off just in time before the other boat, the falls of which also broke,
reached the water.

Thus, there was no preparation made for accidents--we might have been
living in the times of profoundest peace for all the trouble that had
been taken to see that everything was ready in case of accident. Instead
of which, nothing was ready--not a very creditable state of affairs for
a great steamship company in times such as these, when, thanks to the
Huns' ideas of sea chivalry, _any_ ship may have to be abandoned at a
moment's notice. Some passengers had asked for boat drill when the ship
left Singapore, but were told there was no need for it, or for any
similar preparations till after Cape Town, which, alas, never was
reached. Accordingly passengers had no places given to them in the
boats; the boats were not ready, and confusion, instead of order,
prevailed. It was nothing short of a miracle that more people were not
drowned.

If the ship had only stopped when ordered by signals to do so, there
would have been no firing at all. Even if she had stopped after the
warning shots had been fired, no more firing would have taken place and
nobody need have left the ship at all. What a vast amount of trouble,
fear, anxiety, and damage to life and property might have been saved if
only the raider's orders had been obeyed! It seemed too, at the time,
that if only the _Hitachi_ had turned tail and bolted directly the
raider's smoke was seen on the horizon by the officer on watch on the
bridge--at the latest this must have been about 1.30--she might have
escaped altogether, as she was a much quicker boat than the German. At
any rate, she might have tried. Her fate would have been no worse if she
had failed to escape, for surely even the Germans could not deny any
ship the right to escape if she could effect it. Certainly the seaplane