The British are smart people, by Joe, and they know how to search a ship. They attach special importance to sailors' letters. The sailor eagerly looks forward to the letter he will receive at the next port. He never throws the letters away either, but always keeps a stack of them in his sea chest. Sometimes you will see him reading a letter that his mother sent him eight years before. So we had to get up a whole set of letters for our "Norwegian" sailors, each set totally different from the other. Of course, the stolen log of the _Maleta_ gave us a lot of useful information about her crew, and our fake letters were made to tally with this information. Women in the Admiralty and Foreign offices who knew Norwegian wrote them for us. We got old Norwegian stamps and Norwegian postmarks and postmarks of various ports the letters were supposed to have been sent to. Then we aged the letters in chemicals, and tore and smudged some of them. I picked as my officers men who like myself had spent long years before the mast, who knew Norwegian, and were of the right spirit. First Officer Kling had been a member of the Filchner Expedition, in which he had distinguished himself. The officer whom I selected to go aboard captured ships was a former comrade of mine, a fellow of six feet four, whom I met by chance on a dock. In response to my question whether he wanted to accompany me, he asked: "Is it one of those trips that is likely to send you to heaven?" "Yes." "Then I'm with you. My name is Preiss, and you are after prizes. So I'll bring you luck." My artillery and navigation officer, Lieutenant Kircheiss, was a wizard navigator. Engineer Krauss was our motor expert. The boatswain, the carpenter, and the cook, the three mainstays of a voyage in a sailing vessel, I picked with like care. Of the men who were to go with me I only needed twenty-seven with a knowledge of Norwegian. There were just twenty-seven aboard the real _Maleta_. In selecting my men, I interviewed each candidate personally but gave him no hint of why I wanted him. I tried to read these men's souls in order to discover in them the qualities of courage and endurance that would be needed. Without giving them any clue concerning the adventure on which they were soon to engage, I sent them home on furlough to prevent them from meeting one another and talking over the questions I had put to them. Not until the hour of departure did I send for them.