For nearly a week following this the Wolf hove to, sending the seaplane up several times each day for scouting purposes. Apparently she had picked up some information by her wireless apparatus and was on the lookout for a vessel. On the third day the Wolfchen went up three times, and, on returning from its last flight, dropped lights. Early the next morning none of the prisoners was allowed on deck. A gun was fired by the Wolf, and it was afterward found that it was to stop the British steamer Matunga, with general cargo and passengers, including a number of military officers and men.
BETRAYED BY WIRELESS
It was on the morning of Aug. 5, when the Matunga was nearing the coast of the territory formerly known as German New Guinea, that she fell in with the Wolf, which was mistaken for an ordinary tramp steamer, as the two vessels ran parallel to each other for about two miles. Then the Wolf suddenly revealed her true character by running up the German flag, dropping a portion of her forward bulwarks, exposing the muzzles of her guns, and firing a shot across the bows of the Matunga. At the same time the Wolf sent a seaplane to circle over the Matunga at a low altitude for the obvious purpose of ascertaining whether the latter was armed. Apparently satisfied with the seaplane's report, the German Captain sent a prize crew, armed with bayonets and pistols, to take possession of the British ship. Before their arrival, however, all the Matunga's code books, log books, and other papers were thrown overboard. During the time the prize crew, all of whom spoke English well, were overhauling the Matunga, it was learned that the Germans had been lying in wait for her for five days, as they had somehow learned that she was carrying 500 tons of coal, which they needed badly, and that the German wireless operator had been following her course from the time of her departure from Sydney toward the end of July.
The two ships, now both under German command, proceeded together to a very secluded natural harbor on the north coast of Dutch New Guinea, the entrance to which was watched by two German guard boats, while a wireless plant was set up on a neighboring hill and the Wolf's seaplane patrolled the sea around for about 100 miles on the lookout for any threatened danger. The two ships remained in the Dutch harbor for nearly a fortnight, during which time the Wolf was careened and her hull scraped of barnacles and weeds in the most thorough and methodical manner, after which the coal was transferred from the Matunga's bunkers. The latter vessel was then taken ten miles out to sea, where everything lying loose was thrown into the hold and the hatches battened down to obviate the possibility of any floating wreckage remaining after she was sunk. Bombs were then placed on board and exploded, and the Matunga went down in five or six minutes without leaving a trace.
Before the Matunga was sunk all her crew and passengers were transferred to the Wolf, which then pursued a zigzag course across the Pacific Ocean and through the China Sea to the vicinity of Singapore, where she sowed her last remaining mines. According to stories told by the crew, they had sown most of their mines off Cape Town, Bombay, Colombo, the Australian coast, and in the Tasman Sea, between Australia and New Zealand. They also boasted that on one occasion, when off the coast of New South Wales, their seaplane made an early morning expedition over Sydney Harbor (the headquarters of the British Navy in the Pacific) and noted the disposition of the shipping in that port. They also claimed that the seaplane was the means of saving the Wolf from capture off the Australian coast on one occasion, when she was successful in sighting a warship in sufficient time to enable the Wolf to make good her escape.
A week or more was spent by the Wolf in the China Sea and off Singapore, whence she worked her way to the Indian Ocean for the supposed purpose of picking up wireless instructions from Berlin and Constantinople.
An American regiment marching through a French village (American Official Photograph)
