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.