of their quarters. Before this had been done, the poor creatures went sliding back and forth across the smooth deck, from rail to rail. Twice our hope that a friendly steamer was coming to our relief was disappointed. Each time it was an English ship. One of them behaved so peculiarly, and made such unusual manoeuvres as we came in sight, that we believed her to be an auxiliary cruiser. We therefore cleared the _Ayesha's_ deck for action. To occupy the attention of the cruiser, with whom we wished to pass for a harmless merchant vessel, we signaled: "Please give me the geographical position." This is a signal very commonly used by sailing vessels when meeting a steamer. The desired information was given us, but with it came the embarrassing question: "Who are you?" We had no special signal of our own, and the _Ayesha's_ signal, which we had learned from the ship's papers, we did not, for obvious reasons, care to give. So we took four flags that happened to be at hand, arranged them one above the other, tied a knot in the two upper ones, so that no one could tell what they were, and then hoisted this signal in such a way that it was half hidden by the sails. This scheme we hoped would lead the steamer to believe that we had answered the question, but that she had failed to decipher our signal. About half an hour later the steamer had disappeared. We saw her answering signal, "I have seen your signal, but cannot make it out," fluttering after her at half mast as long as she remained in sight. The second English steamer came in view at a great distance from us, and probably did not see us at all. The fourteenth of December, 1914, was a thick, foggy and rainy day, with rather high seas running. The _Ayesha_ was tacking back and forth under close reefed sails, when suddenly, through the dense atmosphere, we could see, only about four thousand meters ahead, a steamer looming up out of a thick, gray fog bank. She had two masts and one smoke stack, and was steering an easterly course. We were sailing toward the west. At this point the course of the ordinary merchantman can only be either to the north, or to the south. Hence, a steamer running on an easterly course here, must have some unusual reason for doing so. The natural inference was that this was one of the German steamers looking for us. We steered our course for her at once, under as much sail as our ship could carry. We sent off red and white fire balls that are visible by day as well as by night, in the hope of attracting the attention of the steamer, which by this time we had recognized as the Lloyd steamer, _Choising_. Our great fear was that the _Choising_ would fail to see us in the foggy weather, and so would pass us by. At last, after we had sent off our fourth or fifth fire ball signal, we saw the ship turn, and come towards us.