he _Wolf_ expected to meet us again before the final separation
occurred, when the transference of the officer would have been effected.

We heard from the _Wolf_ that she was getting very short of food, and
that there was much sickness, including many cases of scurvy, on board.
The pigeons must have gone the way of all flesh by this time, and
perhaps the dachshunds had too--in the form of German sausages! Some of
the prisoners, we knew, had very little clothing, and positively none
for cold weather, and our hearts were sore at the thought of so many of
our fellow-countrymen, many of whom we had known, in good and ill
fortune, being taken into captivity in Germany.

The next day we entered the Arctic Circle. The cold was intense, the
cabins were icy, the temperature falling as low as 14 deg. F. in some of
them. There was no heating apparatus on the ship, with the exception of
a couple of small heating pipes in the saloon. These were usually
covered with the officers' thick clothes, and some of the passengers'
garments drying. The cabin curtains froze to the ports; all the cabin
roofs leaked, and it was impossible to keep the floors and bedding dry;
and in our cabin, in addition, we had water constantly flowing and
swishing backwards and forwards between the iron deck of the ship and
the wooden floor of the cabin. This oozed up through the floor and
accumulated under the settee, and on many nights we emptied five or six
buckets full of icy water from under the settee, which had also to be
used as a bed. At last I persuaded the Captain to allow one of the
sailors to drill a hole in the side of the cabin so that the water could
have an outlet on to the deck. I had asked that this might be done
directly the water appeared in our cabin, but was told it was _against
the regulations of the Board of Trade_! Quoting the Board of Trade under
such conditions--was this a sample of German humour? We managed to
secure a piece of matting for our cabin floor--it was soaked through
every day, but we had it dried daily in the engine-room. Since the great
storm on the Kaiser's birthday our feet had never been dry or warm, and
were in this condition till some hours after we got ashore.

The ports of the cabins had all long ago been painted black in order
that no light might show through, and the darkness at night, especially
in these stormy seas, was always very sinister and ugly, not to say
dangerous--not a spark of light showing on deck