"Everything went well, the only trouble was that our prize, the _Markomannia_, didn't have much coal left. We said one evening in the mess: 'The only thing lacking now is a nice steamer with 500 tons of nice Cardiff coal.' The next evening we got her, the _Burresk_, brand-new, from England on her maiden voyage, bound for Hongkong. Then followed in order the _Riberia_, _Foyle_, _Grand Ponrabbel_, _Benmore_, _Troiens_, _Exfort_, _Grycefale_, _Sankt Eckbert_, _Chilkana_. Most of them were sunk; the coal ships were kept. The _Eckbert_ was let go with a load of passengers and captured crews. We also sent the _Markomannia_ away because it hadn't any more coal. She was later captured by the English together with all the prize papers about their own captured ships. All this happened before October 20; then we sailed southward, to Deogazia, southwest of Colombo. South of Lakadiven on Deogazia some Englishmen came on board, solitary farmers who were in touch with the world only every three months through schooners. They knew nothing about the war, took us for an English man-of-war, and asked us to repair their motor boat for them. We kept still and invited them to dinner in our officers' mess. Presently they stood still in front of the portrait of the Kaiser, quite astounded. 'This is a German ship!' We continued to keep still. 'Why is your ship so dirty?' they asked. We shrugged our shoulders. 'Will you take some letters for us?' they asked. 'Sorry, impossible; we don't know what port we'll run into.' Then they left our ship, but about the war we told them not a single word. [Sidenote: Coal steamers captured.] "Now we went toward Miniko, where we sank two ships more. The Captain of one of them said to us: 'Why don't you try your luck around north of Miniko? There's lots of ships there now?' On the next day we found three steamers to the north, one of them with much desired Cardiff coal. From English papers on captured ships we learned that we were being hotly pursued. The stokers also told us a lot. Our pursuers evidently must also have a convenient base. Penang was the tip given us. There we had hopes of finding two French cruisers. [Sidenote: The fourth smokestack.]