"Growling, growling, growling!
You're always bally well growling.
When you're dead and in your grave
You'll bally well growl no more!"
I didn't quite sense the meaning of it at first, and when they were through singing I started to explain once more that I couldn't stand the coffee out of that infernal, sickening receptacle, looking very much like a wash basin. I hadn't got six words out of my mouth when the song broke out again, and this time the men in the adjacent forecastle room joined in, and I think every English-speaking voice on board the ship was roaring those words. I knew then what it meant, and never after that did I utter one word of complaint. If anybody did, the song was sure to drown his voice. That song might serve a purpose here.
At 10 o'clock in the morning we were led to a washroom, four men at a time. All we had was running salt water and no soap. It drove the dirt in further, but nevertheless it was refreshing.
Many of the men who had been on the raider for a long time were utterly despondent. The treatment to which they had been subjected in the vile-smelling compartments, the lack of decent food and the uncertainty of everything had broken their spirit. Little groups sat about the deck when we were up for our morning airing, their heads in their hands and their shoulders bent and hunched like those of aged men.
A few tried to keep up the spirits of the others. I will never forget Chief Officer Evans of the Voltaire. He had been very stout but he was losing weight at an alarming rate. His features were pinched and his skin hung in folds, yet he was always joking and singing and cheering up the men. It was enough to crack nerves of steel.
Picture us. Some of us have nothing to our backs but pajamas and overcoats in which we left the Georgic. Some of my horsemen have nothing but shirt and trousers, even their socks having been left behind because they were working on the main deck which was awash when the raider fired into us.
None of us expects to reach home! The raider is heavily armed and her officers are brave men. They will tackle anything. Sooner or later it is inevitable we will encounter a British or a French cruiser—and then we will die. We won't be fighting like men. Down there in those rat traps with steel doors bolted against us, we will drown while others are fighting. The fellows who sit around the deck with their heads in their hands moaning, sometimes even sobbing, are not cowards. All they would ask is a chance to die like men. A man doesn't want to go like a drowned rat.
After our little breath of fresh air in the mornings, it seemed worse than ever to go back to that hole—the forecastle. There was just one doubtful cause for thankfulness. We officers, as I was rated, were not in quite as bad a situation as were the men. About 430 of them in all were packed below decks in a hold that smelled to the high heavens with air so laden with soggy, stale tobacco smoke that you could cut it with a knife. The mattresses, which most of them spread on the floor for beds, were made of old cotton waste, and they absorbed filth and dampness like sponges. As for food, the men got sea biscuit for breakfast instead of the black bread—and they were some biscuits. They were as hard as the decks we slept on. For this noon-day meal they were given noodle soup, such as we received, only thinner, and more watery if possible, but they seldom got meat, although we had it nearly every day with a very tasty gravy poured over it.
For the first two days this noon-day meal was the only one I could retain, and I think it was because there was none of that abominable coffee with it. Our manner of eating was somewhat difficult too, for we were given spoons and forks but no knives.
"That's so, you can't file them down and make daggers," explained one of the German sailors. "We aren't taking any chances with neutrals or belligerents either." They weren't. We could readily see that. Of course one of the first things the Germans had done when we went aboard was to take away every firearm or weapon of any character and whatever might have been used to flash a signal to a vessel the raider might pursue or try to elude.