On the morning of February 7th we for the first time encountered icefloes, when attempting the northern passage between Greenland and Iceland.  About 11 a.m. we stopped and hooted for the Wolf, as a fog had come on—­the first time we had heard a steamer’s siren since the day of our capture.  We waited for some hours in the ice, but no answering signal came, so the Captain decided to turn back, as he thought it impossible to force his way through the ice.  We therefore went back again on our course, the Captain hoping that the wind would change and cease blowing the icefloes from off the shores of Greenland.

That morning is unforgettable.  The cold fog, the great bergs of ice floating by the ship and sometimes crashing into her, the dreary sea, the cold, filthy, miserable ship, our hopeless condition, all helped to lower our spirits, and we felt we had plumbed the very depths of misery.

After a day or two slow steaming on this course and occasional stopping altogether—­what dreary, miserable, hopeless days!—­we resumed our attempt to go to the north of Iceland, evidently to escape the attention of the British ships which the Germans expected to encounter between the south of Iceland and the Faroes.  But before long it became evident that ice was still about, and in the darkness of the early morning of February 11th we bumped heavily against icebergs several times.  This threw some of us out of our bunks; once again there was no more sleep during the night.  This time the Captain abandoned his attempt to go through the northern passage, and turned the ship round to try his luck in the passage he did not expect to be so free from British attentions.

We thought perhaps that as we were on short rations and even drinking water was running short, and the case of us all really desperate, the Captain would land us and give up the ship at Reykjavik, leaving us there to be rescued.  Even a stay in Iceland would be better than one in Germany, for which country we now all suspected we were bound.  The uncertainty concerning our ultimate destination added to our miseries, and these were not lessened when on February 11th the Captain told us, for the first time that it was, and always had been, the intention to take us on the Igotz Mendi to Germany, there to be interned in civilian prisoners’ camps.  He told us, too, that the women and those of the men over military age would be released at once, but we all declined to believe anything else our captors told us, as they had deliberately and repeatedly deceived us by assuring us at various times they were going to land us in Spain, or Norway, or some other neutral country.  The string of German lies must surely by now be ended.  But no!  There were still more to come, as will be seen later on.

At daylight on the 11th we were still among icefloes, but going away from instead of meeting them, and on that morning we saw in the distance the coast of Iceland, which the Germans tried to persuade us was the sails of fishing boats, as they did not wish us to think we were so near the Icelandic coast, the first land that we had seen since the Maldive Islands, a week after our capture, i.e. more than four months before.  We also saw a few fishing boats off the coast.