rbour mouth in a
vain attempt to block the narrow entrance and keep us out; the
_Feldmarschal_ now on her way upon the high seas, to carry valuable food
for us and maybe to be torpedoed by her late owners. The crowning
insult, that this ship should have recently been towed by the
_ex-Professor Woermann_--another captured prize.

What of the two dry docks that were to make Dar-es-Salaam the only
ship-repairing station on the East Coast? One lies sunk at the harbour
mouth, shortly, however, to be raised and utilised by us; the other in
the harbour, sunk too soon, an ineffectual sacrifice.

Germans and their womenfolk crowd the streets; many of the former quite
young and obvious deserters, the latter, thick of body and thicker of
ankle, walk the town unmolested. Not one insult or injury has ever been
offered to a German woman in this whole campaign. But these "victims of
our bow and spear" are not a bit pleased. The calm indifference that our
men display towards them leaves them hurt and chagrined. Better far to
receive any kind of attention than to be ignored by these indifferent
soldiers. What a tribute to their charms that the latest Hun fashion,
latest in Dar-es-Salaam, but latest by three years in Paris or London,
should provoke no glance of interest on Sunday mornings! One feels that
they long to pose as martyrs, and that our quixotic chivalry cuts them
to the quick.

There have been many bombardments of the forts of this town, and huge
dugouts for the whole population have been constructed. Great
underground towns, twenty feet below the surface, all roofed in with
steel railway sleepers. No wonder that many of the inhabitants fled to
Morogoro and Tabora. What a wicked thing of the Englander to shell an
"undefended" town! The search-lights and the huge gun positions and the
maze of trenches, barbed wire and machine-gun emplacements hewn out of
the living rock, of course, to the Teuton mind, do not constitute
defence.

But you must not think that we have had it all our own way in this
sea-warfare here. For in Zanzibar harbour the masts of H.M.S. _Pegasus_
peep above the water--a mute reminder of the 20th September, 1914. For
on that fatal day, attested to by sixteen graves in the cemetery, and
more on an island near, a traitor betrayed the fact that our ship was
anchored and under repairs in harbour and the rest of the fleet away. Up
sailed the _Koenigsberg_ and opened fire; and soon our poor ship was
adrift and