mate owned up.  He said that he did it for the sake of the women and children on board; as the sea was rough, their lives would have been in danger if they had been put in the lifeboats when the ship was bombed.  He was confined to his cabin for the rest of the voyage, but we managed to see and talk to him from time to time, and thanked him for his bravery.  Later he was sentenced by the Commander of the Wolf to three years’ imprisonment in Germany and a fine of 2,000 marks.  From this time all the Spanish officers were relieved of their duties.

The Germans had told us that, in the event of the prize being captured while the weather was rough, the ship would not be bombed or sunk, as they had no desire to endanger the lives of the women or children amongst us.  In fact, so they said, the ship would not be bombed under any conditions when once the Wolf had got all the coal she wanted.  It was indeed difficult to see what purpose would be served by the Germans sinking the Spanish ship, if she were overhauled by an Allied cruiser.  The Allies could not keep her, as she would have to be restored to Spain; the Germans said they would not keep her, but return her to her owners.  To have deliberately sunk her would only have meant a gratuitous offence to Spain.  Nevertheless, the next time we met the Wolf a new supply of bombs and hand grenades was put on board our ship.  At the same time an extra Lieutenant came on board, additional neutrals were sent over to help work the ship, and the prize crew was increased from nine to nineteen.  All the prize crew now wore caps with the words “S.M.S. Otter” inscribed thereon.  Somewhere about this time the American Captain and the second mate of one of the captured ships had returned to them their instruments which had been taken from them at the time of their capture.

The Kaiser’s birthday, which fell on a Sunday, was honoured by the sacrifice of the last calf, and was marked by a most terrific storm.  The wind was raging for hours at a hurricane force between eleven and twelve, the seas were between thirty and forty feet high, and it seemed impossible that the ship could live in such a sea.  It seemed that she must inevitably founder.  But notwithstanding terrible rolling, she shipped very little water, but all of the prisoners were alarmed at the rough weather and the rolling of the ship.  The wireless aerials were brought down by the storm, and any seas that did come on board smashed whatever deck hamper had been left about.

From this day onwards we lived in a condition of great misery, and death stared us in the face many times.  The prospect was a gloomy one:  just when my wife and I had reached the time to which we had been looking forward for many years it seemed daily increasingly unlikely that our lives could escape a violent and brutal ending.  Such thoughts inevitably occurred to our minds during these dark and anxious days.  But there was still to come even worse than we had