"Now we numbered, together with the Arabs, seventy men on the little boat. Then we anchored before Konfida and met Sami Bey. He had shown himself useful, even before, in the service of the Turkish Government, and had done good service as a guide in the last months of the adventure. He procured for us a larger boat of fifty-four tons. We sailed from the 20th of March, 1915, to the 24th, unmolested to Lith. There Sami Bey announced that three English ships were cruising about in order to intercept us. I therefore advised traveling a bit overland. I disliked leaving the sea a second time, but it had to be done." Captain Muecke explained that Lith is nothing but desert, and therefore it was very difficult to get up a caravan at once. They marched away on March 28, 1915, with only a vague suspicion that the English might have agents here also. They could travel only at night, and when they slept or camped around a spring, there was only a tent for the sick men. Two days' march from Jeddah, the Turkish Government having received word about the crew, sent sixteen good camels. "Suddenly, on the night of April 1, 1915, things became uneasy," said Captain Muecke. "I was riding at the head of the column. All our shooting implements were cleared for action, because there was danger of an attack from Bedouins, whom the English had bribed. When it began to grow a bit light I thought: 'We're through for to-day'; for we were tired--had been riding eighteen hours. Suddenly I saw a line flash up before me, and shots whizzed over our heads. Down from the camels! We formed a fighting line. You know how quickly it becomes daylight there. The whole space around the desert hillock was occupied. Now we had to take up our guns. We rushed at the enemy. They fled, but returned again, this time from all sides. Several of the gendarmes that had been given to us as an escort were wounded; the machine-gun operator fell, killed by a shot through the heart; another was wounded. Lieutenant Schmidt was mortally wounded. He received a bullet in the chest and another in the abdomen.