dly caused loss to allied shipping.

Once past the British Channel fleet, the _Moewe_ struck for the
steamship lane off the Moroccan, Spanish, and Portuguese coasts. There
she was comparatively safe from pursuit, and so skillfully were her
operations carried on that it was many weeks before the fact became
known that a raider actually was abroad. But one by one overdue
steamships failed to reach their ports and suspicion grew. Either the
_Karlsruhe_ had returned to life as a plague upon allied shipping, an
able successor appeared, or a flotilla of giant submarines was at
large that could cruise almost any distance. Several vessels brought
tales to England of being chased by a phantom ship near the African
coast. But such stories had been repeated so many times without any
foundation that the British admiralty was in a quandary. To overlook
no clue, a flotilla of cruisers swept the seas under suspicion. They
came back empty handed.

At dawn, February 1, 1916, a big steamship passed into Hampton Roads,
disregarding pilots and the signals of other craft. She hove to at an
isolated spot and waited for daylight. When the skies cleared the
German naval flag was seen floating at her prow. Newport News could
scarce believe the report. Then the city remembered the
_Kronprinzessin Cecile_ and the _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_, both of
which had stolen in under cover of night from a raiding career.

But this was no raider. It was the _Appam_, a raider's victim. She had
sailed across the Atlantic from a point on the South African route,
held prisoner thirty-three days by a prize crew of twenty-two men and
one officer, Lieutenant Hans Berg, of the Imperial German Naval
Reserve. Aboard the _Appam_ were 156 officers and men, 116 of her own
passengers, 138 survivors of destroyed vessels, and twenty Germans who
had been en route to a prison camp in England when rescued. This large
company was cowed by the lieutenant's threat to shoot the first man
who made a hostile move, or to blow up the vessel with bombs if he saw
defeat was certain. And, like a good stage director, he pointed
significantly to rifles, bayonets, and bombs.

There were several notables among the prisoners, including Sir Edward
Merewether, Governor of Sierra Leone, and his wife. They were
homeward bound from his African post for a vacation when the _Moewe_
took the _Appam_. All of the persons aboard, save the Germans, were
released and the ship interned. Then followed