Before she sailed I called my crew together and told them that the _Protector_ had been sold to a foreign country, and that, although I could not tell them to whom or to what port she was bound, I should like some of them to go with me to assist me in training the foreign crew to operate her. Every man volunteered and was anxious to go, so I selected those I wanted and they took their suitcases on board the _Fortuna_. It was seven years before some of these men returned to America. The _Protector_ was covered with canvas and she was sighted but once on her way across. To prevent suspicion I returned to Bridgeport for a few days and then took the fast steamer _Kaiser Wilhelm II_ to Cherbourg and was met by the Russian Ambassador in Paris, who gave me Russian passports under the assumed name of Elwood Simons, as the Russian Government did not wish it to become known that it had purchased the _Protector_ or that the builder was coming to Russia to instruct their officers and men in the use of submarines. This travelling about under an assumed name brought about some amusing complications and experiences later. I arrived at Libau by train the morning the _Fortuna_ and _Protector_ arrived off that port, but the government had decided to send her on to Cronstadt, the principal naval station and defense of St. Petersburg, now called Petrograd, so orders were given accordingly. On the way up the Baltic the coverings over the _Protector_ had been removed, and a Russian torpedo boat, seeing her, made off at full speed, soon to return with another torpedo boat and a larger gunboat and beginning to fire blank shots for the _Fortuna_ to stop. The captain did not stop quickly enough, and then they fired solid shot just in front of the _Fortuna's_ bow and she was forced to stop. It developed that one of the officers had recognized the _Protector_ from having seen the pictures of her, but, not knowing that she had been bought by his own government, suspected that the Japanese Government had purchased her, and that she would probably be launched somewhere in the Baltic and attack the Russian fleet. He then sent an armed prize crew on board the _Fortuna_ to take her into Cronstadt as a prize--which incidentally was where she was bound, anyhow.