ny.

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.

There was, too, the case of the Australians taken prisoner on the S.S.
_Matunga_. The women and military doctors had certainly escaped on the
_Igotz Mendi_, but there were taken into Germany from the _Matunga_
three military officers and three elderly married civilians over
military age. They were going but a week's voyage from their homes (July
1917); but, torn from t