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."