Our floating hotel was about full. If we wanted to take any more guests aboard, we would have to get rid of our present company. The old pirates would have had a plank-walking ceremony. That was a sure way to prevent inconvenient information from getting around. Undoubtedly, it would have enabled us to keep our existence still secret. We were buccaneers in a sense, but not quite that bad. We would have to take other measures. When our prisoners got to port and our freebooting career became known, cruisers, of course, would set out after us. They would make the narrow Atlantic much too hot for us. We would have to seek other waters. The broad Pacific remained. We did not want to hold our prisoners for the always rough passage of Cape Horn, where, in addition, there were likely to be cruisers on watch, keeping a guard for suspicious ships that might be trying to take the shortest route from European waters to the Pacific. We might be shelled and sunk, but it would have been scarcely humane to take a chance of going down with all our prisoners on board. So we arranged it in a way that would enable us to get a good start on our trip around Cape Horn before the cruisers could get word of us. The French barque, the _Cambronne_, came along. You should have seen her heave to and her yards come banging down when our German flag went up and we signalled the inevitable: "Stop or I shall fire." Her captain exhibited all of the usual Gallic despair at the prospect of losing his ship. We looked the craft over. She was large and roomy and had aboard a large stock of provisions. "No," I said to her skipper, "we are not going to sink your ship. She will go right on to port." "Eh?" He was immensely surprised. "She will take our prisoners." "I will be delighted, monsieur, to have them as my guests." "They won't be your guests, Captain. You will be the guest of the new captain of the _Cambronne_." "I will not command my ship?" "Not at all. I have a Captains' Club aboard. You, as a prisoner, are now a charter member. Your ship is my prize. I will select a member of the Captains' Club as her skipper." He was very angry. It hurt him nearly as much to be removed from the command of his ship as to have her sunk.