"Great was our joy now. I had all my men come on deck and line up for review. The fellows hadn't a rag on. Thus, in Nature's garb, we gave three cheers for the German flag on the _Choising_. The men on the _Choising_ told us afterward 'we couldn't make out what that meant, those stark naked fellows all cheering!' The sea was too high, and we had to wait two days before we could board the _Choising_ on December 16. We took very little with us; the schooner was taken in tow. In the afternoon we sunk the _Ayesha_ and we were all very sad. The good old _Ayesha_ had served us faithfully for six weeks. The log showed that we had made 1,709 sea miles under sail since leaving Keeling. She wasn't at all rotten and unseaworthy, as they had told me, but nice and white and dry inside. I had grown fond of the ship, on which I could practice my old sailing manoeuvres. The only trouble was that the sails would go to pieces every now and then because they were so old. [Sidenote: The _Ayesha_ is sunk.] "But anyway she went down quite properly, didn't she?" Muecke turned to the officer. "We had bored a hole in her; she filled slowly and then all of a sudden plump disappeared! That was the saddest day of the whole month. We gave her three cheers, and my next yacht at Kiel will be named _Ayesha_, that's sure. [Sidenote: Turkey an ally of Germany.] "To the Captain of the _Choising_ I had said, when I hailed him: 'I do not know what will happen to the ship. The war situation may make it necessary for me to strand it.' He did not want to undertake the responsibility. I proposed that we work together, and I would take the responsibility. Then we traveled together for three weeks, from Padang to Hodeida. The _Choising_ was some ninety meters long and had a speed of nine miles, though sometimes only four. If she had not accidentally arrived I had intended to cruise high along the west coast of Sumatra to the region of the northern monsoon. I came about six degrees north, then over Aden to the Arabian coast. In the Red Sea the northeastern monsoon, which here blows southeast, could bring us to Djidda. I had heard in Padang that Turkey is allied with us, so we would be able to get safely through Arabia to Germany.