A sudden wind squall arose. It blew like a fury. The captain of theAntoninwas a sensible skipper. He immediately lowered sail, took in his royals and upper gallant sails. That was where we had it on him, for we had no miserly shipowner to be afraid of. Our masts wouldn't break, anyway.
"Keep every stitch on, boys! After her, my hearties!"
Of course, we gained rapidly on her now.
The wind continued to howl. The gale raged, and the captain of theAntoninthought we were quite mad. Gallants and royals up during a wind squall—he had never seen such a thing in all his days at sea. The sight was so funny that he wanted a picture of it. We watched him, standing in the stern of his ship and gazing down into the finder of his camera.
"Leudemann," I said to my helmsman, "we must capture that snapshot for our collection of photographs, if we have to take a trip to Davy Jones doing it."
We were attempting to keep a thorough photographic record of our cruise, for the Imperial archives, and a picture of theSeeadlerrunning with all sails set through a squall, particularly if that picture were snapped all unwittingly by the captain of a prize, would indeed be a gem for our collection.
We were close behind theAntoninnow. The captain's picture seemed to have been satisfactorily snapped. A machine gun began to rattle. We were often bored during those long days at sea. Anything for a bit of amusement. It would be funny to watch that captain's face when he heard the typewriter of Mars rattling in his ear and when he saw us sending a stream of lead through his rigging. First he started, and then he glared. What did these lunatics mean? This kind of insanity was too much. His rigging might be injured, ropes cut or spars smashed. He began to roar at us in the most profane French. When a Frenchman swears, you can hear it far off. Then he saw the German flag at our masthead. He staggered back with a dramatic gesture that only a Frenchman can achieve.
We sank theAntoninjust as we sank the others, but first we seized that kodak and roll of film, by Joe.
We added another Allied nation to our list of prizes when theBuenos Airescame bowling along. She was an Italian ship built in England, a fine vessel but filthy dirty. Everything was untidy from stem to stern. Her captain, a fat, unkempt man of about fifty-five with a bristly moustache and a month's growth of scraggly stubble on his face, came aboard theSeeadlercarrying an umbrella! Can you imagine a skipper of a windjammer carrying an umbrella at sea? We couldn't, and my men all burst out in rude guffaws. I suppose he had it to protect himself during a hurricane, eh? I had once seen a photograph of the Italian commander in chief, Count Cadorna, carrying an umbrella. So we immediately dubbed our new skipper Cadorna. He was a genial fellow, full of good nature and fun. You should have seen his astonishment when he saw the fine quarters we provided for our captive skippers. He never did quite get over it. Apparently, he was better off as our prisoner than he had been before.
We sailed night and day. During the day we tacked south into the steady trades, and during the night we ran with the northeast trade winds. At nights, when we ordinarily could not see them (because in wartime they all sailed without lights even in the Pacific), we went in the same direction as the ships bound for America, so that none passed us, and it was up to us to catch them. During the day, with our zigzag tacking, we were pretty sure to come in sight of any vessel sailing along that shipping lane in either direction.
* * *
One night, our lookout saw a tiny flash of light astern. A ship was coming along behind us, and somebody on her had looked at his watch with a pocket flash. We kept along on our way. No doubt in the morning she would still be close to us. Dawn came, and there she was, a magnificent French barque, theLa Rochefoucauld. We signalled her:
"Important news."
She hove to. The captain, who was on deck in his carpet slippers, saw our gun but thought we were the mother supply for a squadron of British submarines. Seeing that he was under some illusion, I decided to have a little fun with him. I called our captured sailors to deck in batches. First up came the Chinamen. They lined up along the rail so that the Frenchman could get a good look at them. Then I called the West Indian Negroes on deck. After them the white men. Now Chinese, now black men, now Caucasians—the captain of theLa Rochefoucauldthought he must be having a nightmare. And a most disagreeable nightmare it was when he saw the German flag run swiftly to the tip of our mainmast. You should have heard him swear.
He climbed on to theSeeadler'sdeck a picture of wrath and despair. He still had on his carpet slippers, and had brought nothing with him. His name was Lecoq.
"Don't you want to send for your belongings, Captain Lecoq?" I asked.
"If I have to lose my ship, mon Dieu, I want to lose everything," he replied.
"You don't want to take anything with you?"
"No, let everything go down with the ship."
I sent a couple of his sailors back aboard theLa Rochefoucauldto pack his luggage and bring it aboard theSeeadler.
One of my sailors came to me, saying:
"They met a cruiser a couple of days ago."
My men had orders to circulate among captured sailors and talk with them to see what they could pick up. This sailor had heard mention of a cruiser in the talk of the French sailors.
That was funny. I had asked Captain Lecoq whether he had sighted any ships within the past week, and he had replied no. In his log I had found no mention of being searched by a cruiser. One of my officers examined the log again and found that a page had been torn out. A thorough questioning of the French sailors brought out the fact that they had been thoroughly searched by a British cruiser. This warship had taken her position three hundred miles south of us and was cruising back and forth across the Pacific ship lane, examining every vessel that passed. So you see, we, apparently, were picking them up after she had O.K.'d them. Captain Lecoq had bidden his men to say nothing about the cruiser. Apparently he hoped that we would wander far enough south to run afoul of the Britisher and be captured.
I was momentarily displeased with him for his deception, but, after all, he was a Frenchman, and we were the enemies of his country. His action was a bit heroic, too. If we ran into the cruiser, we might be sunk, and he would go down with us. I was destined to have trouble later with this same irreconcilable Captain Lecoq.
The stately Cambronne, commanded by an equally stately skipper. ~ Captors and captives aboard the raider enjoying the plunder of the champagne ship. Von Luckner second from the left.The statelyCambronne, commanded by an equally stately skipper.Captors and captives aboard the raider enjoying the plunder of thechampagne ship. Von Luckner second from the left.
The South Sea island home of the shipwrecked buccaneers.The South Sea island home of the shipwrecked buccaneers.
Now the biggest ship we captured in the Atlantic was a 9,800-ton British steamer loaded with champagne—theHorngarth. That was our banner day.
She was well armed and had a wireless. She hove into sight one morning, and we could see that she would make a tough customer for our sailing ship to handle. But why not have a good look at her? We set the signal:
"Chronometer time, please."
The way she paid no attention to the request said very clearly:
"Let that old windjammer go and buy a watch!"
But we had other devices. We had a smoke apparatus to send clouds rolling out of the galley, and on the galley roof was a dish loaded with a quantity of magnesium which when lighted produced a wicked red flame. We set the smoke and fire going, and ran up distress signals. TheSeeadlernow was the most dramatic-looking ship afire you ever saw. Thirty of my crew armed with rifles hid behind the rail, and Schmidt quickly dressed up as the captain's wife, the beautiful but simpering "Josefeena" of the big feet. We had another piece of apparatus which we now used for the first time. It was a kind of cannon made out of a section of smokestack. It was loaded with a charge of powder, and you touched it off with a lighted cigarette. It was quite harmless but made a terrifying noise. You would have thought it a super-dreadnaught's full broadside. I picked three sailors who had the most powerful voices aboard, gave them large megaphones, and stationed them on the topmast yards of the mainmast and mizzen.
If that steamer was short on courtesy, she was long on humanity. She came rushing heroically to the aid of the old sailship that was blazing so dramatically just astern. She had a powerful wireless set, and as I stood on my bridge watching her as she steamed toward us I could not take my eyes off the five-inch gun on her deck. What was our little popgun beside that piece of ordnance? One shot would blow us right out of the water.
The steamer had a big fat captain, who had his cap pulled down over one eye. His voice, even when he whispered, was a deep bellow. You should have heard it through the megaphone! The steamer drew near. The fat captain raised his megaphone.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" His voice boomed across like the rumble of our old cannon.
We cut off the smoke and flame. It looked as if we had fought our fire successfully. Schmidt, the captain's beautiful wife, tripped along the deck with coquettish movements of shoulders and hips. The officers on the steamer's bridge eyed the fair vision and exchanged smiles with that rogue of a Schmidt. Nor was the fat captain insensible to feminine charms. He rolled his eyes and grinned with the expression of a skipper who can easily "cut his officers out."
"Look at the wireless, Leudemann," I said, "and the five-inch gun."
"Knock the wireless over," he replied, "and let's have it out with the five-inch gun."
"Clear the deck for action," I roared.
Instantly, the beautiful Schmidt threw off his silken dress, and in the uniform of a German gob kicked his blonde wig around the deck. The Britishers stared aghast. The German flag ran up, our riflemen arose from behind the rail, ready to pick off anyone who tried to handle the five-inch gun. Bang, crash, and our gun knocked over the wireless shack. A tremendous detonation, and our false smokestack cannon added its voice to the general effect.
The steamer's crew swarmed on deck and ran around like crazy animals. The captain telephoned his order to start the engines. His engine crew was on deck as panicky as the others. He ordered the boats swung out. His men were already doing that as well as their fright allowed.
"Clear the deck for action," he howled.
That only gave the crew a greater scare than ever.
I shouted to him:
"Lay to, or I will sink you."
I had to admire that captain. The fat fellow dominated the frightened mob by sheer force of lung power. His voice seemed to sweep the deck and master everything.
"Gun crew to their posts. By Joe, you scalawags. Gun crew to their posts, I say, by Joe."
We stood watching. I didn't think he could do it, but the panic stilled. The frightened men stood at a kind of attention. The gun crew separated itself from the crowd. It looked as though there would be a fight, his cannon against our rifles. Well, we could pick them off, and that fat "soul of the situation" would be an excellent mark to shoot at.
We had one more device left. I gave the signal. From the mastheads boomed three voices through the megaphones in unison. The shout was in English and seemed to dominate the ocean to the horizon.
"Torpedoes clear!"
On the deck of the steamer a crazy yell arose:
"No torpedoes, for God's sake, no torpedoes."
Handkerchiefs, napkins, towels, and anything white was waved. The cook frantically waved his apron.
"Lay to," I shouted, "or we discharge our torpedoes."
There was no further sound. The fat captain was licked, licked by the terror the torpedo inspired in everyone who sailed on ships. He made no further protest. He could not have done anything with his men now, but I don't think he liked torpedoes either. He sat down on a deck chair, cursing and wiping the sweat off his face.
We still had to be careful. There were plenty of firearms aboard that ship, rifles, grenades, and what not. I kept our riflemen at the rail, ready to cover our boarding party and to shoot down anyone who went near the five-inch gun. Still with the idea of keeping the men on the steamer overawed, I sent my eight strongest men as the boarding crew under the command of my giant prize officer. They had been among the strongest men in Germany. One was the wrestling champion of Saxony, another the wrestling champion of Westphalia. One, a Bavarian who had been a sculptor's model. He had been in much demand for posing because of his prodigious muscular development. Any one of these fellows could bring up the 220-pound weight with one hand. They went with bare arms and shoulders. They had long bamboo poles with hooks at the end. They reached up with the poles, caught the hooks over the edge of the deck of the captured ship, and climbed up hand over hand. The men on deck looked down as they ascended.
"What fellows, by Joe. No, by Joe, we're not going to fight with those fellows!"
Our prisoners came aboard. Among them were eight British marines who had been assigned to the steamer as a gun crew. The fat captain looked around our deck with a sort of belligerent curiosity. He walked up to our smokestack gun, and you couldn't have told his face from a beet.
"Captain, is that the thing that made that hell of a racket?"
"Yes."
"Where are your torpedoes?"
"Torpedoes? We have no torpedoes."
"No torpedoes? That was a fake, too?"
"Yes."
"By Joe, Captain, don't report that, by Joe."
I promised him I would not report it, and told him heartily that he had behaved like a true British skipper, and no man could have done better.
Aye, things have changed on the sea. When I went aboard that steamer, I had to sit there and look around and think. She was a freighter, and what were freighters like when I was in the fo'c'sle? That wasn't so long ago, twenty-odd years, but ships and customs change rapidly. I was in a magnificent saloon, with heavy carpets, glittering candelabra, and big, luxurious club chairs. Paintings in heavy frames hung on the wall. In one corner was a Steinway grand piano and beside it a music rack. There were other musical instruments, a melodeon, a violin, a guitar, a ukulele. Freighters nowadays often have better officers' accommodations than passenger ships. They have more space for them and their voyages are longer, sometimes a year or more. The shipowners provide comforts and luxuries to make the long periods at sea less burdensome. The sailors, too, are put up in far better style than formerly. In my time, even on the biggest freight steamers, the officers had simple quarters and the seamen had little more comfort than they had on the sailing ships. I remembered the various ships on which I had hauled at ropes and swabbed the deck.
"By Joe," I thought, "if they had told you of anything like this, you would have thought them ready for a lunatic asylum."
The hold of the steamer was no less interesting than the officers' saloon. The cargo was valued at a million pounds sterling. It included five hundred cases of rare cognac and twenty-three hundred cases of champagne, Veuve Cliquot. That was something.
"Ho! boys," I called, "lend a hand. There's a bit of work here."
We took the musical instruments, the piano, violin, 'cello, melodeon, and all. We had aboard theSeeadlera pianist and a violinist, both excellent musicians out of the German conservatories. We had no room in our cabins to hang the paintings, so I gave them to our captive captains to take with them when they left our ship. Some of the expensive furniture fitted nicely in theSeeadler'scabins. Of the cognac and champagne we ferried aboard as much as we could stow away. We opened the sea cocks of the steamer, and she settled down peacefully beneath the waves.
One night, the breeze having become light, we proceeded under a cloud of sail. It was a night such as you rarely find anywhere but in the tropics. The four scintillating stars of the Southern Cross twinkled merrily down upon us. Our sails were full, and the waves murmured past our bow. The sky was a gorgeous spread of blinking stars, and Old Man Moon was so bright that he seemed to be laughing and chuckling. The buccaneer's deck was crowded. We sat around in genial fraternity, officers, prisoners, and crew, each with a goblet of champagne. Midship was the orchestra, violin, 'cello, melodeon, and Steinway grand. Perhaps it was the spell of the tropic night, but as I paced the quarter-deck it seemed to me that they played as well as the musicians at the Stadt Opera in Berlin.
"Oh, lovely south wind, blow." The melody drifted along on the wind of the Southern ocean.
How remote the war seemed then! The day was not far when we would be shipwrecked, but to-night all thought of what might be our fate was wafted away by the spell of the music, the champagne, and the poetry of night beneath the tropic stars.
"What ho, a light!"
My night telescope at my eye, I saw a ship. On the horizon, brightly outlined by the light of the moon, stood a stately three-master.
"Hard aport!" We were on the dark side of the horizon, and she could not see us. After a bit of scrutiny as we approached her, we guessed her to be an enemy ship.
Our flash signal flared out across the water. "Heave to—a German cruiser." Unable to make us out, she little guessed that we were nothing more than a sailing ship, from which she could easily escape by slipping through the night. We were confident she would take us for an armoured cruiser easily able to catch her and blow her out of the sea with a broadside.
We waited at the rail to see what would happen. Presently, we heard a splashing of oars. Out of the darkness came a hail, the jolliest hail I have ever listened to. It was in nasal seaport French.
"What a relief! Instead of a Boche cruiser, I find you are an old windjammer like ourselves. But why the joke? Your signal fooled us completely. I suppose you want to tell us something about the war."
I did not wonder at his surmise. Ships long at sea, particularly Allied ships, were always keen about news from the various battle fronts, and it was common enough for vessels to stop and exchange news.
"Come on aboard," I replied. "We have lots of news."
We were in our shirt sleeves, and looked like ordinary seamen. On deck he said proudly:
"I am a Frenchman." As though we couldn't have guessed it.
"A Frenchman? Fine. How is France doing?"
"Ah! France, she is victorious, or will be very soon.Ravi de vous voir."
He fairly bubbled over with delight when we offered him a bottle of champagne. Being homeward bound, he was in a frolicsome mood. A generous taste of the champagne, and he was ready to embrace us. He thought our supposed joke, which certainly would have been somewhat cruel, was the result of our being tipsy. He slapped me on the back, as one cheery skipper to another.
"Captain, what a terrible fellow you are to have fooled me like that. But now I feel as though a stone had dropped from my heart."
"Beware," I thought, "that your stone does not come back twice as heavy."
He was such a cheery, convivial soul that I hated to break the bad news to him. I left the progress of events to do that. He wanted to have a look over our ship. So I ushered him aft to my cabin, and threw open the door. He took a step forward and recoiled. On the walls were pictures of the Kaiser, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and Von Tirpitz, and a large German flag.
"Des allemands!" he groaned.
"Yes," I said, "we are Germans."
"Then we are lost,per Dieu!"
"Yes,per Dieu, you are lost."
He stood with his forehead in one hand. His despair was both tragic and comic to behold. I tried as best I could to say a few words of cheer.
"Well, Captain, you are not the only one to lose your ship during the war. To-morrow I, too, may be sunk, or the next day."
He replied in the most doleful tone imaginable.
"It is not so much the loss of my ship. But it's that I feel I have only myself to blame for it. In Valparaiso, where I lay in port with myDupleix, two of my fellow captains warned me not to start until they had cabled our owners for final instructions and news about U-boats and cruisers. Possibly our owners would instruct us to keep off the usual course, they said. But the wind was fair, and I thought it best to take advantage of it. So, without waiting for a reply from our owners, I sailed from Valparaiso ahead of the other two captains. And now, because I did not take their advice, I have lost theDupleix, my ship.Mon Dieu, what an ass I was! Now they will report it to my owners, and I will never get a ship again."
"What were the names of your friends' ships?"
"TheAntonin——"
"TheAntoninunder Captain Lecoq?"
"Yes. And theLa Rochefoucauld?"
"Orderly," I called in German, which the captain did not understand, "bring up captains numbers five and nine."
While we waited, I invited my mournful guest to have some more champagne, but he refused and continued holding his head and moaning.
A knock at the door.
"Come in."
And in walked the captains of theAntoninand theLa Rochefoucauld. They had been on board ten and three days respectively.
The captain of theDupleixgaped.
"Eh, tout la France!" he cried.
Full of ironical enthusiasm, he raised his glass of champagne and saluted them. Then with joy that he made no effort to conceal, he clasped the hands of the two captains whose advice he had scorned and who had encountered the same fate as he. They returned his welcome with a grim humour.
The presence of these three captains aboard theSeeadlerrepresented a loss of ten thousand tons of saltpetre destined for French powder mills, and a saving of hundreds, perhaps thousands of German lives.
* * *
One Sunday morning, we sighted a large British barque and started after her. She thought we were playfully challenging her to a race, and tried to run away. I don't know whether we could have caught her in a straight sailing ship against sailing ship contest; at any rate, our motor gave us the edge.
A strange feeling came over me as we gained on her and as her lines became more distinct. It was a sense of sadness and of vague, dimly dawning recollection. Had I seen that ship before? Was it possible...
"Signal and ask her for her name," I called.
Our signal flag went aloft. The reply came back:
"Pinmore"
Ah, my oldPinmore, on which I had made the longest and most harrowing voyage of my life. Memories swept over me of those endless storms and of the disease on board, beri-beri, scurvy. My whole being seemed to leap back to the days of my youth. Homesickness seized me. I could not say a word to Leudemann, who stood beside me.
"No use, the ship must be sunk," a harsh inner voice told me.
It was hard for me to sink any sailing vessel, but doubly cruel to have to sink my old ship. I felt as though she were a kind of mother. No sailor with any kind of sailor's soul in him will raise a hand against his own ship.
We took her as we had taken the others. When her crew came aboard, I looked for familiar faces. There were none. The skipper, Captain Mullen, came up to me with a humorous, seamanly air.
"Well, Captain, our hard luck is your good luck."
"Lucky?" I felt like saying. "Do you call this lucky?"
He was a typical old seaman, afraid neither of enemy in war nor storms at sea. The seven seas had been his home. Like the sailing ship, the old-time windjammer captain is vanishing. Captain Mullen was indeed like the king of a vanishing race. He swaggered down below, and saluted our other skippers with a jovial air. He soon became the leading figure of the "Captains' Club."
When everyone had left thePinmore, I had a boat take me over to her. I clambered aboard and sent the boat and its crew back, telling them I would give them a hail when I wanted them again.
"Why does the Count want to remain alone aboard her?" I heard one of them say.
I went to the fo'c'sle. There was my bunk, the same old bunk where I had slept night after night for months and had tumbled out countless times at the command "all hands on deck" while those endless storms bore down upon us. I paced the planks on deck where I had stood watch so often. It seemed as though I had never seen that deck save in a storm. Those gales had left so deep an imprint on my memory that it gave me a sense of strangeness to see the sun shining on thePinmore'splanks and a slowly heaving sea around.
I remembered a cunning little cat I had once owned on board her. The captain's wife wanted it. The steward got it for her. I told the steward that if he did not bring it back to me I would go to the captain. The steward laughed at me. I determined to complain to the captain about the steward and his wife and demand my cat back. I could see myself as I had wrathfully strode along the deck to the cabin. The sight of the door made me stop. I mustered up my courage and advanced again. I ventured just far enough to peep in at the door, which was ajar. The skipper was sitting there reading a paper. One glimpse of the master, and all of Phelax Luedige's bravery oozed away. He turned and tiptoed away. I never did get my cat back, and forever after held a grudge against the steward.
I could still feel the old enmity. If I could have found that steward, I would have let him know how the end of a rope felt. I went to the cabin and half opened the door. It was much as when I had seen it last. The bright rainbow glow of the coloured skylight gave me an old familiar feeling. Something restrained me from entering. I did not dare go in then. I would not now.
At the stern I looked for my name which I had once carved on the rail. I found it, half effaced by time and weather. I read it slowly, spelling it out as a child spells its first lessons: P-H-E-L-A-X L-U-E-D-I-G-E. I looked at the compass, beside which I had watched for hours. The compass is a sacred place to a sailor.
"This ship," I thought, "carried me safely. The storms were wild all the way from 'Frisco around the Horn to Liverpool. They wanted to take us, every man aboard, but the good oldPinmorefought against wind and wave over leagues and leagues of dreary waste and brought us safely to port. Yes, she was our mother, our kindly protecting mother."
The deserted ship with an unguided helm rolled back and forth. The rigging creaked and groaned. It seemed to be a voice, a voice that hurt me. Every spar seemed to say:
"So here you are, Phelax, back again. Where have you been all these years? Where is all the crew? What do you want here, alone? What are you going to do with me?"
Little had I dreamed when I was a sailor on this fine barque that one day I would walk her decks again, not as a seaman, but as the commander of a raider.
Returning to theSeeadler, I shut myself up in my cabin. In the distance I heard the roar of a bomb, and I knew that my oldPinmorehad started on her last cruise.
Ever taken a trip at sea where the company aboard was dull and dead, the passengers uncongenial to one another, and everybody sitting around day after day and bored to death? You have? Well, then, you know what it's like, eh?
Give me a lively, companionable crowd of shipmates, and I don't care how long or how stormy the cruise. On land, if you don't like the company, you can seek better mates elsewhere. On shipboard, do your darnedest and you can't get away from 'em. You have to take your company just exactly as you find it. You are married to it. A genial lot of shipmates and a long cruise, say from New York to Melbourne, and what more can any man ask for at sea?
Although our old jolly-boat was a raiding auxiliary cruiser, she also degenerated into a breed of passenger ship, too. Our passengers were our prisoners. That made the situation somewhat unusual and added a bit of spice. I've served as an officer aboard a dozen or more liners, and have seen all kinds and strata of society aboard, including dull, delightful, ill-natured, jovial—both the quick and the dead. Yes, I have had some splendid passenger lists on voyages where every hour was gay and bubbling with fun. But no group of passengers on a liner ever enjoyed such happy comradeship as did we aboard our buccaneering craft. The fact that we were captors and captives only seemed to make it all the jollier. We took the greatest pleasure in making the time agreeable for our prisoners, with games, concerts, cards, and story-telling. We tried to feed them well, and I think we did, which helps a lot, as you'll agree. We didn't throw it at them either. In fact, we served special meals for all the nations whose ships we captured. One day our own German chef cooked, and that boy wassomecook, as you say. The next day an English cookie, then the French chef, then the Italian to make us somepolenta. The English food was the worst. It usually is. On the other hand, the Americans fed their sailors best of all. It's long been a tradition on Yankee clippers. In the old days, the American sailing ships were famous for frightful work and much brutality, but the food was good. To-day the work is not bad and there is no brutality, but the food is still good.
The prisoners seemed to appreciate our intentions thoroughly. They wanted to do everything they could for us in return. Feelings of patriotism should have made them hope for our early destruction. But more elemental sentiments of gratitude and friendship obliterated the more artificial passions of war hatred. I am sure that very few of our passengers wished us any ill or gloated in the hope of our being sunk by the cruisers of their nations. I think it really hurt many of them to realize that the day probably would come when we would be caught and go down under a rain of Allied shellfire. That magnificent Frenchman, the captain of theCharles Gounod, kept aloof from the general fraternizing, and scrupulously kept up his manner of cold politeness and stately hostility toward us, but even he thawed out a few degrees, although he tried hard to keep from showing it.
There was only one of our prisoners who behaved himself in any way that could be considered improper. That was Captain Lecoq of theLa Rochefoucauld, that same Captain Lecoq who had cherished hopes that we would run afoul of the British cruiser. You see, the skippers aboard were quite free to go where they liked on the ship, except that I asked each one, as he came aboard, not to go into the fore part of the ship, and I explained why.
"My magazines," I said, "are in the forward half of the boat. I do not want you to know exactly where they are placed. After you are released, you might reveal the secret. Then, one of these merry days, if some cruiser takes a shot at me, and if the location of my magazines is known, they'll aim right at that spot. A shell there and up in the air we go. I must ask you to give me your word of honour that you will not go into the foreship, else I will have to keep you confined."
Each skipper gave me his word, including Lecoq.
Captain Lecoq broke his promise. He not only went secretly into the foreship, but he made sketches of the layout there. Captain Mullen of thePinmoresaw the sketches, knocked Lecoq down, and reported him to me. I berated Lecoq soundly.
"And as a result of your dishonourable action," I said, "when I release my prisoners and send them off to some port, there will be one Frenchman who will remain behind, and that Frenchman will be you. You will continue your cruise with us. You know where my magazines are, and I cannot trust any promise that you now give me."
He turned a bit green around the gills at that, but there was nothing he could say in reply.
Our only woman aboard, the skipper's little bride, grew melancholy. We did everything we could to make the time pleasant for her, but she pined for the society of other women. It was rather a trial for her to be so long the only woman among several hundred men.
"Count, I do so wish there were a woman aboard that I could talk to," she said to me a bit coaxingly one day. "Why don't you catch me one?"
I always like to oblige a lady, particularly one so charming and agreeable as she, but catching another woman was a game of chance with us. You don't often find fair company aboard freighters, especially in tropical waters. However, I said:
"Madam, we will do our best."
At times I used to amuse myself by joining the crowd on the lookout in the rigging. It was a misty day, and nobody had much of a chance of seeing anything. Then it cleared a little in the west, and Boarding Officer Preiss, who was beside me, thought he saw a ship. I instructed the helmsman to steer in than direction, and after fifteen minutes a large British barque appeared through the mist. As we drew near her, I saw a white figure on the deck. Sure enough, a woman.
"Madam," I shouted, to the Canadian skipper's bride, "get ready to welcome your companion. She'll be paying you a call in a few minutes."
Everybody, prisoners and all, swarmed on deck to witness the exceptional capture. TheSeeadlerbore down on the unlucky barque.
The captain looked curiously at the crowded figures standing at our rail, of every colour and race. They waved gaily. Our gramophone blared out, "It's a Long Way to Tipperary."
"Hello," he shouted through his megaphone, "collecting volunteers?"
He thought we were picking up war volunteers from the Atlantic islands.
"Volunteers?" I called in return. "Oh, yes."
Our prisoners laughed a bit.
"Any news of the war?" he asked.
Officers and sailors and the woman on his deck craned their necks for a reply.
"Much news of the war," I responded. "I will signal it."
They stared, awaiting the signal.
"C-I-D," our signal flags went up; "heave to or I will fire."
I could see the captain rapidly thumbing the pages of his book. His head jerked up suddenly. His binoculars focussed themselves on our masthead where the German flag now waved. Our gun mask dropped, and the cannon peered forth. By Joe, but it raised a commotion on the deck. When she saw it, the woman darted into her cabin. The sailors ran to the boats. Even the helmsman deserted the wheel. The captain was the only one who kept his head. He seized the helm with a firm hand, and the ship hove to.
Our guests were always interested in the prospect of having new additions to their company. They had an ever-ready, cordial welcome for fresh arrivals. This time, the coming of a second feminine passenger made the occasion a gala one. Everybody put on his best manners. The members of our "Captains' Club" marshalled their forces on deck, ready to greet the officers and the lady from the captured craft with suitable dignity and formality.
Our little woman put on her best clothes and asked me for a nosegay from a supply of artificial flowers we had captured. The newly arriving woman, who scarcely knew what to expect aboard our dreadful pirate craft, was surprised when she was greeted not only by our Captains' Club with all of its stately courtesies, but also by a brightly smiling young woman who presented her with a bouquet of flowers that made up in brightness of colour what it lacked in sweetness of perfume, since they were imitation ones.
The two women immediately became the best of friends, and the convivial spirit aboard made our happiness complete.
The captured barque, theBritish Yeoman, carried a rare store of provisions, including some live pigs and chickens. She also had two pets, a curious pair—a rabbit and a pigeon. We promptly adopted them and called the pigeon "the dove of peace" in honour of the spirit aboard our raiding ark. That rabbit and pigeon were inseparable. If the rabbit strayed, the pigeon would coo and coo for it to come back, and the rabbit would obediently respond.
Then we also had two dachshunds aboard, Piperle and Schnaeuzchen. Piperle was a friendly little rascal and most intelligent. He seemed to understand what our work was, and grew most enthusiastic. He went out with the boarding parties, barked furiously if anything seemed to go wrong, and wagged his tail with a tremendous enthusiasm when things turned out all right. He seemed to take it as his especial task to give a friendly welcome to prisoners brought aboard. He would bark and leap upon them, as though saying:
"Hello, you'll have a good time here."
Schnaeuzchen was an ill-natured specimen of dachs bitch. She looked on satirically at Piperle's demonstrations, and people had to make many amicable overtures before she became friendly. She and Piperle were of discordant temperaments. They got along together in a resigned sort of way, with many a quarrel in dog language, something like husband and wife. I think she nagged him a lot.
We gave the rabbit and pigeon quarters in Piperle's kennel, which delighted the good-natured dog. He welcomed his guests with cordial demonstrations. He licked the rabbit's fur continually, which at first made the pigeon jealous. The bird sulked and made angry sounds. The unfortunate rabbit seemed in a quandary, torn between his liking for the new friend and the old. He must have been a diplomat, though, for presently he found a way to reconcile the pigeon to his fondness for Piperle, and the three became excellent friends. When the three were asleep in the kennel, they made an edifying picture of harmony, Piperle on his side, the rabbit huddled against his belly, the pigeon perched on his side.
Schnaeuzchen, malign and crafty, watched this beautiful friendship with a jaundiced eye. She was the villain of the piece. She often made attempts to devour the rabbit or the pigeon or both, or at least to take a bite out of them. She was quick and cunning with her snapping jaws and sharp teeth. I spent a great deal of time trying to convince her that she had better leave the three pals alone, and Piperle had to be on the alert all the time to protect his two friends. One night Schnaeuzchen, with bold and bloody resolve, raided Piperle's kennel. I suppose she reasoned that she had better end the obnoxious situation with one fell blow. She got in before Piperle knew what had happened, and the rabbit barely escaped her jaws. Piperle turned on her and chastised her properly. After that she resigned herself to the inevitable. She kept the peace with the other pets, and while she never became really friendly with them, the pigeon and rabbit were at least safe.
Talking about animals brings to mind one remarkable piece of good fortune that blessed our entire adventure. Before it was over, we were destined to suffer pretty nearly all the hardships that the sea can bestow upon the sailor—arctic ice and tropical sun, storm and calm, frightful labour and deadening idleness, shipwreck, life as castaways on a desert island, the terrors of weeks in an open boat, hunger, thirst, and scurvy. But we never had any bedbugs. I had had enough experience with those vermin in my early days before the mast. I was determined to have none of them now. Bedbugs are a constant pest aboard sailing ships, and doubtless some of the vessels we captured had plenty of them. But aboard theSeeadlerwe had a magnificent fumigating plant, and every article that was brought aboard was given a thorough treatment. That fumigator was one of our most treasured possessions. Without it, we would surely have been in a fix. We could not have put comfortably into a port and called for the vermin exterminator, and if we had taken aboard any bedbug guests, our long voyage would have given them plenty of time to multiply and overrun our ark. We would have been eaten alive.
I remember a time during my jack-tar days when we had a magnificent collection of bedbugs in the forecastle. A comrade and I went to the captain, a mean old German skipper, and told him we were being eaten alive and begged him to go to the slight expense of getting a vermin exterminator.
"Bedbugs," he grunted, "Gott im Himmel, catch them."
We did catch them. We caught a match box full of them, and put them in his bunk.
The next day the vermin exterminator came aboard.
Our floating hotel was about full. If we wanted to take any more guests aboard, we would have to get rid of our present company. The old pirates would have had a plank-walking ceremony. That was a sure way to prevent inconvenient information from getting around. Undoubtedly, it would have enabled us to keep our existence still secret. We were buccaneers in a sense, but not quite that bad. We would have to take other measures. When our prisoners got to port and our freebooting career became known, cruisers, of course, would set out after us. They would make the narrow Atlantic much too hot for us. We would have to seek other waters. The broad Pacific remained. We did not want to hold our prisoners for the always rough passage of Cape Horn, where, in addition, there were likely to be cruisers on watch, keeping a guard for suspicious ships that might be trying to take the shortest route from European waters to the Pacific. We might be shelled and sunk, but it would have been scarcely humane to take a chance of going down with all our prisoners on board. So we arranged it in a way that would enable us to get a good start on our trip around Cape Horn before the cruisers could get word of us.
The French barque, theCambronne, came along. You should have seen her heave to and her yards come banging down when our German flag went up and we signalled the inevitable: "Stop or I shall fire."
Her captain exhibited all of the usual Gallic despair at the prospect of losing his ship. We looked the craft over. She was large and roomy and had aboard a large stock of provisions.
"No," I said to her skipper, "we are not going to sink your ship. She will go right on to port."
"Eh?" He was immensely surprised.
"She will take our prisoners."
"I will be delighted, monsieur, to have them as my guests."
"They won't be your guests, Captain. You will be the guest of the new captain of theCambronne."
"I will not command my ship?"
"Not at all. I have a Captains' Club aboard. You, as a prisoner, are now a charter member. Your ship is my prize. I will select a member of the Captains' Club as her skipper."
He was very angry. It hurt him nearly as much to be removed from the command of his ship as to have her sunk.
It was a touchy matter to select a skipper from among a dozen captains, each of whom was full of sensitive dignity and thought he was the best navigator of the lot. The French captains thought a Frenchman should be selected, since the most numerous nationality among the prisoners was the French. The traditional principle of seniority, however, pointed to the selection of the oldest skipper. My belief in that principle was confirmed by the fact that the oldest skipper was Captain Mullen of thePinmore. He had shown himself to be the finest of gentlemen, and then there was the memory of my old ship, which I had been compelled to sink. I appointed Captain Mullen master of theCambronne. Since he was a Britisher, it was reasonable that his ship should sail under British colours. That necessitated the ceremony of hauling down the French flag and hoisting the Union Jack. The French captains did not like it at all.
I was rather glad that it was not I who would command theCambronne. With all those captains aboard, especially the disgruntled French captains, the skipper of theCambronnewas certain to have an uncomfortable time. One skipper always knows more than any other skipper. Nor is any skipper ever reticent about the mistakes of another. The skipper of theCambronnehad better navigate with a perfect correctness, or there would be plenty of talk aboard.
We lopped off theCambronne'supper masts, so that she could set only her lower sails. She could not make any speed now, and it would take her from ten to fourteen days to get to Rio de Janeiro, which was the nearest port. Then I exacted a pledge from Captain Mullen:
"Captain," said I, "we are releasing our prisoners, and they are under your command. I understand perfectly well that when you get to port our existence will be known. We will be a sailing ship in a world of armoured cruisers. We will be chased like a wild deer. We need a start. We have taken care that you do not get to port too soon. One thing remains, though. You may meet a ship within a week or within a day—it may be a steamer with a wireless plant. I ask for your word that you will not communicate with any ship until you reach port. We have, I hope, treated our prisoners fairly, and I ask this of you in return. I must have your solemn word on it."
"Count," he replied, "I give you my word that theCambronnewill not communicate with any ship until she is in port at Rio."
We shook hands on it, and my mind was at rest. It was no risk to take the word of thePinmore'sold skipper.
He played his part nobly. He passed several steamers on his way to Rio, but steered clear of them. One comical thing happened. A big steamer came toward theCambronneone morning, and then her captain noticed the crowd of prisoners on the ship's deck. He was a cautious soul. It looked suspicious. The steamer turned and fled at full speed.
There remained the case of Captain Lecoq of theLa Rochefoucauld, who had broken his word to me and whom I had promised not to release with the other prisoners. He tried to dissuade me. He was aghast at the thought of being kept aboard theSeeadlerthroughout her long cruise, the end of which no one could foretell. He vowed by all the saints that he would keep the position of the ship's magazines locked sternly within his bosom. I would not listen to him. I told him that the others would go but he would remain. I intended to hold him until we had caught and released our next batch of prisoners. He enlisted the other captains to intercede in his behalf. They came and asked me to relent.
"Gentlemen," I replied, "I have just now rested the safety of my ship on Captain Mullen's word. You are all ship masters. You know a captain's duty to the vessel he commands. Very well, I know that Captain Mullen's word is good. I have taken the others of you at your word, and you have not failed me. But Captain Lecoq broke his word. Can I trust him not to break it again?"
They argued so hard for their unfortunate fellow skipper that I finally gave in. After all, even if he did break his word again and tell of the position of my magazines, it did not necessarily mean disaster. I made him sign a promise and made the other captains sign as witnesses to his promise. Then I gave orders that he should go with the rest.
We paid our prisoners off, just as if they had been working for us. Each received wages for the time he had spent aboard, and each was paid the wage he ordinarily received from his shipowner. By Joe, that made them happy. We had a final banquet. The sailors feasted in their quarters. I entertained the officers and ladies in my cabin. Toasts of champagne were drunk, and at the end there were cordial handshakes. We transferred the crowd to theCambronnein boatloads, and each boat, as it pushed off, gave three cheers for theSeeadler.
Evening was coming on. TheSeeadlerlay watching while theCambronneraised sail. Now the stately barque was sliding through the water. Hands waved and farewells were shouted. The two ships saluted each other. With her snow-white canvas bellied out by the brisk wind, theCambronnesailed toward the horizon. Aboard the buccaneer, we watched till the last tip of her mast disappeared below the skyline.
We had been away from port for eight weeks and had sunk eleven vessels, representing a total of more than forty thousand tons of Allied shipping. The Atlantic had given us its share. Now to the Pacific. And God save us from the cruisers.
Through an oily sea we sailed south and west toward the Falkland Islands. Many a time had I passed this way in the old days when bound for Cape Horn. These islands of the South Atlantic have long been the base for whaling schooners. But to every German the Falklands will be forever memorable as the scene of a one-sided naval engagement in which one of our best beloved admirals was overwhelmed by a British fleet.
Had you seen our deck as we sailed south during these days, you might have wondered what we were about. Along with other plunder, we had looted captured ships of several great sheets of iron. We had ripped them from iron walls and roofs of forecastles and stowed them on our deck. Now the mechanics of theSeeadler'smotor crew got busy with acetylene torches, and from those sheets of metal they welded a great iron cross, ten feet high.
We drew near a spot on that lonely ocean just a bit to the east of the Falkland Islands. My navigation officer and I figured out the point carefully on our chart, and when our instruments told us we were there, I called all hands on deck. Somewhere far below on the floor of the ocean were the bodies of hundreds of our comrades and the battered hulks of a once proud German fleet. It was in these very waters that our gallant Pacific Squadron under Count von Spee sank in three thousand fathoms. For here it was that our light cruisers, theScharnhorst,Gneisenau,Nuremburg, andLeipsic, with odds against them, fought it out with a more powerful British squadron.
With flag at half mast, we stood at solemn attention. The sky was gray and melancholy. The sea rolled with a gentle swell. In our mind's eye we could picture that disastrous day when, outranged by the guns of the great British warships, our cruisers, two large and three small, had fought a losing and hopeless fight. One, a scout cruiser, escaped. The others went down. Pounded from the distance, they trembled under the blows of the shells that rained down upon them. Exploding projectiles raked the decks and pierced the hulls of the ill-fated vessels. As if in a last struggle, trying to keep afloat for one more shot at the enemy, they staggered, lurched, and then, one after the other, plunged into the depths, entering port on their final voyage far below on the ocean floor, eighteen thousand feet beneath the surface. Every man aboard three of the ships was lost. A high sea happened to be running at the time, so the victors had little chance to rescue the men from the doomed ships. Two hundred and fifty members of the crew of theGneisenauwere picked up and got to the Falklands alive.
As if in a dream, I thought of the last time I saw my friend Count von Spee. It was in the days before the world went mad. The Navy Yard at Kiel was in gala mood. Every warship in the harbour had sent three hundred men. They stood at rigid attention while Von Spee and his staff strode by. Then he addressed them.
"By order of the Emperor, I am to take command of our cruisers in Chinese waters. My officers and men sail with me to-morrow."
The sailors all give three cheers. They think the Admiral and his men are merely going for a pleasant vacation to the Orient. It is in 1913. No war is in sight. Yet a darker note intrudes: Even then military and naval men were unable to escape the thought of war:
"We are leaving home and country for two years. We who part from you to-morrow will do our duty, knowing that every man at home will do his. If war should come, we will be across the world and you will be here. We will be too far away to lend a hand to you, and there is little that you will be able to do for us.
"Ours is a young navy, but we have had a great teacher. When England built her mighty fleet, she taught us how to build ours. The English have great naval traditions, and both their fleet and traditions have been our model. If war should come before we meet again, we along the far-off China coast may be but a few ships against many enemies, but from you of the High Sea Fleet we expect great deeds."
We of the German Navy knew and constantly gave expression to the thought that Britain was our guide on the sea. Her great seafaring tradition was our conscious and admitted pattern. We German naval men liked the English and were in sympathy with them. Our navies were alike in spirit. The French Navy was somewhat different. Its morale was perhaps not so good. French naval officers all come up from the ranks. The British and German come from cadet schools and are recruited mostly from the first families. That is best. It provides a finer corps of officers. I, myself, came up from the forecastle, but I believe that, unless you have officers and men from different worlds, your men will have little respect for their commanders. It must either be that, or your officers must inspire respect with their fists as in the old sailing-ship days. The French Navy no longer has a rich tradition. It is true that the French had far greater sea fighters than we in past centuries, and they had their fine old naval traditions. But during the Revolution the old Royal Navy of France was swept away and remained abolished for twenty years. At the end of that time, a new navy was formed, but by then the fine old French traditions seem to have been forgotten and new traditions had to be formed. We Germans, with a new fleet, took over the old, solid tradition of the British and made it our own. We did everything we could to implant it in our men, and make it a real, living thing ingrained in our people. Our sea leaders understood the importance of a tradition. That was why we were determined to keep a fleet after the war. When our great ships went down at Scapa Flow, our Socialists favoured the total abandonment of the naval arm, but fortunately enough of our people came out of their post-war trance long enough to prevent such a fatal error. Perhaps it might be only a few small ships that we could retain, but it would serve to keep traditions alive until we could again build up a fleet as great or even greater than the one we lost.
Von Spee was a sailor's admiral. He was a seaman by temperament, open, honest, and jovial, uncomfortable on land and only himself when on the bridge of his flagship. Too many of our professional fighting men, I regret to say, were more ornamental than useful. They were good at wearing gold lace and that is about all. But not Von Spee. He was at his best on a quarter-deck in a storm. I still can see him pacing back and forth, with his bushy brows and piercing blue eyes.
The day after he saidauf wiedersehento us at Kiel, he and his officers and men left by transport for the Orient, there to relieve the officers and men aboard the cruisers of our small Pacific Squadron at Tsing Tao. What was to have been their two-year term overseas began as commonplace, quiet routine. It ended under the salvos of British guns off the Falkland Islands.
Von Spee's plan, when the war caught him 15,000 miles from German waters, was to harass the Allies in the Pacific and then try to slip back through the North Sea to Kiel. Lady Luck smiled on him for a little while and then deserted him. After crossing the Pacific, he caught Craddock, the British admiral, off the coast of Chile. Von Spee's star was in its ascendancy at this time and Craddock's on the wane. A German secret agent in Chile flashed a wireless to Von Spee giving him the information that Craddock was waiting for the arrival of the big but old battleshipCanopusthat was rounding the Horn. Without theCanopus, Craddock's forces were weaker than Von Spee's, and Von Spee instantly dashed to the attack so as to engage Craddock before theCanopuscame up. Craddock and his men met their fate like true British sailors. Outgunned, the British cruisers continued to fire until they sank. Only one, a small boat, got away. But their conqueror's days were numbered.
Von Spee now began his long race toward Kiel. Only two routes were possible, one by Cape Horn and the other by the Cape of Good Hope. Of course, he knew the British would be laying for him at both places. He knew also that they would be after him with swifter and more powerful ships than his own. His one chance was to beat them to Cape Horn, lose himself in the broad Atlantic, make a run for it, and probably fight his way through the blockade.
By now he was short of both munitions and coal. A wireless from Germany brought the good news that a supply ship had slipped through the blockade and was now on its way out to meet him. What a tremendous voyage he might now have made! What a hair-raising dash at the Allied blockade line he might have made! But he never got the chance.
As he rounded the Horn, Dame Fortune tempted him, and he made what proved to be a fatal error. He stopped a British collier and took all her coal. This delayed him for three days. Meanwhile, a fleet of Britain's mightiest battle cruisers had arrived at the Falklands. He still might have run by them unnoticed had he not determined to shell and destroy the wireless station on the Falklands. Thus he stumbled into that nest of battle cruisers. He tried to run, but they caught and sank him. That day the British had their sea giants, theIndefatigable, theInvincible, theIndomitable, and along with them a number of other battle cruisers, that later were to fight gallantly at Jutland, and then find their way to rest on the floor of the North Sea.
Only one of Von Spee's ships, the light but fleet cruiserDresden, showed her heels to the British leviathans and slipped back around Cape Horn, But the Fates were merely playing with the poorDresden, and a few days later she was sunk by the more powerful British cruiserKentoff San Juan Fernandez, Robinson Crusoe's island, in the Pacific. She was lying in neutral waters and should have been sheltered by the laws of war. Her captain signalled to the commander of theKent:
"We are in Chilean territory."
"My orders are to sink you on sight," replied theKent, "and no matter where you are."
The captain of theDresdenblew up his ship, and with his officers and crew swam ashore. The island was not quite so deserted after this shipwreck as it was in Robinson Crusoe's day!
That in brief was the story of the plucky Von Spee and his gallant men. Hence this dreary waste of waters off the Falklands was sacred to us. We hove to, and from my quarter-deck I presided over a brief memorial service above the watery graves of our comrades and their ships. First I told my boys the story of my friend Count von Spee and his men, and every one of us knew that we, too, might soon be on our way to join them. But with the difference that we might not even have a chance to fight it out.
On German ships, the captain is also the chaplain. Every Sunday aboard theSeeadlerwe had our hour of prayer and song. When we had "guests" aboard from enemy ships, we invited them to join with us in the worship of the Great Ruler of the Waves. Our service followed the ritual of no particular creed. It was as simple as we simple seamen could make it. The table which bore the ship's Bible was draped not only with our German flag but also with the flags of all the Allied nations whose ships we had captured and under whose colours our prisoners had sailed. I wanted to make our prisoners feel that the service was as much theirs as it was ours, and that we did not feel ourselves any more a chosen people before the Altar of God than any other people.
My life has not been altogether a pious one. On the contrary, it had been decidedly blasphemous. My character was then, and still is, far from saintly. However, I may not have been wholly unfit for the office of ship's chaplain. I am religious at heart, easily swayed by sentimental appeal. Had I not been a member of the Salvation Army in Australia? Those testimonial meetings in Fremantle were still vivid memories to me. So I was not exactly a greenhorn at conducting a prayer meeting.
Before concluding our little memorial service, I addressed our comrades three thousand fathoms below us. No mounds were raised over their graves, no green grass or kindly flowers had been placed to cheer them on their journey to the land from which no traveller has yet returned. Only the waves of the sea. I spoke to them as though my voice could somehow find its way to their resting place among the mountain ranges at the bottom of the South Atlantic:
"Glorious fallen comrades, we bring you a message from home. Your comrades have kept their promise to your commander. On sea and on land they are fighting for the Fatherland. We of theSeeadlersalute you and solemnly swear that we, too, will endeavour to live and die as gloriously as you. We, too, are hunted on the sea, even as you were. So perhaps it will not be long ere we join you down there in Davy Jones's Locker. If we do, our one hope is that we will be able to fight our last fight as gallantly as did you."
I then led the sailors in a prayer that we repeated aloud, and while the chorused invocation travelled southward on the winds that blew toward the Antarctic, four men came forward bearing the great iron cross.
"A decoration for the graves of heroes!"
At this signal from me the massive emblem slid into the water with scarcely a splash and flashed swiftly down, down, three thousand fathoms, to carry our message to Admiral Count von Spee and his men.
"Ahoy, shipmate," I said to Leudemann, "you are the fellow who likes yacht racing. By Joe, it's to be a race now—a race to see who gets to Cape Horn first."
We knew that, as soon as our former prisoners made port, the news of our presence in the South Atlantic would be flashed abroad. Then the British would send their cruisers on the double-quick down the coast of South America to keep us from doubling the Cape. To be sure, we had taken care to give ourselves a mighty good start. But in a race of windjammer against swift cruisers, what is a start of a thousand miles or so? With decent weather, we had hopes of making it. So far we had had fair winds and had made good time. But the most difficult stretch of sea in all the world now lay before us. The storms for which the Horn is famous often delay sailing ships for weeks.
"And then," responded Leudemann, "even if we do get to the Cape before any cruisers that may be sent down from the North, they may have a cruiser or two nosing around at the Pacific end of the Straits. Unless we round the Horn before those chaps reach Rio, the jig may be up."
Just south of the Falklands, we caught a wireless from a British cruiser, a warning message to Allied merchantmen.
Steer clear of Fernando Noronha. German cruiserMoewereported there.
"Moewe" means "sea gull" in German. "Hail to you, far-distant Sea Gull, may you fare as well on your warlike flight as we hope to fare in our Sea Eagle!"
A feeling of homesickness for the oldMoewecame over me, as it does over any sailor at the mention of a ship on which he has sailed. My service aboard theMoewehad been neither long nor eventful, but already she had made for herself a heroic reputation. I have always regretted that I was not with her on her raids. She made several, slipping out through the blockade, sinking quantities of Allied shipping, and stealing back into German waters.
She was built just before the war, and originally designed to carry the exotic banana from Southwest Africa and "German East" to Hamburg. Plans had just been made to flood Germany with them. Her sister ship in the banana trade was theWolf, and she, too, became a famous raider.
All manner of ingenious devices were invented in fitting out theMoewefor her career as a raider. She was altered so that she could disguise herself and change disguises while steaming at full speed just like a quick-change actor. One day she would be a three or two funnelled steamer, the next she would look like a slow tramp with one funnel. The line of her deck could be changed in a few minutes also. She also had fake superstructures that could be raised or lowered at will. She could even be made longer or shorter in a few moments by means of a fake section that slipped out from her stern. One day she would be a tramp, the next, with fake bulls'-eyes, a liner. These startling metamorphoses were a great success and enabled her to dodge many an Allied cruiser.
Of course, the British soon got on to theMoewe'squick-change habits, and were not to be fooled by them. On one of her adventures, theMoewewas trapped off the eastern coast of South America. The British cruisersGlasgowandAmethystwere warned by wireless that theMoewewas steering south from Fernando Noronha to take coal. So they rushed out from Rio de Janeiro to trap her. Presently, theGlasgowspotted theMoeweon the horizon. The German ship had on one of her innumerable disguises, and the captain of theGlasgowcould not recognize her. He was wary, however, and on to theMoewe'stricks, so he wirelessed her to stand by to be searched. TheMoeweturned and ran south. TheGlasgowcould make twenty-five knots and easily outrace her. TheMoewewas well armed with guns and torpedoes and would fight, but she would be no match for an armoured ship. The men aboard theMoeweseemed as good as at the bottom of the sea. TheGlasgowknew that the fleeing ship must be the long-sought-for raider, and prepared to sink her.
The two ships steamed with straining boilers, and the Glasgow was fast creeping up on theMoewe. When almost within range, the hunted raider ran into one of those sudden rain squalls that sweep over the ocean. Like the Biblical cloud, it hid her from the pursuing cruiser. Of course, theGlasgowfollowed her into the squall. But as theMoeweran through the swirling storm, she passed another steamer, this one steaming north. The cruiser saw emerging from the squall this new ship. She had three masts. TheMoewehad had but two. The captain of theGlasgowthought only of theMoewe'sability to disguise herself. He presumed that theMoewehad taken advantage of the squall to run up a third mast and then double back on her trail in the hope that the Englishman would not recognize her and that she might pass safely and even have an opportunity to torpedo the Glasgow. The cruiser instantly opened fire, and blew the poor, inoffensive cargo steamer out of the water. It was only when they examined the wreckage that they discovered that they had made a mistake and sunk a British freighter! Meanwhile, theMoewehad escaped once more.
Nor was that the only ship the British sank by mistake. They shelled two harmless sailing vessels to pieces, mistaking them for ourSeeadler. It all came about because of one of those familiar war rumours, a rumour to the effect that we were already somewhere off the Australian coast. An Australian cruiser encountered a Scandinavian three-master, and they seemed to think she was behaving queerly. Word had been passed around that theSeeadlercarried torpedoes. So the cruiser thought she had better not run any chance of being blown up. She opened fire at long range. Only ten men aboard the Scandinavian ship were saved. Later on, the armoured cruiserKent[1] sank another sailing vessel under similar circumstances in the Pacific.