If the ship had only stopped when ordered by signals to do so, there would have been no firing at all.  Even if she had stopped after the warning shots had been fired, no more firing would have taken place and nobody need have left the ship at all.  What a vast amount of trouble, fear, anxiety, and damage to life and property might have been saved if only the raider’s orders had been obeyed!  It seemed too, at the time, that if only the Hitachi had turned tail and bolted directly the raider’s smoke was seen on the horizon by the officer on watch on the bridge—­at the latest this must have been about 1.30—­she might have escaped altogether, as she was a much quicker boat than the German.  At any rate, she might have tried.  Her fate would have been no worse if she had failed to escape, for surely even the Germans could not deny any ship the right to escape if she could effect it.  Certainly the seaplane might have taken up the chase, and ordered the Hitachi to stop.  We heard afterwards that one ship—­the Wairuna, from New Zealand to San Francisco—­had been caught in this way.  The seaplane had hovered over her, dropped messages on her deck ordering her to follow the plane to a concealed harbour near, failing which bombs would be dropped to explode the ship.  Needless to say, the ship followed these instructions.

“There was no panic, and the women were splendid.”  How often one has read that in these days of atrocity at sea!  We were to realize it now; the women were indeed splendid.  There was no crying or screaming or hysteria, or wild inquiries.  They were perfectly calm and collected:  none of them showed the least fear, even under fire.  The women took the matter as coolly as if being shelled and leaving a ship in lifeboats were nothing much out of the ordinary.  Their sang-froid was marvellous.

As we thought the ship was slowly sinking, we pushed off from her side as quickly as possible.  There were now four lifeboats in the water at some distance from each other.  The one in which we were contained about twenty-four persons.  There was no officer or member of the crew with us, while another boat contained officers and sailors only.  No one in our boat knew where we were to go or what we were to do.  One passenger wildly suggested that we should hoist a sail and set sail for Colombo, two days’ steaming away!  Search was made for provisions and water in our boat, but she was so full of people and impedimenta that nothing could be found.  It was found, however, that water was rapidly coming into the boat, and before long it reached to our knees.  The hole which should have been plugged could not be discovered, so for more than an hour some of the men took turns at pulling, and baling the water out with their sun-helmets.  This was very hot work, as it must be remembered we were not far from the Equator.  Ultimately, however, the hole was found and more or less satisfactorily plugged.  Water, however, continued to come in, so baling had still to be proceeded with.  An Irish Tommy, going home from Singapore to join up, was in our boat.  He was most cheerful and in every way helpful, working hard and pulling all the time.  It was he who plugged the hole, and as he was almost the only one among us who seemed to have any useful knowledge about the management of lifeboats, we were very glad to reckon him among our company.