The Captain of the Spanish ship was now relieved of his duties—­and also of his cabin, which the German Captain had annexed, leaving the owner thereof the chartroom to sleep in—­and was naturally very chagrined at the course events had taken, especially as he said he had been informed by the Consul at Lourenco Marques that the course between there and Colombo was quite clear, and had not even been informed of the disappearance of the Hitachi, though she had been overdue at Delagoa Bay about a month.  Consequently he had been showing his navigation lights at sea, and without them the Wolf would probably not have seen him, as it was about 1 a.m. when the Wolf picked him up.

The remaining Spanish officers took their watch on the bridge, always with a member of the prize crew in attendance; the Spanish engineers remained in charge of the engine-room, again with a German always present; and the Spanish crew remained on duty as before.  There was a prize crew of nine Germans on board; the Captain, Lieutenant Rose, who had also been in charge of the Hitachi after her capture, and the First Officer, who had also filled that post on the Hitachi, being the only officers.  Lieutenant Rose spoke Spanish in addition to English and French, and the Spanish Captain also spoke very good English.  Some of the Spanish officers also spoke English, but the knowledge of it was not so general as it was on the Wolf, where every officer we met spoke our language, and most of the prize crew spoke quite enough to get on with.

The Spanish Captain, a charming gentleman, and in appearance anything but a seafaring man, was, however, frankly puzzled by some current English slang.  One of the passenger prisoners—­the hero of the kerosene porridge—­was known among us as the “hot-air merchant.”  This was simple enough, but when we said he also suffered from cold feet, the Spanish Captain admitted defeat.  Such a contradictory combination seemed inconceivable.  “If a man were full of hot air, how could he have cold feet?” he said.  Lieutenant Rose, however, was au fait with the latest English slang, and always used it correctly.

The Igotz Mendi, 4,600 tons, had been completed in 1916, and was a ship admirably fitted for her purpose, which, however, was not that of carrying passengers.  Ordinarily she was a collier, or carried iron ore.  Her decks were of iron, scorchingly hot in the tropics and icy cold in northern latitudes.  There was no place sheltered from the sun in which to sit on the small deck space, and the small awnings which were spasmodically rigged up were quite insufficient for the purpose.  There were now twenty-one “passenger” prisoners on board, including the Japanese stewardess, and five Asiatics.  There were no cabins except those provided for the officers, who generously gave them up to the married couples on board, the officers taking quarters much more crowded and much less desirable.