He sent back a verbal message that there was no alternative but to put us all, women included, on the _Wolf_, as the _Hitachi_ had no coal, but that they should be landed at a neutral port from the next boat caught, if she had any coal.
We were still not satisfied with this, and I again protested to our Captain against what was equivalent to putting our women in a German first-line trench to be shot by our own people. He replied that we need have no anxiety on that score. "We know exactly where all your cruisers are, we pick up all their wireless messages, and we shall never see or go anywhere near one of them." Whether the Germans did know this, or hear our ships' wireless I cannot tell, but it is certainly true that we never, between September and February, saw a British or Allied war vessel of any sort or kind, or even the smoke of one (with the single exception to be mentioned later), although during that time we travelled from Ceylon to the Cape, and the whole length of the Atlantic Ocean from below 40° S. to the shores of Iceland, and thence across to the shores of Norway and Denmark. But notwithstanding the Captain's assurance, we still felt it possible that on the _Wolf_ we might be fired on by an Allied cruiser, and some of us set about settling up our affairs, and kept such documents always on our persons, so that if we were killed and our bodies found by a friendly vessel our last wishes concerning our affairs might be made known. I wrote my final directions on the blank sheet of my Letter of Credit on the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Bank, which, after being cancelled, I now keep as a relic of a most anxious time when I was a very unwilling guest of the Kaiser's Navy.
The food on the _Hitachi_ was now getting poorer and poorer. There was no longer any fruit, cheese, vegetables, coffee, or jam. All the eggs were bad, and when opened protested with a lively squeak; only a very little butter remained, the beer was reserved for the ship's officers, iced water and drinks were no longer obtainable, and the meat became more and more unpleasant. One morning at breakfast, the porridge served had evidently made more than a nodding acquaintance with some kerosene, and was consequently quite uneatable. So most of the passengers sent it away in disgust. But one of them, ever anxious to please his captors, "wolfed" his allowance notwithstanding. He constantly assured the Germans that the food was always ample and excellent, no matter how little or bad it was. When Lieutenant Rose came down to breakfast that morning, we were all waiting to see what he would do with his kerosene porridge. He took one spoonful and, amid roars of laughter from us all, called for the steward to take it away at once. Our hero looked as if he were sorry he had not done the same! On the _Wolf_ the food was still poorer, and beri-beri broke out on the raider. A case of typhoid also appeared on the _Wolf_, and the German doctors thereupon inoculated every man, woman, and child on both ships against typhoid. We had heard before of German "inoculations," and some of us had nasty forebodings as to the results. But protests were of no avail--every one had to submit. The first inoculation took place on November 1st and the next on November 11th, and some of the people were inoculated a third time. The Senior Doctor of the _Wolf_, on hearing that I had come from Siam, told me that a Siamese Prince had once attended his classes at a German University. He remembered his name, and, strangely enough, this Prince was the Head of the University of Siam with which I had so recently been connected!