The island was Wakaya. Several old sailing ships were in the
harbour. We gazed at them with hungry eyes, and eager plans of
capturing one ran through our minds. Natives on shore spied us, took
us for shipwrecked sailors, and put a boat out to meet us. It suited
our plans to let them go right on thinking we had been shipwrecked.
That might make it much easier for us to get some information about
the vessels at anchor. Leaving a couple of my boys in the boat, the
other four of us accompanied the natives to their huts, where they
treated us hospitably. They were a simple, trusting people. Several
half-breeds and a couple of white men, however, looked at us
suspiciously. One half-breed was particularly offensive and insisted
on asking us many questions. We did not like his behaviour at all.
Kircheiss and I took a walk along a path in the woods to talk over
what seemed another menacing situation. A white man came galloping
by on horseback. He was pale with excitement. He slowed down for a
moment, gazed at us, responded curtly to our greeting, and went on.
Thoroughly alarmed, we hurried back to the village. Some curious
business was afoot, and we were determined to find out what it was.
"Our last half gallon of rum," Kircheiss murmured regretfully.
"Yes," I responded, "it is too bad, but it will go to a useful
purpose."
We got hold of the half-caste who had been so inquisitive. The white
man we had seen on horseback was with him. Something, indeed, was
afoot. We talked casually with them and then suggested drinking.
They were interested, and became enthusiastic when we produced our
half gallon of rum. In the half-breed's hut we staged a drinking
bout, which lasted half through the night. Nothing like rum to make
men friendly and conversational. The half-breed got so
conversational that he blurted out,
"Why, you're all right. But at first we thought you were Germans.
We could get fifty pounds if you were Germans."
Now, as an American sailor would say, you've got to "hand it" to the
English. They know how to spend money when it is useful. We Germans
are usually more niggardly, or "careful" some might call it. We will
try to save a mark and then lose thousands. Having received the
wireless warning from the resident at Aitutaki of mysterious armed
Germans in the South Seas, the authorities in the Fijis had passed
word among the natives to be on the lookout for us, and had offered a
two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar reward to anyone who turned in definite
information about a party of Germans posing as neutrals.
It was clear enough that the half-breed and the white man had been
plotting to hand us over to the authorities, but how far they had
gone we did not know. We didn't find out that night. It was not
until later that we learned the white man's horseback ride had been
to give a warning about us to the captain of a cutter in the harbour,
and that the cutter had at once shoved off to carry the message to
the officials on one of the larger islands a day's sail away. Not
knowing this, we used a good deal of persuasion to put the idea
firmly into the heads of the two men that we could not possibly be
Germans. It may have been our eloquence, or, more likely, the genial
influence of the rum, but, at any rate, they seemed to lose all of
their suspicions and became convinced that we were the truest
Norwegians from Scandinavia. Kircheiss and I, somewhat the worse
from our session at detective work, slept at the Englishman's house.
The four others were offered quarters ashore for the night, but two
of my boys remained in the boat as a precaution. It was well they
did, too. During the night, native swimmers went out to her and cut
the anchor rope. They were put up to it by a Malay police officer
who was suspicious of us. Not knowing any or my men would remain on
board her, since she was only an open lifeboat, he planned to search
her. So he sent his swimmers out to pull her ashore and beach her.
The wind was inshore. The anchor rope cut, the boat drifted in. Our
two men were asleep, and only awakened when keel jarred against
bottom. Dark figures were around in the water, trying to pull the
boat on the beach. Our men, pistol in hand, drove them away and then
pushed out into open water.
On the following day, we made our final costly error. The ships in
the harbour weighed anchor and raised sail. We picked the one that
seemed the newest and arranged with the skipper to take us along with
him to Suva, on the main island Viti Levu. Of course, our plan was
simply to sail a few miles out to sea with him and then take the ship
ourselves after donning our uniforms and getting out all of our
weapons. A sudden squall blew up and forced the vessels back to
port. We returned with her. And now we should have taken her while
she lay at anchor. The people ashore would have seen what was going
on, but we could have held up the island and then put to sea, storm
or no storm. That was our first impulse. We should have followed
it. Always trust your first impulse--at any rate, if you go into the
pirate business. It is the boldest and best. Instead, we chose a
more cautious course. Prudence ceases to be a virtue when you are on
an adventure like ours. We had been bold enough heretofore, and I
have no satisfactory explanation for our caution now. It may have
been that we were not quite ourselves. Our voyage down from the
Societies and the Cooks to Fiji, with those days of hunger, thirst,
and scurvy, had sapped our strength and vitality. Perhaps, although
we felt quite well, we had not yet got back our full vigour of body
and mind. Perhaps we were low on red corpuscles. At any rate, we
resolved to wait until the following day and capture our ship when it
had got out to sea. While we waited, another vessel arrived.
She was a beauty, too, and would have delighted any seaman's eye as
she came sailing into the harbour. She had just arrived, we were
told, from Suva. She ran regularly among the islands, carrying
merchandise to the traders. She was a handsome three-masted schooner
with auxiliary motor power, new, clean, and trim, just the kind of
ship we wanted.
"By Joe," I said to my boys, "there's our ship."
We immediately dismissed all idea of the old windjammer we had
intended to capture, and devoted ourselves to this new beauty. A
council of war was held, after which Kircheiss went to the captain of
the vessel, which now had docked, and told him that we were
Norwegians who, while making a cruise in a lifeboat, had missed our
ship, which was taking coal from Australia to Suva. Could we not
take passage with him to Suva instead of on the other slower old
craft, so that we could get back to our own ship? We would pay
regular rates for the passage.
"All right," replied the captain, a jovial, unsuspecting fellow.
"Come aboard at eight o'clock this evening. We sail in the morning."
It was our plan again that, once aboard this lovely ship and out at
sea, we would suddenly appear in our uniforms and hoist the German
flag.
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."