But our little South Sea colony passed its first nights uneasily. For sleeping places, we slung hammocks between the palms. At intervals, a cocoanut would fall from a height of fifty or sixty feet and go whizzing close by a man's head. While our fellow countrymen back in the cities along the Rhine were complaining about the night raids of the French and British bombing squadrons, we had our bombing problem also. It didn't make much difference whether you were bumped off with a falling cocoanut or a falling bomb. The result was all the same. After one whizzed by your ear, you would very likely go down to the open beach to quiet your nerves. Then if you tried to sleep there, the land crabs would soon convince you that the beach was no place for a weary war veteran either. Patrols of fighting marine crabs would raid that beach every night. After being chased out by the crabs, you would go back to your hammock and lie awake wondering when the next aërial cocoanut bombardment would commence. So life during those first days on our tropic isle was not all skittles and beer or orchids and cocoanut milk. You can bet we worked hard getting up huts! Luckily, there were no casualties from either crabs or cocoanuts. We cleared a large space for our village, and built huts out of timbers, sailcloth, and palm leaves. The first one up was a queer-looking thing, but our architecture improved with practice. Our prisoners, who were all Americans, helped us a great deal. They understood the art of pitching tents. They built a special town for themselves, and gave the streets such names as Broadway, State Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, and the Bowery. In time we contrived to arrange quite decent dwelling places. We had plenty of furnishings. From the wrecked _Seeadler_, which remained perched forlornly on the coral reef, we took everything we could carry. We even built a chapel, took the Bible from the _Seeadler_, and from parts of the wreck we built a fine altar and crucifix. Of course, we also installed our wireless set ashore in order to keep in touch with passing ships and events happening out on this side of the world. Nor did we neglect to take ashore a heavy arsenal of arms and ammunition, including rifles, Luger pistols, hand grenades, and dynamite. In short, we had a perfect little town with everything except a calaboose. Some of our men who had romantic tendencies constructed "country homes" for themselves a few hundred yards away in the jungle. Then we named the place Seeadlerburg, Sea Eagle Town. There were gull's eggs everywhere along the shore, but the birds were brooding now, and most of the eggs we collected had half-formed little gulls in them. We got around this by clearing a large section of beach and throwing the old eggs into the lagoon. Then the gulls flocked back and laid more eggs, and thus a supply of fresh eggs was assured.