the pier to look us over. A company of infantry lined both sides of the approach to the pier with bayonets fixed. They certainly were a comic-opera-looking lot in their hot-weather knee pants.

During our march down the street between the gauntlet of bayonets and the crowd behind them, a half-caste fellow, seeing us unarmed and helpless, stepped forward and spat in the face of one of my boys. I jumped out of line and gave him a blow straight from the shoulder that sent him down in a heap. His friends had to carry him away. I had acted on the impulse of the moment and expected to be run through with a bayonet, but the officer in command of the soldiers shouted:

"Serves him right! Good for you, Count!" Then addressing himself to the crowd he added: "These men have done nothing to deserve such treatment." He said it as though he meant it, too. That Englishman was a real fellow, I tell you.

We were promptly questioned. Where were the _Seeadler_ and the remainder of its crew? Of course, my boys kept mum. I, on the other hand, invented a story about accidentally getting separated from the rest, who were still aboard the _Seeadler_--where, we didn't know. The story, of course, was not believed.

At first they kept us at the Governor's Rest House, a fine place with a garden, where visiting white people often stopped. Our meals were borne to us by coolies from the local hotel. The temporary commandant of the Rest House was a Lieutenant Wodehouse, a fine fellow. After a day or so he was replaced by a Lieutenant Whitehouse, whom we didn't like so well. He was what the British themselves would call "a bit of an ass, y'know." Whenever he talked with me he kept his hand on his pistol. He apparently thought me a sort of ogre, a bad man sent to frighten nice young lieutenants. Presently he came, hand on pistol, and announced:

"General Mackenzie wants to see you, all of you."

"More questions, by Joe," I thought.

Appearing before a general was an event of some moment. We felt we had to look worthy of the German Navy. We had our uniforms, which were somewhat faded after the long trip at sea. But we slicked them up as best we could and generally made ourselves as presentable as possible. They loaded us into stinking cattle cars. For a visit to a general? _Qurre!_ we thought. They led us to a stone building and ushered us in. It was a jail!

"Is this your General Mackenzie?" I sneered at Whitehouse. "You're a fine British officer."

He walked away, ashamed, himself, of the dodge he had used to get us to the jail without the desperate attempts he, in his stupid timidity, expected us to make.

But the jail was not so bad. We got our meals from a restaurant. They separated me from my men, which I did not like. Nor was it exactly military ethics to confine prisoners of war in a common calaboose. But the authorities were nervous. They believed the _Seeadler_ was lurking somewhere near by, and they expected our comrades to come raiding ashore and try to rescue us. Of course, they kept on trying to get us to tell them where the _Seeadler_ was, but they learned nothing.

Lieutenant Whitehouse was still our jailer. Keeping a good hold of his pistol, he came up to me again. He spoke very politely this time:

"A Japanese admiral wants to see you, sir."

I laughed at him.

"First it was General Mackenzie, and now it is the Japanese admiral. Ho! Ho! What tricks are you up to this time?"

"No, really, upon my word, really, Count, the Japanese admiral wants to see you."

"By Joe, Lieutenant, I was fool enough to get all slicked up to see your General Mackenzie. But I'll be hanged if I'll budge an inch to see your old Japanese admiral."

I didn't know what kind of foolishness it was this time, and intended to protest and stall as long as I could. He went away rather sheepishly. In a few minutes another lieutenant showed up.

"There is a Japanese admiral who really does want to see you, Count Luckner, you know," he said.

"Oh, since you say so, Lieutenant, it must be so," I replied.

I brushed up my uniform and accompanied him through the courtyard to a pier. A splendid cruiser, the _Ysuma_, lay out there at anchor in the harbour. A boat manned by Japanese sailors was waiting there for me at the landing. Aboard the cruiser, the magnificent deck contrasting with the dingy jail that now was my home, I felt like a man who, long confined in darkness, suddenly walks into sunlight.

My feelings changed to those of discomfort as the Admiral welcomed me. He was a grave, courteous little man, clad in an immaculate white uniform. My own uniform had once been white, but in spite of all the washing I had given it, it was now a dingy gray. The gold braid had turned green from the corrosion of the sea water. So I tried to make up in dignity of bearing what I lacked in perfection of dress. He introduced me to his officers:

"Here is the man we have chased for three months." And then turning to me:

"I am sorry, sir, to meet you in this situation. I would rather it had been in a good, square fight."

"I should far rather be your prisoner, Admiral," I answered, "than the ignominy of living in this beastly Fiji Island jail."

The Japanese had not known of the jail part of it. The officers looked in cold astonishment at the British lieutenant, who was much embarrassed.

In the luxurious saloon I was extended gracious, indeed ceremonious hospitality, the hospitality of Japan. The admiral offered me cigars and cigarettes and poured out the champagne for me. I took a cigar, but refused the wine.

"I am a teetotaller," I said, "a prohibitionist, as the Americans would say."

I suspected that I would be questioned about the _Seeadler_, and didn't want my tongue lubricated with champagne!

The admiral placed three books before me. The frontispiece of one was the picture of the _Emden_; of the other, a picture of the _Moewe_. He turned the pages. Both were filled with Japanese writing. The third book was empty. The admiral placed this book before me and presented me with a pen.

"Write something about your cruise," he asked. "In our country we write about the deeds of the enemies we have met. We tell what they did for their countries, so that it may fill our youth with enthusiasm to do as much for our country. Write down one or two things that I can use."

"Gladly," I replied, and began to write briefly of our experiences while rounding Cape Horn.

"Just a question first," interrupted the admiral. "Did you put to sea from a neutral port, the United States, Argentine, or Chile?"

"We sailed from Hamburg," I responded. "We flew the Norwegian flag and were searched for an hour and a half by a British cruiser."

"Examined by the British?"

"Yes."

Those grave Japanese faces lighted up with smiles of exquisite amusement.

After I had written my short piece, the admiral spoke again.

"And now, Count, tell me where you have been."

"Admiral," I responded, "that is a question I should prefer not to answer right away. First tell me where you looked for me."

He brought out a big chart. A quick glance, and I saw the island of Mopelia. Around it was a faint line in pencil. That told me what I wanted to know. Undoubtedly, they had found the diary my boy had lost, the last entry of which mentioned Mopelia.

The admiral pointed to the Tasman Sea, between Australia and New Zealand.

"I was on your trail here, Count, but I lost you near New Zealand."

"I am sorry to say, Admiral, that my ship was never within six thousand miles of those waters."

"But," he responded, "the ships you sank in the Pacific were all to or from Australia."

"I know, but--" A little judicious hesitation.

"But where were you, Count? Tell me."

"I cruised back and forth south of the Hawaiian Islands over the waters where the Australia-San Francisco ships, the eastbound and westbound, pass." There is nothing like the truth.

"You are right, Count. I should have thought of it."

"I am glad you didn't," I replied, "or you would have captured me."

He dropped the questioning for a while and asked me about the Battle of Jutland, which always seems to interest Japanese naval men tremendously. When I said I had been through the battle, they made me tell them every detail I could remember. They were interested in everything. The admiral's comment on what I told him was interesting.

"Another proof," he exclaimed, "that the smaller fleet was superior per ship to the larger."

And now the admiral came square to the point.

"Tell me, Count, where your _Seeadler_ is."

I was in a tight hole. I must strike a blow for my comrades out there on Mopelia. The elements I had to work upon lay in the fact that the diary which had been found mentioned merely that we had put stores aboard at Mopelia and told of the capture of the _Manila_ and said nothing of the fact that we had sunk that ship. Then, also, the truth is rarely believed. I proceeded to skate very near the truth.

"The _Seeadler_," I replied, "was lost."

"How was it lost?"

"We got on the coral reef at Mopelia. We tried our best to get off, put our stores ashore to lighten the ship. But it was no use."

"What did you do then?"

"We went aboard the _Manila_."

"The four-masted schooner, _Manila_?"

"Yes, we captured her and took her along with us."

"Where is the _Manila_ now?"

"She is waiting for me off Mopelia. My men are having a good vacation on the island until I come back."

"I say, Count, we Japanese are not such fools. You had the four-master _Manila_, and you sailed from Mopelia to the Fijis in a small boat."

"Yes," I replied. "There was not room enough for all of us aboard the _Manila_."

The admiral looked at me with a sly Oriental smile. Fine, I thought. I had figured out their minds correctly. They had not set straight out for Mopelia, in spite of their knowing that we had landed stores there, because it seemed wildly impossible that I with my five men had sailed from Mopelia to the Fijis in an open boat.

"Count," exclaimed the admiral, "I will tell you where your crew is. You did not leave a four-masted schooner and sail twenty-three hundred miles in a lifeboat. You sailed here in the _Manila_, and, having got here, you put out in your lifeboat to capture another ship in a near-by harbour. You tell me your crew is at Mopelia, hoping I will get up steam immediately, go hurrying away for a few thousand miles on a wild-goose chase, and leave them in peace. The _Manila_ is in these waters. In four days, your crew will be my prisoners."