"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: