.

"Great was our joy now. I had all my men come on deck and line up for
review. The fellows hadn't a rag on. Thus, in Nature's garb, we gave
three cheers for the German flag on the Choising. The men on the
Choising told us afterward 'we couldn't make out what that meant,
those stark naked fellows all cheering!' The sea was too high, and we
had to wait two days before we could board the Choising on Dec. 16. We
took very little with us; the schooner was taken in tow. In the
afternoon we sunk the Ayesha and we were all very sad. The good old
Ayesha had served us faithfully for six weeks. The log showed that we
had made 1,709 sea miles under sail since leaving Keeling. She wasn't
at all rotten and unseaworthy, as they had told me, but nice and white
and dry inside. I had grown fond of the ship, on which I could
practice my old sailing manoeuvres. The only trouble was that the
sails would go to pieces every now and then because they were so old.

"But anyway she went down quite properly, didn't she?" Muecke turned to
the officer. "We had bored a hole in her; she filled slowly and then
all of a sudden plump disappeared! That was the saddest day of the
whole month. We gave her three cheers, and my next yacht at Kiel will
be named Ayesha, that's sure.

"To the Captain of the Choising I had said, when I hailed him: 'I do
not know what will happen to the ship. The war situation may make it
necessary for me to strand it.' He did not want to undertake the
responsibility. I proposed that we work together, and I would take the
responsibility. Then we traveled together for three weeks, from
Padang to Hodeida. The Choising was some ninety meters long and had a
speed of nine miles, though sometimes only four. If she had not
accidentally arrived I had intended to cruise high along the west
coast of Sumatra to the region of the northern monsoon. I came about
six degrees north, then over Aden to the Arabian coast. In the Red Sea
the northeastern monsoon, which here blows southeast, could bring us
to Djidda. I had heard in Padang that Turkey is allied with us, so we
would be able to get safely through Arabia to Germany.

"I next waited for information through ships, but the Choising did not
know anything definite, either. By way of the Luchs, the Koenigsberg,
and Kormoran the reports were uncertain. Besides, according to
newspapers at Aden, the Arabs were said to have fought with the
English. Therein there seemed to be offered an oppor