Although completely surprised by the dramatic turn of events, both the crew and passengers of the Nichi Maru remained perfectly calm. The captain, a descendant of the knightly Samurai of Old Japan, was on the point of ordering full speed ahead, with the object of ramming the perfidious vessel and sending both ships to a common destruction; but the knowledge that the safety of nearly a thousand non-combatants, many of them women and children, would be in dire peril through such an act compelled him to submit to the inevitable.
Humanity, not fear, had conquered the courteous and lion-hearted yellow skipper.
Boats were lowered from the German auxiliary cruiser—for such she undoubtedly was. Into them clambered a number of motley-garbed men armed with rifles and automatic pistols. But for their modern weapons the boat's crew might have come from the deck of an Eighteenth-Century buccaneering craft.
"I say, you fellows," said O'Hara, "I'm off below."
"What for?" asked his companions in surprise. Not for one moment did they imagine that the Irishman was showing the white feather, but at the same time they were mystified by his announcement.
"To get into uniform," he replied. "Those skunks won't find me in mufti."
"Right oh!" declared Denbigh. "We'll slip into ours, too."
In a few minutes the chums had changed into their naval uniforms. By the time they regained the promenade deck the Germans were in possession of the ship.
A fat ober-leutnant, backed up by half a dozen armed seamen, held the bridge, the Japanese captain and deck officers being compelled to retire to the chart-room. A couple of arrogant unter-leutnants with much sabre-rattling, were herding the European male passengers on the port side of the promenade deck. The Japanese passengers they drove forward with every insulting expression they could make use of. It was the German officers' idea of revenge, for the fall of Kiau Chau, where the boasted Teutonic fortress had succumbed to Oriental valour, rankled in the breasts of the subjects of the All-Highest War Lord.
Two German officers, apparently of the Accountant branch, had possessed themselves of the passenger list of the captured vessel, and were proceeding to call the names it contained. Each person on hearing his name had to step forward. "Denbigh, Frank," exclaimed one of the officers. Denbigh, standing erect, faced his captors. "Ah! Englander officer, hein?" queried the Teuton insolently. "Goot! More to say soon. Step there over, quick."