Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

Kiel and not at any Danish port. And, as the tug captain said afterwards, if he had towed the ship off, the Germans would have most likely

out the hawser directly afterwards; he would have received no pay for his work, and we certainly should not have landed in Denmark.

XI.

A fine lifeboat manned by that the Wolf had gene sturdy Danish sailors was ashore in the same place! alongside the ship; the sea All our fellow-countrymen on was very rough, but our ship board her would then have steady, firmly embedded in the been free, and they could have sandy bottom. Once more we given information and saved us all climbed a ship's ladder; as well. the lifeboat was rising and falling almost the height of the ship with the heavy seas, and descent into it was not easy. But nothing mattered now; once over the side of the ship we were were no longer in German hands, and were free. The waves dashed over and drenched us as we sat in the lifeboat; we were sitting in ioy water, all of us more or less wet through. At last the lifeboat crew pulled for the shore, the high seas sweeping over us all the way. grounded on the beach; the sturdy sailors carried some, others jumped into the water and waded ashore, and we were all on terra firma, free at last, after weary months of waiting and captivity. We had been saved at the eleventh hour, almost the fifty-ninth minute of it; we were at the gates of Germany, being due at Kiel the very next day. It was 8 miraculous escape if ever there was one, and came at a moment when all hope seemed gone. Would

We

Once on dry land we walked up to the lighthouse. There we were received with open arms. The kindly Danes could not do enough for us. We had only what we stood up in; we dried our clothes, other dry garments were offered us, hot drinks and food were supplied liberally, and we were generally made much of. We had come back to life and warmth once more. The lighthouse staff and villagers vied with each other in their efforts to make us feel at home and comfortable, and after interviews with some Danish Government officials we were taken to hotels in Skagen, the name of the nearest town, a small summer bathing resort just to the south of the Skaw. After lunch, the first square meal we had had for months, we set off to telegraph to our relatives and friends, and announce we were still in the world. It was one of our greatest anxieties on board, that we could not communicate with our friends, who we knew

would be grieving over our disappearance, and, we feared, must have given us up for lost. The same afternoon we walked back to the beach to see if we could go aboard the stranded ship to retrieve our luggage, but the sea was far too rough to allow of this, and the German and Spanish crew had not been taken off. While on the beach we saw two floating mines exploded by a Danish gunboat. We had not only had a narrow escape from the Germans, but also from the dangers of a mine-field. The next day was again too rough for us to go aboard-in fact it was so rough that the lifeboat went out and took everybody off the ship, both Spanish and German. The Spanish first mate was thus saved, and after all did not serve his sentence in Germany. It was reported that a German submarine appeared to take off the German officers, but it was too rough to lower the boats, so this could not be contrived.

The Igotz Mendi was now deserted, but she had reverted to her original owners and was no longer a German prize. She would have been the only prize the Wolf had seeured to take home-a neutral ship with only a few tons of coal on board, and a few married couples and sick and elderly men as prisoners. Not much to show for a fifteen months' cruise, and even that was denied the Germaus; though the Wolf had certainly carried home a valuable cargo and some hundreds of prisoners, had sunk seven

steamers and seven sailingships, and claimed many more ships sunk as a result of her mine-laying.

Never was there a more dramatic turning of the tables: the Germans were now interned and we were free. The German officers were sent off under guard to an inland town, and the sailors sent to a camp in another part of Denmark. The sailors did not attempt to disguise their joy at the turn events had taken. On their return to Germany they would have had a few weeks' leave, and then done duty in a submarine or at the front. Now, they were interned in a land where there was at least much more to eat than they could have hoped for in Germany, and their dangers were at an end till the war was over. They were marched under an armed guard of Danes up and down the village street several times on one of these days; they were all smiles, singing as they marched along.

The next day a hurricane was still blowing, and going aboard was still out of the question. The ship was blown farther inshore, and it began to look as if she would break up and we should see nothing of our personal belongings. The day after, however, was beautifully fine, and we left Skagen harbour in two motor barges and boarded the ship, which was in charge of the Danish authorities. After some diffioulty, for the ship was in a state of great chaos, we secured all our baggage,

which was landed that night at Skagen much to our relief, as it was badly wanted. We had set foot on the Igotz Mendi for the last time.

The position of the ship was a unique one. She was a neutral ship, a German prize, stranded in neutral waters with a crew composed of Germans and neutral prisoners, and carrying passenger prisoners of many enemy nationalities -English, Australian, Ameriean, Japanese, Chinese, and Indian. The Danish authorities adjudged her, on the day after her stranding, to be a Spanish ship; and before leaving her the Spanish flag was hoisted at her stern, the first time that or any other flag had appeared there since that November morning when the Germans had captured her far away in the Indian Ocean.

During the week we had to give evidence to the Danish authorities concerning our eapture and treatment on board. We were overwhelmed with kindness by the Danes, who made no secret of their sympathies with the Allies; invitations to dinners and parties flowed in, and we could not have accepted them all if we had stayed as many weeks as we had days. On Friday, March 1, most of us left Skagen. The whole village turned out to give us a good send-off. The ladies among us were presented with flowers and chocolates, the men with smokes, and we left with the heartiest good wishes of our

From

warm-hearted hosts. Skagen our passage was arranged by the British Consular authorities. We stayed a few days in Copenhagen, and then travelled through Sweden and Norway, leaving a port somewhere in that country for another somewhere in this, and 80 to London, where we arrived in a characteristic pea-soup fog on the morning of March 10, after incessant travelling by train and sea for a week. We feared that as we had escaped the Germans once, they might make a special effort to sink us orossing the North Sea; but fortunately the U-boats left us alone, though few, if any of us, turned in during those last two nights.

No comment need be made on the German procedure of dragging their prisoners, month after month, over the oceans. Such a thing had never been done before. Some men had been kept prisoners on the Wolf for nearly a year. It was hard enough on the men, but infinitely worse for the women. One had been eight months, one seven, and others five months in captivity, often under the worst possible conditions. But they all kept cheerful throughout, even when it appeared we were certain to be taken into Germany.

Every man is liable to think under such conditions that he is in a worse case than his fellow-captives. There were certainly examples of very

hard luck amongst us. The American captain had abandoned his sea calling for six years, and decided to make one more trip and take his wife to see her relatives in Newcastle, N.S.W. They never got there, but had eight months' captivity and were landed in Denmark instead. Many sailors captured in the Pacifio had left the Atlantic trade after encounters with the U-boats in that ocean. One of the members of the Spanish crew had been a toreador, but his mother considered that calling too dangerous, and recommended the sea as safer. Her son now thinks otherwise; perhaps she does, too! I thought, until our timely timely rescue eame, that our own case was a fairly hard one. I had

retired, after spending twenty years in Government service in Siam, and we had decided to spend some months at least, possibly "the duration," in South Africa before proceeding home. Our plans went hopelessly astray, our health has not improved by the treatment; but although we took six months to get from Siam to London, the Germans have succeeded in getting us home much earlier than we, or they, anticipated.

Fortunately one usually forgets the miseries of sea travel soon after one gets ashore. But never, I think, will one of us ever forget our long captivity at sea with our enemies, or the canned crab, the bully beef, the beans, and the roll of the Igotz Mendi.

[blocks in formation]

"Keep the paddles swiftly going;
Rough and fierce the river's flowing,
Ram bol, Hurry bol, Hurry bol Aee.
See the sun is fast declining,
To the moon his charge resigning,

Ram bol, Hurry bol, Hurry bol Aee.

Pull away, boys, nothing fearing,
Though the rapids we are nearing,
Ram bol, Hurry bol, Hurry bol Äee.

In the well-plied oar confiding,
Safely o'er them we are gliding,

Ram bol, Hurry bol, Hurry bol Aee.

Keep her clear that granite block there,
See, she nears the sunken rock there,

Ram bol, Hurry bol, Hurry bol Ẵee.

Now the threatened danger's over,
Nothing from her course shall move her,
Ram bol, Hurry bol, Hurry bol Lee.

Soon we'll make the ghat, my hearties!
Spend the night in jovial parties,
Ram bol, Hurry bol, Hurry bol Aee.”
(ad infinitum.)

THE Conventional India of the picture-books-of 'Little Henry and his Bearer'-lay sleepily around them. That is to say: tall, tawny tiger-grass that brushed their elephant's forehead; green and feathery toddy-palms deep dipped in golden sunshine; and, in the distance, a vivid streak of orude turquoise, which betrayed the course of a mighty, orocodilehaunted river. The noonday sun beat impartially upon the jungle, the elephant, and the preposterously blue Brahmaputra-for that was the river's name. Incidentally, the ele

-Assamese Boat Song.

phant possessed a name too: she was called Maria.

Maria possessed no howdah, and the two young sportsmen who rode her clung desperately to the primitive "pad" of their lurching steed, and still more desperately to their doublebarrelled 450s. Readers who may have studied photographs of elephant processions in Princely Indian Durbars need retain no illusions about Maria. She was neither ornamental, docile, nor sagacious. On the contrary, this old red-eyed slut of a timber-hauler from a teachest factory near by bore

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »