My "subjects" somehow managed to get along on terms of general amity.
Our American prisoners took no exception to my mandates handed on to
them by Leudemann, my prime minister. They said that, since they had
been treated so well aboard the _Seeadler_, they wanted no other
command over our colony. The two captains and their lady had made
mutually satisfactory arrangements among themselves, and, so far as
we knew, there was no unpleasant incident, although, for the purposes
of my tale, it would have helped a lot if they had fought a duel with
swords or cocoanuts or chunks of jagged coral on the shore of our
tropic lagoon.
The three Kanakas proved to be thoroughly good fellows and helped us
in many ways. We got along with them in pidgin English at first
until one of them picked up a little German.
In the middle of the camp we made a sort of plaza. The _Seeadler's_
batteries furnished electric light for it, and there we gathered
every night. We still had plenty of champagne and cognac left from
the capture of the champagne ship. So, in the cool of the evening,
we sat out there on the edge of this equatorial Potsdammer Platz
sipping drinks out of wine and brandy glasses, just as we might have
at the Adlon in Berlin. There was plenty of pipe tobacco, and Dr.
Pietsch had taken care to rescue from the wreck a store of his
endless cigars. The wind blew, the stars shone, and the orchestra
alternately played German classics from the operas and American
ragtime melodies. Ah, yes, this last bit of the once glorious
overseas German Empire wasn't such a bad little paradise at all. We
castaways out there in the solitude of the South Seas felt as though
we were the only people left in the world, like Noah and his family
on Mount Ararat.
But after about three weeks of this Garden-of-Eden-without-an-Eve
existence, the monotony of it began to get on our nerves. Of course,
there was the "wife" of the officer of the ... but she was far too
busy to be interested in the rest of us. We hadn't been sent out to
colonize the South Seas and take life easy. So we cast about for a
way to go buccaneering again. Our first need was for a ship to take
the place of our unfortunate three-master impaled out there on the
coral reef. The Kanakas told us that a French sailing vessel visited
the island every year to take away turtle meat. The best guess that
they could make was that it would be another six months or so before
she arrived. Well, after six months, we would have a ship. We could
always fall back on that. But, by Joe, six months was a long time to
wait. The war might be won or lost by then. And it was highly
unlikely that any other ship would stray into those waters for Heaven
knows how long. We all grew impatient. Few sailors are keen about
remaining cast away on a tropical isle for long, and especially on an
atoll as small as Mopelia. We felt the itch to get out to sea again.
I was particularly anxious to set something stirring. Before long
the tropical sun and lazy life would sap my men's vitality, and all
they would be good for would be to loll around.
We still had our lifeboats, and the hurricane season was not on. So
why not put to sea in one of them? We devised rigging and sails for
our best lifeboat, mast, jib boom, main boom, gaff, stays, and back
stays. We scraped, caulked, and painted her. She was not in any too
good condition, and despite our labour she continued to leak a bit
and needed constant bailing. Even in calm weather, we had to bail
forty pails a day. We loaded her with provisions for half a dozen
men over a long voyage. She was eighteen feet in length and only
about fourteen inches above water amidship. Into this small space we
stored water, hardtack, machine guns, rifles, hand grenades, and
pistols. The only luxuries we allowed ourselves were a few tins of
pemmican, a side of bacon, and an accordion. The music of the
squealer was to be our solace during a cruise the length of which
none could foretell. The great question was, could our tiny craft
survive a storm? At any rate, she could sail, and that was
something. We christened her the _Kronprinzessin Cecilie_--without,
however, painting her name on the stern.
Of course, everybody wanted to go, but there could be only six of us
at the most. So I picked the men who seemed to be in the most
vigorous health at the time, Mate Leudemann, Lieutenant Kircheiss,
Engineer Krauss, Boatswain Parmien, and Yeoman Erdmann. This left
the colony on the atoll in the hands of Lieutenant Kling.
Our overloaded cockleshell with a crew of six was the smallest
auxiliary cruiser in the war. For cruiser we were, and we were
setting out to capture a ship, sail back to Mopelia, pick up our
comrades there, and continue our raid. To find and take a ship on
the high sea was a doubtful proposition, but we might get to some of
the other islands, not too well populated and guarded, and find a
vessel at anchor. We could board her at night, overpower the captain
and crew, and sail off with her. We planned first of all to visit
the Cook Islands, some eight hundred miles distant, and if we found
no ship there, continue on another thousand miles farther to the Fiji
Islands, where there were sure to be ships loading with copra for the
ammunition factories of Europe. We figured on making around sixty
nautical miles a day, so that, if we had to go all the way to the
Fijis, it would take us approximately thirty days. Thus we should be
back with a ship in three months at most. We discussed our tactics
thoroughly for the expected capture. We would steal aboard.
Half-past three in the morning was the best hour. Men sleep their
soundest then. A couple of us would go to the officers' cabins, the
rest to the forecastle. We would show our pistols, disarm them, and
herd them below. It would be good to sneak to their clothing first
and take away their belts and snip the buttons off their trousers.
Then, when you have them put on their clothes they stand, without
belts, suspenders, or buttons, holding up their trousers. Thus they
are helpless. We had a few bombs loaded only with powder, harmless,
but capable of making a terrific noise. If there is any trouble, you
throw one. It hurts nobody, but the terrible explosion creates a
general panic. A couple of men with their heads about them can do
wonders with dozens in a panic. Another good thing is to have a
couple of fellows outside shout suddenly and make a great
disturbance. That creates excitement and throws people off their
guard. I said to my bo's'n:
"Don't hurt anybody unless you have to. We don't want to spoil our
clean record by killing anybody. But, by Joe, if a captain or a
watchman raises a rifle or a pistol, don't wait till he shoots. Get
him first."
On a bright summer morning--August 23, 1917, to be exact--we all
shook hands. There was no cheering, merely quiet, earnest words of
friendship and good luck. It was the first time that we sixty-four
seamen had parted since the _Seeadler_ had set sail to run the
blockade eight months before, and it was only now, at the moment of
saying good-bye, that we realized how closely attached to one another
we had become. We who were going could see a brooding question in
the eyes of those who were staying behind:
"How will that overloaded cockleshell stand heavy weather?"
Never mind, we would probably find out soon enough. The
understanding was that, if we did not return in three months,
something had happened to us. They should wait for us until then.
Afterward, Kling and his men were to get away from the atoll as best
they could.
We sailed out of the lagoon, through the coral entrance, into the
open sea. The hulk of the _Seeadler_ lay there helpless on the reef.
The tide was high, and the breakers swept over the coral. She was a
red brown now from rust and weathering. Each flooding billow raised
her a bit, and then she sank back hopelessly with loud groans and
creaks of despair on the coral bed. As we passed her she seemed to
call over to us:
"Come aboard, I want to take you on your voyage. Don't desert your
old friend."
And as a wave raised her it seemed as though she were struggling to
get on an even keel again and come to us, only to find that the coral
held her in a relentless grasp. Tears filled our eyes.
"Good-bye, _Seeadler_" I called; "perhaps we shall never see you
more. And even if we do, you can never sail again. Nevermore will
songs resound on your decks. Nevermore will you raise your sails and
fly a flag from your masts."
A brisk wind carried us westward with a swelling of our sails. The
happy island receded. The last German colony and the wreck of the
_Seeadler_ slowly dropped out of sight over the rim of the horizon.
To-day the _Seeadler_ still remains on the reef at Mopelia. After we
had gone, Lieutenant Kling, afraid that the stumps of her mast might
attract a passing warship, blew them out with dynamite. The
explosion set a fire that burned away part of the woodwork. A
quantity of ammunition still aboard blew up and cracked the forepart
of the hulk. Afterward, when the _Seeadler's_ history became
generally known, the Harris-Irby Cotton Company of New York, which
had originally owned the ship as the _Pass of Balmaha_, investigated
the possibilities of salvaging the ship. A party of engineers was
sent to Mopelia. They reported that the ship was unsalvageable. In
my cruise around the world aboard the _Vaterland_ I shall stop at the
island and survey what once was my tropical domain. And again I
shall board the old _Seeadler_ on which we sailed and raided. So,
until then, old ship! _Auf wiedersehen!_