New Year’s Day!  With the dawn of 1918 we looked back on the last few months of its predecessor and what they had meant and brought to us all.  What would the New Year bring forth?  Liberty, or continued captivity; life, or death at sea?  On New Year’s morning we wished each other good luck and a Happy New Year, but with the news of our captors’ intentions given us on the preceding day our prospects were the reverse of rosy.

The two ships had parted on the evening of the 30th, both going north, and we did not see the Wolf again till the morning of January 4th.  She was then seen to be overhauling a ship on the horizon.  We followed at a short distance, and before long saw a ship in full sail.  The Wolf approached her, spoke to[3] her, and, to our intense astonishment, released her.  It seemed too good to be true that the Wolf would leave any ship she met quite unmolested, but so it was—­for a short time.  It was between ten and eleven when the Wolf and her prize proceeded on their original course and the sailing ship crossed our course astern.  About 1.30 p.m., however, we changed our course and turned about.  We were all mystified as to what was going to happen, until we saw a sail on the horizon.  The Wolf’s purpose was evident then.  She was going back to destroy the ship whose existence she had forgiven in the morning.  Imagine the feelings of the crew of her prey; seeing the Wolf bearing down on her in the morning, their suspense as to their fate and that of their ship, their joy at their release, and—­here was the Wolf again!  What would their fate be now?  The Wolf did not leave them long in doubt.  She came up to her prize about 5 p.m.  She was a four-masted barque in full sail, in ballast from the Cape to South America, and made a beautiful picture as she lay bathed in floods of golden light from the setting sun.  Before dark, however, preparations had begun to remove her officers and crew and provisions, and this was completed in a few hours.  We were invited by the Germans to stay up and see the end.  They told us a searchlight would be thrown on the ship, that we might better see her go down.  Stage effects, with a vengeance!  But they were not carried out—­it was a too dangerous proceeding, as the enemy regretfully realized.  We waited up till past eleven and saw lights flitting about the doomed ship, as the Germans sailors were removing some things, making fast others, and placing the bombs to blow her up.  But none waited up for the end, which we heard took place after midnight.  The ship first canted over, her sails resting on the water, righted herself and then slowly disappeared.  It was a beautiful moonlight night for the commission of so dark a deed.  The Germans afterwards told us that when the Wolf first spoke the barque she gave her name Storobrore and said she was a Norwegian ship, and so was released.  The Germans had afterwards discovered from the Wolf’s shipping register that she was the Alec Fawn and British owned before the war, and therefore to be destroyed.