I must ride out to
meet my men," he said, and we approached a big caravan. Thirty
Bedouins, with the Turkish flag at the head of the column; then, all
mixed up, sturdy German blond sailors in disguise, with fez or turban,
all on camels, among them dusky, melancholy looking Arabs. "Children!"
their Captain called out to them, "you've all got the Cross, and you,
Gyssing, have a Bavarian order to boot." "Hurrah!" resounded through
the red desert. The German flag was raised. Handshaking all around.

"Children, here is Paradise; come, here flows champagne! And here,
these are real railroad tracks!"

"How soon do you want to travel?" a Turkish Major asked.

"In three hours, as quick as possible, through night and day," Captain
Muecke replied. Even before he had reported his safe arrival to his
parents at home, he files a telegraphic request for a new command
before the enemy. Never have I seen so much modesty alongside so much
glory as among these fifty Emden men.

"Have you papers here?" one of them asks.

"A heap."

"How is it with Germany?" comes a voice from the crowd.

That's what they all want to know. The men bathe, and then look
happily at the special train in the desert.

THE SURVIVORS.

TABUK, (via Damascus,) May 8, noon.--They're still asleep. Last night
the joy lasted a long while. But I couldn't help admiring the
discipline, which did not break down even on that well-deserved joy
day. Earnestness, the basic characteristic of the soldier, lay under
all their merriment. As the engine was reported to be ready to start,
Muecke called out: "All abroad! Youngsters, only once in my life do I
command a railroad train." Then he and the officers sat down among the
sailors. At every station they made jokes, because they were real
stations that followed one another automatically and without the
danger of adventures!

But all have only one wish--to get quickly back to Germany. Muecke
wants to shorten all the festivities in his honor; he longs for
nothing more than a command in the North Sea. I go down the aisle of
the cars and watch them sleeping--comrades held together by the bonds
of nine months on seas and desert, and I think how young they all are.
None of them over 30, and their commander only 33. Of the officers,
only Lieutenant von Gyssing was on the Emden. Wellman joined the party
at Padang, Dr. Lang and Lieutenant Gerdts were taken over from the
steamer Choising. This steamer of the North German Lloyd,