The public of New Zealand was inflamed against us. When we arrived there was a great outcry and demand that we be shot. This amazed us, but we discovered the reason a few days later. You see the inhabitants of these islands thought that we had sunk the big New Zealand passenger steamer _Wairuna_, with all on board. As a matter of fact, we knew nothing of the _Wairuna_ and hadn't even heard of her. Later, it developed that she had been captured by our fast auxiliary cruiser _Wolf_, sister ship of the _Moewe_, and her crew taken aboard as prisoners. But so far as the New Zealanders were concerned, their ship and all on board her had vanished as though swallowed up by the sea. So they were frantic about it, and my boys and myself nearly lost our lives as a result. After carrying out her raid, the _Wolf_ slipped through the blockade again and back into Germany. At the time of our arrival in New Zealand from Fiji, nothing was known of the _Wolf_, and it was supposed that we had sunk the _Wairuna_ with her passengers and crew. The rage of the public was such that the authorities had to hide us away in their naval barracks at the Devonport Torpedo Yard, and then transfer us secretly to a prison camp on the island of Motuihi, near by. Meanwhile, the populace clamored for us to be turned over to them so they could lynch us. The little island of Motuihi, a beautiful strip of land, had long been the internment place of many Germans who had been captured when the British seized our possessions in Samoa and in other parts of the South Seas. They were all civilians, from ten to seventy years of age, traders, plantation owners, and officials. They greeted us with pride and affection, but more particularly with anxiety. They said we were sure to be shot. I laughed at this. "By Joe, who wants to kill us? On what grounds could mere prisoners of war be shot down in captivity?" I asked. But things looked a little less rosy when, forty-eight hours later, we were taken by boat to Auckland and then whisked by automobile, under cover of night, through valley and forest to a freight train pulled up in a wild, remote place. They locked us up in a freight car, where there were two beds. They told us it was to protect us against the public. The train pulled out and, after an all-night journey, stopped near the outskirts of the city of Wellington, the capital of the islands that comprise New Zealand. Here they put us into another automobile and rushed us to the Danish Barracks in Wellington, an old jail, an almost prehistoric relic of more primitive days in New Zealand. A native keeper who led us along a corridor tugged at my coat and pointed into a cell. There were my boys, Leudemann, Krauss, Parmien, and Erdmann. They were in chains. We were all to stand trial together. We spoke to one another for a minute, and then Kircheiss and I were led to our cells.