My wife and I were bound for Cape Town, and had joined the ship at
Singapore on the 15th, having left Bangkok, the capital of Siam, a week
earlier. Passengers who had embarked at Colombo were beginning to
recover from their sea-sickness and had begun to indulge in deck games,
and there seemed every prospect of a pleasant and undisturbed voyage to
Delagoa Bay, where we were due on October 7th.

The chart at noon on the 26th marked 508 miles from Colombo, 2,912 to
Delagoa Bay, and 190 to the Equator; only position, not the course,
being marked after the ship left Colombo. Most of the passengers had, as
usual, either dozed on deck or in their cabins after tiffin, my wife and
I being in deck chairs on the port side. When I woke up at 1.45 I saw
far off on the horizon, on the port bow, smoke from a steamer. I was the
only person awake on the deck at the time, and I believe no other
passenger had seen the smoke, which was so far away that it was
impossible to tell whether we were meeting or overtaking the ship.

Immediately thoughts of a raider sprang to my mind, though I did not
know one was out. But from what one could gather at Colombo, no ship was
due at that port on that track in about two days. The streets of Colombo
were certainly darkened at night, and the lighthouse was not in use when
we were there, but there was no mention of the presence of any
suspicious craft in the adjacent waters.

It is generally understood that instructions to Captains in these times
are to suspect every vessel seen at sea, and to run away from all signs
of smoke (and some of us knew that on a previous occasion, some months
before, a vessel of the same line had seen smoke in this neighbourhood,
and had at once turned tail and made tracks for Colombo, resuming her