With our four machine guns and twenty-nine rifles we could, for the time at least, have prevented the English from making a landing on the island, but against the fire of the English cruiser's heavy guns, which would then have been directed against us, we would have had no defence whatever. Taking everything into consideration, therefore, we could do no more than defer the surrender of a position that, from the outset, it had been impossible to hold. Moreover, confinement in an English prison was little to our taste. Now, fortunately for us, the small white schooner that we had failed to blow up was still riding at anchor in the harbor. It could, and it should help us to escape from our predicament. I decided to leave the island on the little boat. Her name was _Ayesha_,[2] and at one time she had served to carry copra from Keeling to Batavia two or three times a year, and to bring provisions back with her on her return trip. Now that steamship service had been established between these two points, she lay idle and dismantled in the harbor, and was gradually falling into decay. Taking no one with me, I got into the steam launch and went out to the schooner to learn whether she was at all seaworthy. The captain and a single sailor were aboard her. Of the former I inquired casually whether he had any ammunition aboard, for I did not wish him to suspect the real purpose of my coming. He said there was none, and a brief inspection of the ship led me to believe that she was still seaworthy. Consequently I sent my officers and men aboard the _Ayesha_ to get her into trim for sailing. There was plenty to do on the little ship. All the sails and rigging had been taken down and stowed away, and had now to be put in place again. When the Englishmen on the island realized that it was my intention to sail off in the schooner, they warned me with great earnestness against trusting ourselves to her, saying that the _Ayesha_ was old and rotten, and could not stand a sea voyage. Furthermore, they informed me that an English man-of-war, the _Minotaur_, and a Japanese cruiser were in the vicinity of the island, and that we would surely fall a prey to one of them. As my predecessor in command of the _Ayesha_ was leaving her, he wished us Godspeed, and concluded with the comforting remark, "But the ship's bottom is worn through."