The first boat to be launched with passengers in it was handled entirely by the white passengers. In this boat were four women and twenty-eight men; on being lowered the davit fall on one end fouled; and it looked very much as if everybody were going to slide out, as the boat was nearly perpendicular. Fortunately for all concerned, the fouled davit fall broke, and the boat dropped into the water. A lot of water was shipped but the boat floated right side up. The men immediately pulled away from the vicinity of the vessel. It was the firm belief of the occupants of this boat that they were to be shelled later on by the Raider. One of the lady passengers during the excitement lost a lot of jewels. Some days later a German sailor clearing out one of the life-boats found these jewels. He came down the deck to where there were several of the passengers standing and asked: "Does anybody belong to these things?" He held out for their inspection a handful of diamonds, rubies, pearls and other valuable articles. Needless to say, he had no difficulty in finding an owner. This sailor earned 18 marks per month and the value of the find was in the neighbourhood of ten thousand dollars. I wonder how many men, under the circumstances, would have returned these jewels. The _Wolf_ and the _Hitachi_ now steamed to the southernmost group of the Maldive Islands, arriving there on September 27th. The vessels tied up alongside of each other and coal and cargo were transferred from the _Hitachi_ to the _Wolf_. The cargo of the _Hitachi Maru_ was valued at over a million and a half pounds sterling, chiefly copper, tin, rubber, thousands of tons of silk, tea and hides. It always seemed uncanny to me that these "deep-sea vultures" seemed to be able to capture a vessel loaded with any particular kind of cargo they wanted. About a month before this capture, I heard the officers talking among themselves and one of them remarked, "Now the next ship we get should be loaded with copper and rubber and tin." Sure enough the _Hitachi_ had what they wanted. It seemed a pity to me to see the thousands of bales of silk goods, ladies' blouses and silk kimonos being dumped from one hold to another and trampled on. When the _Hitachi_ was finally sunk there were a couple of thousand tons of expensive Japanese lingerie and other ladies' wear and miscellaneous department store merchandise sunk with her. The mermaids must have had "some" bargain sale. It was the intention of Nerger to pick up, if possible, a vessel that could furnish him with enough coal to take both the _Hitachi_ and _Wolf_ back to Germany. At this time there was a lot of talk about landing us on one of the islands where there were missionaries. However, none of us took any stock in this "landing talk," as it was too apparent what their intentions were.