"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."

XXIX
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: