We seized the opportunity to write letters, which were posted on the ships, and one of our number went to see the doctor. To the credit of the enemy be it said, that almost all the letters subsequently arrived, a sad exception being a butterfly, addressed to Professor Poulton at Oxford, which, if, as may have been the case, it was retained as something valuable, presumably went down off the Falkland Islands. Mr. Edmunds, meanwhile, had not unnaturally rejoiced at having his market brought to his door, and sold the ships nearly £1,000 worth of meat. They offered to pay for it in gold, but it seemed common prudence to ask instead for an order, a decision which was later sadly lamented.
On Thursday some of our staff returned: the Germans were, it seemed, most unpopular; they did not come on shore and had given no food, clothes, or soap. Kanaka sentiment at this moment would have been certainly pro-Ally.
On Friday rumours reached us that there was something mysterious going on. Why, it was asked, did the Germans say they had no newspapers, so rarely come on shore, and go out at night without lights? and why did one officer say that “in two months Germany would be at the top of the tree”? We discussed the matter and passed it off as “bazaar talk.” On Sunday, however, news came from Mataveri which we could no longer wholly discredit. The German tobacco planter had been on board, and the crew had disobeyed orders and disclosed to their countryman the fact that there was a great European war; the combatants were correctly stated, but much detail was added. Two hundred thousand men were, it was said, waiting at Kiel to invade England; the war had taken our country by surprise, and the German ships had already made a sudden raid and sunk eight or nine Dreadnoughts in the Thames; the Emperor was nearly at Paris, though the French continued to fight on most bravely. It was a terrible war as neither side would show the white flag. An army had been sent from England to the assistance of the French, but it had been badly defeated. The English Labour Party had objected to troops being sent out of the country, in consequence of which the Asquith ministry had fallen, the House of Lords came in somehow; anyway, England was now a Republic, and so were Canada and Australia; India was in flames, and two troopships had been sunk on the way there from Australia.
We are still inclined to think that the Germans themselves believed all these things; they had so often been told, by those in authority, that such would occur on the outbreak of war with England, that wishes had become facts. As a small mercy we got the news of the loss of the German colonies, but the Scharnhorst, which had just come from the French possession of Tahiti, said that the natives there having risen and killed the Germans, the warships had therefore bombarded the town of Papeete, which was now “no more.” The reason given for keeping us in the dark so long was, that hearing there were foreigners on the island, they thought that we might fight amongst ourselves. Von Spee made exact inquiries as to the number of whites in the place, and told the Kanakas that when he returned he would hold them responsible for our safety. The real reason of the silence maintained was most probably to prevent any question being raised of their use of the island as a naval base. When the news could no longer be concealed, the officers gave it as their opinion, that “when Germany had conquered France, peace would be made with England, in which case Britain would probably gain some territory as she had such good diplomatists,” a compliment at least for Lord Grey. The reality of the war was brought home by the concrete fact that the ships were reliably reported to be in fighting trim, with no woodwork visible. That Sunday evening one of us saw the squadron going round in the dusk, the flagship leading. They had said that they would come again, but they never did. They went on their way to Coronel and the Falklands.
On Monday morning we met our photographer by arrangement on the road to Mataveri, in order to take some of the half-way terraces; he had brought two newspapers, which had at last been got hold of, and we sat down beneath a wall to read them. They were German ones, of September 15th and 17th, published in Chile, and contained little news; but we read between the lines that things were going better in France, for the Germans had made “a strategic retreat according to plan,” and then the curtain fell on the great drama. The ground rocked for us, as it did at home in those first August days; it was just one week since we had covered up our diggings and it seemed centuries. How much to believe we did not know, but some of it sounded plausible, and when later we found that England was facing the struggle as a united whole, and that there was still a British Empire, we felt that the greatest nightmare of the war had passed.
From the personal point of view our thoughts turned, of course, to the yacht; she would no doubt remain in safety at Talcahuano, that was a comfort. At any other time it would have been a matter of anxiety that the crew should continue indefinitely without employment, and that there was no pecuniary arrangement there for so long a detention; as it was, we were so absolutely helpless that the futility of worrying was obvious. As regards ourselves, we could only cut down our use of such things as flour and tea, and wait; our experience of war rations thus came early. The most serious threatened shortage was that of paper. It was intensely strange to go back to digging out statues, when morning, noon, and night our hearts were over the seas; but that was “our job,” there was at least no daily and hourly waiting for news, and in the peace of a plain duty and the absolute silence of the sea around us there was a certain kind of rest.
For the next few weeks life went on quietly, sheep-shearing absorbed the energies of the community, and the village was laid low by an attack of dysentery, from which in a short time there were eight deaths: the disease was either a legacy from the Germans, or the result of the distribution of some more Baquedano clothes which had been left with the schoolmaster. It seemed as if we might spend the rest of our lives on the island, when suddenly, as things always happened in mid-Pacific, on December 1st, six weeks after the departure of the German squadron, a little ship turned up. She was flying the Chilean flag, but had an English captain, and was to take back word to Valparaiso how things were going on the island. She brought good news on the whole, but also the regretted tidings of the sinking of the Good Hope and Monmouth on November 1st. Mr. Gillam wrote that the yacht was, as we had expected, detained at Talcahuano till the passage was considered safe. The point which immediately concerned us was the offer of passages in this vessel to Chile should we desire them; but she could only by her charter stay some five days, during which time it would have been quite impossible, even had our work been finished, to transport our goods from Raraku. There was no room for hesitation: S. must go and look after Mana, and insure her against war risks. Mr. Ritchie and the Fernandez boy had already sailed on the Baquedano, and as the photographer’s work on the island was nearly done for the present, it seemed best he should accompany my husband and resume his post on the yacht. Bailey and I were therefore left to represent the Expedition on the island.
When the good-byes had been said, it was better not to have time to think, so we at once set to work, packed up such things as were necessary from our country house, and transferred the camp back to Mataveri. There I took up life once more in my tent by the grave of the murdered manager. Mr. Edmunds would, I knew, kindly give me assistance in case of necessity, and it was desirable to be near the village, for I proposed to spend the time till S. returned in interviews with such of the old people as could remember traditions and customs, prior to the coming of Christianity. This work was, however, not destined to continue undisturbed.
On Wednesday morning, December 23rd, another German ship came into Cook’s Bay—the armed cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich. The Manager went on board, and returned with the information that the Captain had said he “would require thirty or forty beasts, but that as the crew would be busy next day they would not take them till after Christmas.” They would give no account of themselves, nor any news of the war. It was a relief to realize that S. would not yet have had time to leave Chile, and that he and the yacht were presumably safe in harbour. That very afternoon, however, my writing was interrupted by a cry of congratulation from the native girls at work in Mr. Edmunds’ kitchen, “Mana is coming.” A woman, who had been up on the high ground, had reported that she had seen the little vessel off the south coast and that she was now sailing round Rano Kao, hence making direct for Cook’s Bay. It might, of course, be a mistake, but it was, on the other hand, just possible that Mr. Gillam had seized an opportunity to slip across to the island without waiting for a reply to his letter. The immediate question, supposing that it was indeed Mana, was how she could be stopped walking straight into the jaws of the enemy. Bailey saddled in haste, and rode up to the top of the headland to try to warn her not to proceed. I armed myself with a towel and coat to make a two-flag signal, which denotes urgency, and fled down to the rocks on the coast below, selecting a point from which it was possible to command the furthest view, without being noticed from the cruiser. It was a very forlorn hope, that it might be possible to attract the yacht’s attention before she was seen by the enemy, but it was obviously out of the question to continue, under a tree, copying notes while Mana might be at the moment meeting with a watery grave.
My thoughts, while I sat there with eyes glued to the horizon, went back to academic discussions with Admiral Fremantle on board a P. & O. liner only a few years before, on the right in war-time to capture private property at sea, and how little it had then occurred to me that the matter would ever become so vitally personal. I waited for two and a half hours, not daring to leave, but with hope growing momentarily stronger that there was an error somewhere. Meanwhile, Bailey had seen the vessel from the mountain and was confident that it was the returning yacht, but had been unable to get into touch with her. He had come down and consulted with Mr. Edmunds, who had then most kindly ridden over to the south coast to see what could be done from there; the nearer view had made clear that the alarm was a false one, the vessel was not Mana but some other passing schooner, and we breathed once more.