did. The two sacks with their contents and the contents of the six

suitcases were immediately burnt in the engine room. I personally saw some of this literature. It was all printed matter in a character unknown to me. Some of it was in newspaper form, some in leaflets, but most of it was in the form of pamphlets; the outside cover being mostly pink. The six empty suitcases were appropriated by various members of the crew, I took one of them myself, and it is with me at the present moment. Later I learned from Jehangir that the literature was printed in San Francisco and copies of it ‘existed’ in Constantinople and Berlin.

“After depositing the two notes on the shore, we weighed anchor. Nelson informed me that he intended proceeding to San Diego....

“After about thirty hours’ absence ashore at San Diego the party returned to the _Maverick_, bringing with them a few supplies. Nelson informed me that he was now going to Hilo, Hawaii, and when we were well under way he told me that from the Brewster Hotel, San Diego, he had rung up Jebsen at San Francisco on the long distance telephone and was told in reply to wait at the hotel until he heard from him (Jebsen) further. The following morning he got a wire from Jebsen instructing Nelson to proceed to Hilo, Hawaii, where he would receive further orders. Nelson said he had no word of the _Annie Larsen_.

“We left for Coronados Island on or about the 2d of June and arrived at Hilo on or about the 14th. Port officials came alongside and demanded who we were and what our business was. The captain told them what sort of clearance we had and that we had entered Hilo to communicate with his owners. At about 8 P. M., when it was dark, Captain Elbo, of the war-bound German merchantman _Ahlers_, came alongside in a small dinghy rowed by one German sailor and asked to be allowed aboard to speak to the captain. Nelson spoke to him over the rail, declining to take the German captain aboard as the health officer had not cleared the ship, but offered to see him the following morning. Before Elbo left, however, he passed a note up to Nelson, who showed it to me later on in his cabin. It read as follows: ‘_Maverick_ is to proceed to Johnson Island and then await the arrival of the schooner _Annie Larsen_ and the rest of the ship’s programme is to be just as settled before,’ namely, that after transferring the cargo to the _Maverick_, the _Maverick_ was to proceed on her original voyage.

“Later Captain Elbo took us to the office of Hackfield & Company. There we met a young German named Schroeder who, Elbo gave us to understand, was the chief representative of the Maverick Company at Honolulu and had specially come down to Hilo to meet Nelson about _Maverick’s_ future plans. It appeared that while we were still at the Collector’s office a war-telegrams slip had been out, and among other items of interest was mentioned the arrival in Hilo of the mysterious ship _Maverick_, whose captain had made a statement that he had been trading in the South Sea Islands and he intended leaving for Anjer, Java, stopping at Johnson Island on the way. Schroeder had seen this slip just before we called on him and was apparently highly indignant that Nelson should have disclosed the future movements of the _Maverick_ to the press representative. Schroeder told Nelson that it would be impossible for him to permit him, Nelson, to go on to Johnson Island after the news had been made public and that he, Schroeder, would have now to recast his plans. He asked Nelson to wait at Hilo till he should hear from him from Honolulu, where he, Schroeder, must return to arrange for fresh plans. At Nelson’s request Schroeder authorized Hackfield to pay all bills ‘O. K.’d’ by Nelson and to give him such money as he might require.

“Thus we were at Hilo close on two weeks, during which time I personally attended to all the ship’s needs. I was assisted by Captain Elbo.

“A couple of days before we sailed from Hilo, Nelson and I met Elbo and another captain of a war-bound German merchantman in Honolulu, who, we were told, had specially come down to give Nelson final instructions. The Honolulu captain told us that the original plans of the _Maverick_ were now finally abandoned, as it was impossible to use the _Maverick_ any more for the purpose she was intended for, in view of the notoriety she had obtained. The _Maverick_ was now to proceed to Anjer, Java, calling at Johnson Island; that on arrival at Anjer she was to clear for Batavia and report herself to Behn Meyers, the Maverick Company’s agents. Elbo and the Honolulu captain came aboard the _Maverick_. The Honolulu captain had a private talk with me alone in my cabin. He handed me a sealed packet which evidently contained a plate of something heavy. The letter was unaddressed. I was instructed to hand this over to Helfferich at Behn Meyers upon arrival in Batavia. I did not know then who this Helfferich was, nor did I ask who he was. I was merely told that he was the manager of Behn Meyers. I was asked to be careful of that letter, and I was not to give it to anybody else. Shortly after, the Honolulu captain and Elbo left, and we put to sea.

“When we were a couple or three days out of Hilo, Hari Singh, during a conversation, referred once more to the literature we had destroyed at Socorro, and said that it was the product of many of his countrymen who were in America and that he himself had contributed to it. He claimed to have the whole of it by heart and could repeat it without mistake. He was evidently an exile, for he said that ‘during the many years of his exile from India’ he had at various times written a good deal against the British rule in India. He gave me to understand that formerly he belonged to the Indian Army. He said his home was in the far interior of the country inhabited by ignorant classes, and that if he could only succeed in getting to them, he would easily incite them to revolt against the British Government by promising to provide them with arms and ammunition. He was still under the impression that we were on our way to India, and said that he knew the place we were bound for very well, and so did the other four, and that he could be of great assistance after we got there.

“We got to Johnson Island five days after our departure from Hilo. There was no _Annie Larsen_ there. I went ashore together with the mate and left a bottle with a message as follows: ‘The American steamer _Maverick_ entered and cleared here to-day.’ We left there the same afternoon and made for Anjer, Java. After over three weeks’ voyage we arrived at Anjer about the 20th of July. After examination we asked for and obtained permission to proceed to Batavia, and we set sail the same afternoon accompanied by a Dutch torpedo boat. Early next morning we arrived outside Batavia, and later we were taken into port by the harbour master.

“Two or three days outside Anjer I read the letter made over to me by Jebsen at Los Angeles for Page. Owing to Jebsen’s warning to be careful about it, I had always carried this letter on my person so as not to lose it. The result was that the envelope had almost fallen to bits; now and again I put the letter, together with the old cover, into a new envelope, but toward the end they, too, got broken up. So I had not to open it to read it. The contents were type-written in German, and were a sheet and a half of the ordinary square business paper. As far as I am able to recollect, the letter read as follows: ‘Upon the meeting of the _Annie Larsen_ with the _Maverick_ at ... (blank) the transhipment of the cargo must be commenced at once. The official reason to be given out was that the _Maverick_ is going to Batavia or some other Oriental port to be sold or chartered. It may be suggested that she is good for oil trade on the China Coast. The cases containing rifles should be stowed in one of the two empty tanks and flooded, and the cases of ammunition should be placed in the other, but need not be flooded unless as a last resort. _Maverick_ should then proceed to Anjer, Java. No attempt is to be made to escape from British warships, if encountered at sea, nor should she try to avoid meeting merchantmen or warships of other nationalities. In case of her meeting a warship she should act in a manner absolutely open and above suspicion. In case of her being boarded by enemy officers all cordiality should be shown to them, and, in fact, an inspection should actually be offered, to put them off their suspicion. Under no condition is the steamer or the cargo to be permitted to fall into their hands. Should the cargo be discovered, and should there be no escape from capture, the Captain is ordered not to hesitate to have recourse to the last resort, namely, to sink the ship. Upon arriving at Anjer the _Maverick_ will be met in the Sunda Strait by a small friendly boat which will instruct you regarding further details. Should you not be met at Anjer you are to proceed to Bangkok, where you are to arrive toward dusk. Here you will be met by a German pilot who will give you further instructions; should you not be met here, also, you are to proceed to Karachi. Outside Karachi the _Maverick_ is to be met by numerous small friendly fishing craft. The fishing craft, together with the five blacks aboard, will attend to the unloading and landing of the cargo. Two of the blacks should go ashore immediately on arrival and proceed inland to notify your arrival to “the people”. The remaining three blacks and the friendly natives will assist in burying the cargo. Should no friendly fishing boats meet you, two of the blacks should go ashore and do the notifying of the people.’

“After the mission was over, that is whether the _Maverick_ was successful or not, she was to go to Batavia and report to Behn Meyers & Company. The last instruction in the letter was that all undelivered papers were to be handed over to Behn Meyers. In accordance with this I made over the letter to Helfferich on our arrival.

“After we had been in the harbour (Batavia) for about an hour or so a German came aboard and introduced himself as Kolbe, 2d Officer of the war-bound merchantman _Silesia_. Nelson signed me to leave them alone, which I did. After they had conversed for about twenty minutes, Kolbe, Nelson, and myself went ashore together and motored down to Helfferich’s residence at Konigsplein W. 8. On the way we stopped at the American Consulate; Nelson went in alone. While waiting for him outside in the car I had a talk with Kolbe. He knew all about the _Maverick_ and her mission. When I told him that I should like to interview the manager of Behn Meyers to deliver the letter given to me by Dinart at Hilo, Kolbe replied that Helfferich, the man we were on our way to, was the manager and I could make the letter over to him. Dinart had not mentioned Helfferich by name at the time of handing the letter to me. He asked me just to deliver it to Behn Meyers. When Nelson joined us again we proceeded to Helfferich’s place where I met for the first time the brothers Theodore and Emile Helfferich. Kolbe and I retired to another part of the house while Nelson and the brothers held a conversation for half an hour or so. After Nelson had done, he left with Kolbe, leaving me with the brothers. I spent about an hour with them. I gave Theodore Helfferich Dinart’s letter which he opened in my presence. It was a typewritten sheet in code. Helfferich said it would take him some time to decode it. The ‘weight’ inside the letter I have spoken of was what looked like a thin slab of lead enclosed in another cover. Helfferich opened this cover and on seeing that it was a thin slab, threw it aside without taking the trouble of examining it closely. I have no idea what it was for, but I imagine that in case it had to be suddenly thrown overboard the weight inside the cover would sink the letter at once. I told them all about our trip, and showed them the letters I had brought with me. Helfferich read the letter intended for Page, and remarked that the arrangements made at this end were substantially the same as those indicated in the letter. He said the signals were the same, and password was the same, and the code was the same. Emile spoke up and said that he had waited for the _Maverick_ for three weeks in the Sunda Strait. They deeply regretted the failure of the _Maverick_ in not bringing the arms and said that their arrangements on this side were excellent and they were only waiting the arrival of the cargo when they could have easily put their whole scheme through. They observed that ‘the people’ in India were all ready and prepared and had only been waiting for the arms to turn up. They did not discuss their own scheme with me. Theodore Helfferich expressed his disgust at the _Maverick_ being thrust upon him and could not understand the object of her being sent to Batavia when she was not carrying the cargo, and when she could have as easily returned to America. It was then arranged that I should take up my lodging in a hotel ashore and in the meantime Helfferich would decipher the code letter. Things were to be left alone until he had read that.

“A couple of days after, I was rung up by Helfferich and I went and saw him at his place in the evening. He had deciphered the letter which had ‘originated’ from San Francisco. Helfferich said that the letter directed the abandonment of the _Maverick_, which was either to be sold or chartered to anybody or that she could be used for any regular purpose if Helfferich so desired. She was, if not sold, to be retained in this part of the world and on no account to be returned to America.”

So fizzled the German-Hindu gun-running expedition to India. The _Maverick_ had arrived, with five “Persians” and no guns, at a Dutch port in the Indies--not India. The Hindus and the crew scattered to the winds; Starr-Hunt started to return to Los Angeles but was detained by the British authorities at Singapore, and ultimately appeared in the Federal court-room at San Francisco as the chief witness for the Government in its case against the German consul and his staff, the complacent Americans, and the Hindu conspirators. The _Annie Larsen_ wandered up and down the Pacific Coast, and finally put in at Hoquiam, Wash., where she was promptly seized and her cargo of arms and ammunition locked up by the United States Government.

Von Brincken bore bitter testimony to the failure of the _Maverick_ expedition, in the course of a “Report Concerning My Activities at the Imperial Consulate in San Francisco, California”--a report written November 10, 1916, and intended for the eyes of the German Foreign Office. He said:

“I complied with that instruction and met Ram Chandra and other leaders of the Hindu Nationalists, and there laid the foundation for the entire Hindu work which has since then been carried out here on the Pacific.... Up to the present date, I have fulfilled this assignment absolutely alone.... Mr. Von Schack has seen Ram Chandra only a few times during the entire period--while Consul-General Bopp saw the man only once. I had nothing to do with the ship-matters in connection with the Hindu affair. Therefore, I am not responsible for the failure of the ‘_Maverick_ Expedition.’ I had only planned the point of landing at Karachi. Besides, through messengers, I had prepared the populace of the Punjab for the arrival of the _Maverick_.”

At the time of the _Maverick_ enterprise, and after its failure, the Germans engineered a half dozen plots with the Hindus, looking toward revolution in India. Von Papen in New York directed a scheme for an incursion into north-western India through Afghanistan. The German Consul-General in Chicago shipped two German officers and two Hindu agitators to the Orient to train Hindu soldiers in upper Siam for an invasion of Burma. Wesendonck sent Har Dayal from Berlin to Constantinople to act as chairman of a committee of Mohammedans who were to incite the Mussulman population of India to revolt. Ram Chandra, at the instigation of Von Brincken, sent Hindu emissaries from San Francisco to organize revolutionary movements among the Indians in Manila, Tokyo, Shanghai--even in Seoul and Peking. Other emissaries, gathering men and money or transmitting messages, worked in Panama, in Switzerland, in the Sinai Peninsula, in Sweden--scarcely a country in the world but was touched by a filament of this spider’s web of German intrigue.

And, like gossamer, it all came to airy nothingness. A few dacoities [robberies accompanied by violence], a few vain attempts to suborn loyal native troops in India, were the net results of enormous labours, lengthy journeys, and huge expenditures of money.

By December, 1915, the German Government became impatient of this much ado about nothing. But it did not abandon hope. Zimmermann summoned a little, nervous, excitable Hindu from New York to Berlin. Dr. Chakravarty left America on a false passport, and in February, 1916, was appointed in Berlin to head the Indian intrigues in America. Zimmermann’s cable to Bernstorff, quoted in the first part of this article, notified the German authorities here of his appointment. By August, Dr. Chakravarty was in San Francisco, consulting with Ram Chandra and the Germans there.

Chakravarty and Ram Chandra had one thing in common--both knew the value of real-estate. Out of their joint operations in the insubstantial pursuit of Indian liberty, each emerged with some perfectly sound investments in mundane property, paid for with money subtracted from the German gold that passed through their hands for the “freeing of the oppressed.” Chakravarty put about forty thousand dollars into New York apartments, and Ram Chandra several thousands into residence and business property in San Francisco.

Ram Chandra’s real-estate ventures got him into trouble. They gave the needed opportunity to his rival for control of the Hindu organization in California. This rival was Bhagwan Singh, the poet and orator of the “Movement.” Late in 1916, he accused Ram Chandra of stealing Hindu funds. The directors of the Hindu Pacific Coast Association investigated the charge, and threw Ram Chandra out. Bhagwan Singh became president of the association and editor of the _Ghadr_. A few months later, when the United States entered the war, the whole crew was arrested, along with the German agents in San Francisco and Honolulu and with the Americans and German-Americans implicated in the _Maverick_ enterprise.

The trial of these men was one of the most picturesque scenes ever enacted in an American court. In the prisoner’s dock aggressive blond German officers sat beside anaemic, swarthy, turbaned Hindus and plain American business men. To make the evidence intelligible to the jury, a map of half the world was painted on one wall of the court-room, showing America and Asia and the Pacific Ocean, splotched with red dots and routes of travel. Beside the map were printed the names of the defendants, so that their strangeness might be somewhat simplified. Among the polyglot evidence were Hindu publications in six Oriental languages, including Persian; cipher messages which, when deciphered, proved to be an Indian revolutionist’s letters which had to be translated by reference to page and line of an American’s book about “Germany and the Germans”; enciphered code, written in Berlin by the German Foreign Minister, transmitted to Stockholm and thence by the Swedish Government to Buenos Aires and thence by Count Luxburg to Bernstorff in Washington, telling him to pay an East Indian in New York money for use in San Francisco to send arms to revolutionists near Calcutta--besides other oddities of men and places and documents too numerous to mention.

The episode of the _Maverick_ and the _Annie Larsen_ occupied a large place in the trial. One of the humours of that fiasco was the proof that “Juan Bernardo Bowen,” of Topolobampo, Mexico, was a romantic imagining to conceal plain Bernard Manning of San Diego. There was no Juan Bernardo. The man who got Tauscher’s shipment of arms for the _Annie Larsen_ was Manning.

The prosecution proved that the funds for the purchase of the _Maverick_ and for the charter of the _Annie Larsen_ were got from the German Consulate’s bank accounts in San Francisco, and were concealed by an elaborate jugglery through a chain of American lawyers and shipping agents in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego.

The end of the story is briefly told in the following despatch to the New York _Sun_, dated San Francisco, April 24, 1918:

Twenty-nine men, charged with conspiring on American soil to start a revolution against British rule in India, were found guilty by a jury in Federal Court early to-day.

Just as court adjourned for the noon recess yesterday, the last day of the trial, Ram Singh, a defendant, shot and killed Ram Chandra, another defendant. United States Marshal James Holohan shot Ram Singh dead in his tracks.