Five Months on a German Raider | Page 3

Steward standing by to help. The women had to climb the rail and gangway which was lashed thereto, and the boat was so full of gear and tackle that at first it was quite impossible for any one to find a seat in the boat. It was a difficult task for any woman to get into this boat, and everybody was in a great hurry, expecting the firing to recommence, or the ship to sink beneath us, or both; my wife fell in, and in so doing dropped her jewel-case out of her handbag into the bottom of the boat, and it was seen no more that day. The husbands followed their wives into the boat, and several other men among the first-class passengers also clambered in.
Directly after the order to lower away was given, and before any one could settle in the boat, the stern falls broke, and for a second the boat hung from the bow falls vertically, the occupants hanging on to anything they could--a dreadful moment, especially in view of what we had seen happen to the No. 1 port boat a few moments before. Then, immediately afterwards, the bow falls broke, or were cut, the boat dropped into the water with a loud thud and a great splash, and righted itself. We were still alongside the ship when another boat was being swung out and lowered immediately on to our heads. We managed to push off just in time before the other boat, the falls of which also broke, reached the water.
Thus, there was no preparation made for accidents--we might have been living in the times of profoundest peace for all the trouble that had been taken to see that everything was ready in case of accident. Instead of which, nothing was ready--not a very creditable state of affairs for a great steamship company in times such as these, when, thanks to the Huns' ideas of sea chivalry, any ship may have to be abandoned at a moment's notice. Some passengers had asked for boat drill when the ship left Singapore, but were told there was no need for it, or for any similar preparations till after Cape Town, which, alas, never was reached. Accordingly passengers had no places given to them in the boats; the boats were not ready, and confusion, instead of order, prevailed. It was nothing short of a miracle that more people were not drowned.
If the ship had only stopped when ordered by signals to do so, there would have been no firing at all. Even if she had stopped after the warning shots had been fired, no more firing would have taken place and nobody need have left the ship at all. What a vast amount of trouble, fear, anxiety, and damage to life and property might have been saved if only the raider's orders had been obeyed! It seemed too, at the time, that if only the Hitachi had turned tail and bolted directly the raider's smoke was seen on the horizon by the officer on watch on the bridge--at the latest this must have been about 1.30--she might have escaped altogether, as she was a much quicker boat than the German. At any rate, she might have tried. Her fate would have been no worse if she had failed to escape, for surely even the Germans could not deny any ship the right to escape if she could effect it. Certainly the seaplane might have taken up the chase, and ordered the Hitachi to stop. We heard afterwards that one ship--the Wairuna, from New Zealand to San Francisco--had been caught in this way. The seaplane had hovered over her, dropped messages on her deck ordering her to follow the plane to a concealed harbour near, failing which bombs would be dropped to explode the ship. Needless to say, the ship followed these instructions.
"There was no panic, and the women were splendid." How often one has read that in these days of atrocity at sea! We were to realize it now; the women were indeed splendid. There was no crying or screaming or hysteria, or wild inquiries. They were perfectly calm and collected: none of them showed the least fear, even under fire. The women took the matter as coolly as if being shelled and leaving a ship in lifeboats were nothing much out of the ordinary. Their sang-froid was marvellous.
As we thought the ship was slowly sinking, we pushed off from her side as quickly as possible. There were now four lifeboats in the water at some distance from each other. The one in which we were contained about twenty-four persons. There was no officer or member of the crew with us, while another boat contained officers and sailors only. No one in our boat knew where we