Von Luckner had been incorrect in believing the island entirely uninhabited. Three Tahitians lived there to make copra (dried cocoanut) and to raise pigs and chickens for the firm of Grand, Miller & Co. of Papeete; this firm was shortly to send a vessel to take away its employes, a fact which the Germans learned with mixed emotions.
They brought ashore everything they could from their wrecked ship, including planks and beams, of which they constructed barracks; also provisions, machine guns, and wireless apparatus. The heavy guns were put out of commission—likewise the ship's motor. The wireless plant, a very powerful one, was set up between two cocoanut trees. It was equipped with sending and receiving apparatus, and without difficulty its operator could hear Pago-Pago, Tahiti, and Honolulu.
On Aug. 23 Count von Luckner and five men set out in an armed motor sloop for the Cook Islands, which they reached in seven days. There they succeeded in deceiving the local authorities, but a few days later they and their boat were captured in the Fiji Islands by the local constabulary and handed over to the British authorities. Thus ended the Captain's hope of seizing an American ship and returning to Mopeha for his crew.
On Sept. 5 the French schooner Lutece from Papeete arrived at Mopeha to get the three Tahitians and their crops. First Lieutenant Kling took a motor boat and a machine gun and captured the schooner, which had a large cargo of flour, salmon, and beef, with a supply of fresh water. Kling and the rest of the Germans, after dismantling the wireless, left the island that night, abandoning forty-eight prisoners, including the Americans, the crew of the Lutece, and four natives. Before going they destroyed what they could not take with them, cut down many trees to get the cocoanuts more easily, and left to the prisoners very scant provisions, and bad at that. The few cocoanuts that remained were largely destroyed by the great number of rats on the island. There was plenty of fish and turtles.
After the flight of the Germans the French flag was hoisted on the island and the twentieth-century Robinson Crusoes organized themselves under Captain Southard of the Manila and M. Fain, one of the owners of the Lutece. The camp was rebuilt, the supplies rationed out, the catching of fish and turtles arranged, and the question of going in search of help discussed. On Sept. 8 Pedro Miller, one of the owners of the Lutece, set sail in an open boat with Captains Southard and Porutu, a mate, Captain Williams, and three sailors, hoping to reach the Island of Maupiti, eighty-five miles to the east; but after struggling eight days against head winds and a high sea he returned to Mopeha with his exhausted companions. Two days later, Sept. 19, Captain Smith of the Slade, with two mates and a sailor, left the island in a leaky whaleboat dubbed the Deliverer of Mopeha and shaped their course toward the west; in ten days they covered 1,080 miles and landed at Tutuila, one of the Samoan Islands, where the American authorities informed Tahiti by wireless of the serious plight of the men marooned on Mopeha. The British Governor at Apia—Robert Louis Stevenson's last home—also offered to send a relief ship; but the Governor of the French Establishments of Oceania, declining this offer with thanks, dispatched the French schooner Tiare-Taporo from Papeete on Oct. 4.
Two days later the relief expedition sighted Mopeha by means of a column of smoke that rose from the island, for the Robinson Crusoes had organized a permanent signal system to attract the attention of passing vessels. The arrival of the rescuers was greeted with frantic acclamations. By evening the last boatload of refugees was aboard the Tiare-Taporo, and on the morning of Oct. 10 the schooner reached Papeete, where the prisoners at last were free.
The fate of the Lutece with the main body of the Seeadler's crew was indicated, though not fully explained, by a cable dispatch from Valparaiso, Chile, March 5, 1918, stating that the Chilean schooner Falcon had arrived there from the Easter Islands with fifty-eight sailors formerly belonging to the crew of the Seeadler. The sailors were interned by the Chilean Government. Count Felix von Luckner, commander of the Seeadler, who, with five of his men, had been captured by the local constabulary of the Fiji Islands, was interned by the British in a camp near Auckland, New Zealand. In December he and other interned Germans escaped to sea in an open boat and traveled nearly 500 miles, suffering from lack of food and water, but were recaptured after a two weeks' chase.