On the _Choising_ we had news which was of importance to us. At the time that we left Padang in the _Ayesha_, we found it a most difficult problem to decide where to go. My earliest plan, to try to reach Tsing-tao, had to be abandoned when, at Padang, we learned of the fall of that colony. My next intention was to join His Majesty's ship _Königsberg_, of whose whereabouts we knew nothing more than that she was somewhere in the Indian Ocean. In case she was no longer there (I had hoped to get news of her from the _Choising_), my next plan was to sail to German East Africa. We knew that there had been some severe fighting there between our colonial troops and the English, and, upon reflection, I abandoned this project also, as being an absolutely hopeless one. With only fifty men, whose clothing outfit was an entirely inadequate one, and who were wholly unprovided with any of the many things necessary to troops on land, with neither surgeon nor medicines, no knowledge of the language, no guide, and no maps, it would be next to impossible, in a district as large as the fighting area of South-east Africa, to locate and make connection with troops numbering not more than a few thousands themselves. For the present, therefore, there was but one course left open to us,--to make our way homeward by following the route around Africa. How to provision our ship for so long a journey was a problem which suggested many difficulties, however. But at last we found in one of the newspapers the report of a battle between Turkish and British troops at Sheikh Said, near Perim, an island in the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb (Gate of Tears). This gave us reason to believe that Turkey also had now entered the war. Our diligent search for confirmation of this surmise was finally rewarded by finding in one of the papers the announcement that war between the Turkish and British Empires had begun. The new situation thus created suggested a landing in Arabia as our nearest and most hopeful prospect. The course which appeared to be even more reasonable, viz., to join the _Königsberg_, was abandoned, in the first place, because the _Choising_ had brought word that the _Königsberg_ had been sunk in battle somewhere to the north of Australia, and in the second place, because of news that she was bottled up in the Rufiji River. If she had been sunk, our search for her would be to no purpose, and if she was shut in by a blockade, she would neither have coal, nor could she use any that we might bring her. The fifty men whom we should add to her numbers would only make so many more mouths to feed.