We were now proceeding north every day, keeping in mid-Atlantic—­always well off the trade routes, though of course we crossed some on our way north.  The Wolf, naturally, was not looking for trouble, and had no intention of putting up a fight if she could avoid it.  She was not looking for British warships; what we were anxious to know was whether the British warships were looking for her!  On the 19th the Captain again thought he saw distant smoke on the horizon, and we careered about to avoid it as before.  But on this occasion we were running away from a cloud!  The next day we left the tropics, and with favourable weather were making an average of about 180 knots daily.  On several days about this time, we passed through large masses of seaweed drifting from the Sargasso Sea.  We did not meet the Wolf on the 22nd as our Captain evidently expected to do, and we waited about for her several hours.  But next day we did meet her, and we were then told that in eighteen days we should be ashore.  We wondered where!  We were then about 30 deg.  N., and we parted from the Wolf the same afternoon.  It was always a great relief to us all when we parted from her, keeping our ship’s company of prisoners intact.  For the men amongst us feared we might all be put upon the Wolf to be taken to Germany, leaving our wives on the Igotz Mendi.  This, so we had been told, had been the intention of the Wolf’s Commander when the prisoners were first put on the Spanish boat.  He had ordered that only women, and prisoners above sixty and under sixteen should be put on the Igotz Mendi, but the German doctor, a humane and kindly man, would have nothing to do with this plan and declared he would not be responsible for the health of the women if this were done.  So that we owe it to him that wives were not separated from their husbands during this anxious time, as the Commander of the Wolf had inhumanly suggested.

CHAPTER IX

EN ROUTE FOR RUHLEBEN—­VIA ICELAND

A last effort was made to persuade the Captain to ask the Wolf’s Commander to release the Spanish ship here, take all the prize crew off, and send us back to Cape Town (which would have suited the plans of every one of us), for a suspicion began to grow in our minds that Germany, and nowhere else, was the destination intended for us.  But our Captain would not listen to this suggestion, and said he was sure the Spanish Captain would not go back to Cape Town even if he promised to do so.

On the next day, January 24th, relief seemed nearer than it had done since our capture four months before.  I was sitting on the starboard deck, when suddenly, about 3.30 p.m., I saw coming up out of the mist, close to our starboard bow, what looked like a cruiser with four funnels.  The Spanish officer on the bridge had apparently not seen it, or did not want to!  Neither, apparently, had the German sailor,