topping
altogether--what dreary, miserable, hopeless days!--we resumed our
attempt to go to the north of Iceland, evidently to escape the attention
of the British ships which the Germans expected to encounter between the
south of Iceland and the Faroes. But before long it became evident that
ice was still about, and in the darkness of the early morning of
February 11th we bumped heavily against icebergs several times. This
threw some of us out of our bunks; once again there was no more sleep
during the night. This time the Captain abandoned his attempt to go
through the northern passage, and turned the ship round to try his luck
in the passage he did not expect to be so free from British attentions.

We thought perhaps that as we were on short rations and even drinking
water was running short, and the case of us all really desperate, the
Captain would land us and give up the ship at Reykjavik, leaving us
there to be rescued. Even a stay in Iceland would be better than one in
Germany, for which country we now all suspected we were bound. The
uncertainty concerning our ultimate destination added to our miseries,
and these were not lessened when on February 11th the Captain told us,
_for the first time_ that it was, and always had been, the intention to
take us on the _Igotz Mendi_ to Germany, there to be interned in
civilian prisoners' camps. He told us, too, that the women and those of
the men over military age would be released at once, but we all declined
to believe anything else our captors told us, as they had deliberately
and repeatedly deceived us by assuring us at various times they were
going to land us in Spain, or Norway, or some other neutral country. The
string of German lies must surely by now be ended. But no! There were
still more to come, as will be seen later on.

At daylight on the 11th we were still among icefloes, but going away
from instead of meeting them, and on that morning we saw in the distance
the coast of Iceland, which the Germans tried to persuade us was the
sails of fishing boats, as they did not wish us to think we were so near
the Icelandic coast, the first land that we had seen since the Maldive
Islands, a week after our capture, i.e. more than four months before. We
also saw a few fishing boats off the coast.

We now shaped a course for the coast of Norway, keeping to the north of
the Faroes. On Sunday, the 17th, we again ran into a very heavy storm.
Ever since the storm on January 27