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. It seemed very hard that after this long separation, and just when we were looking forward to a joyful and fairly speedy reunion, we should perhaps never see her again.
The Captain said we might write these letters, which would not be posted if the Igotz Mendi with us on board got back safely to Spain. "But," he added, "we have changed our plans, and now intend that you should be landed in Norway. It will be safer for you all, and you will not have to risk meeting our submarines in the Atlantic again. When we arrive in Norwegian waters the German prize crew will be taken off the ship after the Wolf has got home, the ship will be handed over to the Spaniards, and you will all be landed in Norway, from where you can easily make your way to England." Here was quite a new plan—how much truth there was in this declaration will be seen hereafter. From now onwards definite promises began to be made to us concerning the end of our captivity: "In a month you will be free," "The next full moon will be the last you will see at sea," etc., etc.
We were now proceeding north every day, keeping in mid-Atlantic—always well off the trade routes, though of course we crossed some on our way north. The Wolf, naturally, was not looking for trouble, and had no intention of putting up a fight if she could avoid it. She was not looking for British warships; what we were anxious to know was whether the British warships were looking for her! On the 19th the Captain again thought he saw distant smoke on the horizon, and we careered about to avoid it as before. But on this occasion we were running away from a cloud! The next day we left the tropics, and with favourable weather were making an average of about 180 knots daily. On several days about this time, we passed through large masses of seaweed drifting from the Sargasso Sea. We did not meet the Wolf on the 22nd as our Captain evidently expected to do, and we waited about for her several hours. But next day we did meet her, and we were then told that in eighteen days we should be ashore. We wondered where! We were then about 30° N., and we parted from the Wolf the same afternoon. It was always a great relief to us all when we parted from her, keeping our ship's company of prisoners intact. For the men amongst us feared we might all be put upon the Wolf to be taken to Germany, leaving our wives on the Igotz Mendi. This, so we had been told, had been the intention of the Wolf's Commander when the prisoners were first put on the Spanish boat. He had ordered that only women, and prisoners above sixty and under sixteen should be put on the Igotz Mendi, but the German doctor, a humane and kindly man, would have nothing to do with this plan and declared he would not be responsible for the health of the women if this were done. So that we owe it to him that wives were not separated from their husbands during this anxious time, as the Commander of the Wolf had inhumanly suggested.
CHAPTER IX
EN ROUTE FOR RUHLEBEN—VIA ICELAND
A last effort was made to persuade the Captain to ask the Wolf's Commander to release the Spanish ship here, take all the prize crew off, and send us back to Cape Town (which would have suited the plans of every one of us), for a suspicion began to grow in our minds that Germany, and nowhere else, was the destination intended for us. But our Captain would not listen to this suggestion, and said he was sure the Spanish Captain would not go back to Cape Town even if he promised to do so.
On the next day, January 24th, relief seemed nearer than it had done since our capture four months before. I was sitting on the starboard deck, when suddenly, about 3.30 p.m., I saw coming up out of the mist, close to our starboard bow, what looked like a cruiser with four funnels. The Spanish officer on the bridge had apparently not seen it, or did not want to! Neither, apparently, had the German sailor, if, indeed, he was even on the bridge at that moment. I rushed to inform the American sailing ship Captain of my discovery, and he confirmed my opinion that it was a four-funnelled warship. The Germans were by this time fully alarmed, and the ship slowed down a little; the Captain, evidently also thinking that the vessel was a cruiser, went to his cabin to dispose of the ship's papers, the crew got into their best uniform to surrender, and it looked as if help were at hand at last. We got our precious packages together, put them in our pockets, and got everything ready to leave the ship. We were all out on deck, delighted beyond words (our elation can be imagined), and saw the ship—it must be remembered that it was a very misty day—resolve itself into two two-funnelled ships, apparently transports, one seemingly in distress and very much camouflaged, and the other standing by. Soon, however, they proceeded on their course and crossed our bows fairly close. We were then all ordered to our cabins, and we saw the two ships steam off to the westward, without having spoken us or given any evidence of having seen us at all.