right did not bother the Germans.  Many times they promised him to release his ship, never intending to do so.  Whenever they were asked why they did not release us when we thought it possible, they always advanced “military reasons” as the excuse.  “That,” as I said to the Captain, “covers a multitude of sins.”  The Commander of the Wolf had personally assured the married couples on the Matunga that they would be kept no longer than two months.  But they were kept nearly seven.  Some men had been kept prisoners on the Wolf for more than a year.

It was hard enough on the men, but infinitely worse for the women.  One had been eight months, one seven, and others five months in captivity on the high seas, often under the worst possible conditions.  But they all played their part well, and kept cheerful throughout, even when it appeared they were certain to be taken with their husbands into Germany.

Every man is liable to think, under such conditions, that he is in a worse case than his fellow-captives, and there were certainly examples of very hard luck amongst us.  Mention of a few cases might be of interest.  The American Captain had abandoned his sea calling for six years, and decided, at his wife’s request, to make one more trip and take her to see her relatives in Newcastle, N.S.W.  They never got there, but had eight months’ captivity and landed in Denmark instead.  Many sailors had left the Atlantic trade after encounters with the U boats in that ocean, only to be caught by the Wolf in the Pacific.  One of the members of the Spanish crew had been a toreador, but his mother considered that calling too dangerous and recommended the sea as safer.  Her son now thinks otherwise; perhaps she does too!

The Captain of a small sailing ship from Mauritius to West Australia, in ballast to load timber, saw the Wolf when a day off his destination.  Not knowing her, he unwisely ran up the Red Ensign—­a red rag to a bull, indeed—­and asked the Wolf to report him “all well” at the next port.  The Wolf turned about and sunk his little ship.  Although the Captain was at one time on the Wolf almost in sight of his home in Mauritius, his next port was Kiel, where it is to be feared that he, an old man of seventy, was the reverse of “all well.”

One of our fellow-prisoners had been on the P. & O. Mongolia when she was sunk by one of the Wolf’s mines off Bombay.  Later on, on the Hitachi, he was caught by the mine-layer herself!  But he defeated the enemy after all, as he escaped on the Igotz Mendi!  One of the seafaring men with us had already been torpedoed by the Huns in the Channel.  Within a fortnight he was at sea again.  The next time he was caught and his ship sunk by the Wolf off New Zealand.  He also escaped on the Igotz Mendi, and when last seen ashore was dying to get to sea again, in a warm corner, so he said, so that he could “strafe the Huns” once more.  They had held him prisoner for eight months, and he had some leeway to make up.