– 67 –
Lieutenant Ernst Kyller watched through his binoculars as the two British cruisers turned in succession away from the land and coalesced with the darkness that fell so swiftly over the ocean and the land. They were gone.
‘Every day it is the same.’ Kyller let the binoculars fall against his chest and pulled his watch from the pocket of his tunic. ‘Fifteen minutes before sunset, and again fifteen minutes before sum-up they sail past to show us that they are still waiting.’
‘Yes, sir,’ agreed the seaman who was squeezed into the crow’s-nest beside Kyller.
‘I will go down now. Moon comes up at 11.44 tonight – keep awake.’
‘Yes, sir,’
Kyller swung his legs over the side and groped with his feet for the rungs of the rope ladder. Then he climbed down the palm tree to the beach fifty feet below. By the time he reached it the light had gone, and the beach was a vague white blur down to the green lights of phosphorus in the surf.
The sand crunched like sugar under his boots as he set off to where the launch was moored. As he walked, his mind was wholly absorbed with the details of his defence system.
There were only two of the many mouths of the Rufiji, up which the English could attack. They were separated by a low wedge-shaped island of sand and mud and mangrove. It was on the seaward side of this island that Kyller had sited the four-pounder pom-poms taken from their mountings on Blucher’s upper deck.
He had sunk a raft of logs into the soft mud to give them a firm foundation on which to stand, and he had cut out the mangroves so they commanded an arc of fire across both channels. His search-lights he sited with equal care – so they could sweep left or right without blinding his gunners.
From Commander Lochtkamper he had solicited a length of four-inch steel hawser. This was rather like an unrehabilitated insolvent raising an unsecured loan from a money-lender, for Commander Locktkamper was not easily parted from his stores. Far up river Ensign Proust had diverted some of his axe-men to felling fifty giant African mahogany trees. They had floated the trunks down on the tide; logs the size of the columns of a Greek temple. With these and the cable Kyller had fashioned a boom that stretched across both channels, an obstacle so formidable that it would rip the belly out of even a heavy cruiser coming down on it at speed.
Not satisfied with this, for Kyller had highly developed the Teutonic capacity for taking infinite pains, he lifted the fat globular mines with their sinister horns that Blücher had sown haphazardly behind her on her journey up-river. These he rearranged into neat geometrical ranks behind his log boom, a labour that left his men almost prostrated with nervous exhaustion.
This work had taken ten days to complete, and immediately Kyller had begun building observation posts. He placed them on every hump of high ground that commanded a view of the ocean, he built them in the tops of the palm trees, and on the smaller islands that stood out at sea. He arranged a system of signals with his observers – flags and heliographs for the day, sky-rockets for the night.
During the hours of darkness, two whale boats rowed steadily back and forth along the log boom, manned by seamen who slapped steadily and sulkily at the light cloud of mosquitoes that haloed their heads, and made occasional brief but vitriolic statements about Lieutenant Kyller’s ancestry present worth and future prospects.
At 2200 hours on the moonless night of 16 June 1915, the British motor torpedo-boat YN2 crept with both engines running dead slow into the centre of Lieutenant Kyller’s elaborate reception arrangements.
– 68 –
After the clean cool air on the open sea, the smell was like entering the monkey-house of London Zoo. The land masked the breeze, and the frolic of the surface chop died away. As the torpedo-boat groped its way into the delta, the miasma of the swamps spread out to meet her.
‘My God, that smell.’ Sebastian twitched his flattened nose. ‘It brings back pleasant memories.’
‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ agreed Flynn.
‘We must be almost into the channel.’ Sebastian peered into the night, sensing rather than seeing the loom of the mangroves ahead and on either hand.
‘I don’t know what the hell I’m doing on this barge,’ grunted Flynn. This is raving bloody madness. We’ve got more chance of catching a clap than finding our way up to where Blücher is anchored.’
‘Faith! Major O’Flynn, and shame on ye!’ The commander of the torpedo-boat exclaimed in his best musichall brogue. ‘We put our trust in you and the Lord.’ His tone changed and he spoke crisply to the helmsman beside him. ‘Lay her off a point to starboard.’
The long nose of the boat, with the torpedo tubes lying like a rack of gigantic champagne bottles on her foredeck, swung fractionally. The commander cocked his head to listen to the whispered soundings relayed from the leadsman in the bows.
‘Twelve fathoms,’ he repeated thoughtfully. ‘So far so good.’ Then he turned back to Flynn.
‘Now, Major, I heard you shooting the blarney to Captain Joyce about how well you know this river, I think your exact words were, “Like you know the way to your own Thunder Box.” You don’t seem so certain about it any longer. Why is that?’
‘It’s dark,’ said Flynn sulkily.
‘My, so it is. But that shouldn’t fluster an old river pilot like you.’
‘Well, it sure as hell does.’
‘If we get into the channel and lay up until the moon rises, would that help?’
‘It wouldn’t do any harm.’
That exchange seemed to exhaust the subject and for a further fifteen minutes the tense silence on the bridge was spoiled only by the commander’s quiet orders to the helm, as he kept his ship within the ten fathom line of the channel.
Then Sebastian made a contribution.
‘I say, there’s something dead ahead of us.’
A patch of deeper darkness in the night; a low blurred shape that showed against the faint sheen of the star reflections on the surface. A reef perhaps? No, there was a splash alongside it as an oar dipped and pulled.
‘Guard boat!’ said the commander, and stooped to the voice-pipe. ‘Both engines full ahead together.’
The deck canted sharply under their feet as the bows lifted, the whisper of the engines rose to a dull bellow and the torpedo-boat plunged forward like a bull at the cape.
‘Hold on! I’m going to ram it.’ The commander’s voice was pitched at conversational level, and a hubbub of shouts broke out ahead, oars splashed frantically as the guard boat tried to pull out of their line of charge.
‘Steer for them,’ said the commander pleasantly, and the helmsman put her over a little.
Flash and crack, flash and crack, someone in the guard boat fired a rifle just as the torpedo-boat struck her. It was a glancing blow, taken on her shoulder, that spun the little whale boat aside, shearing off the protruding oars with a crackling popping sound.
She scraped down the gunwale of the torpedo-boat, and then was left astern bobbing and rocking wildly as the larger vessel surged ahead.
Then abruptly it was no longer dark. From all around them sparkling trails of fire shot into the sky and burst in balls of blue, that lit it all with an eerie flickering glow.
‘Sky rockets, be Jesus. Guy Fawkes, Guy,’ said the commander.
They could see the banks of mangrove massed on either hand, and ahead of them the double mouths of the two channels.
‘Steer for the southern channel.’ This time the commander lifted his voice a little, and the ship plunged onward, throwing out white wings of water from under her bows, bucking and jarring as she leapt over the low swells pushed up by the out-flowing tide, so the men on the bridge hung on to the hand rail to steady themselves.
Then all of them gasped together in the pain of seared eyeballs as a solid shaft of dazzling white light struck them. It leapt out from the dark wedge of land that divided the two channels, and almost immediately two other search-lights on the outer banks of the channels joined in the hunt.
Their beams fastened on the ship like the tentacles of a squid on the carcass of a flying fish.
‘Get those lights!’ This time the commander shouted the order at the gunners behind the Lewis guns at the corners of the bridge. The tracer that hosed out in a gentle arc towards the base of the searchlight beams was anaemic and pinkly pale, in contrast to the brilliance they were trying to quench.
The torpedo-boat roared on into the channel.
Then there was another sound. A regular thump, thump, thump like the working of a distant water pump. Lieutenant Kyller had opened up with his quick-firing pom-pom.
The four-pound tracer emanated from the dark blob of the island. Seeming to float slowly towards the torpedo-boat, but gaining speed as it approached, until it flashed past with the whirr of a rocketing pheasant.
‘Jesus!’ said Flynn as though he meant it. He sat down hurriedly on the deck and began to unlace his boots.
Still held in the cold white grip of the searchlights, the torpedo-boat roared on with four-pounder shell streaking around her, and bursting in flurries of spray on the surface near her. The long dotted tendrils of tracer from her own Lewis guns still arched out in delicate lines towards the shore, and suddenly they had effect.
The beam of one of the searchlights snapped off as a bullet shattered the glass, for a few seconds the filaments continued to glow dull red as they burned themselves out.
In the relief from the blinding glare, Sebastian could see ahead, and he saw a sea serpent. It lay across the channel, undulating in the swells, bellied from bank to bank by the push of the tide, showing its back at the top of the swells and then ducking into the troughs; long and sinuous and menacing, Lieutenant Kyller’s log boom waited to welcome them.
‘Good God, what’s that?’
‘Full port rudder!’ the commander bellowed. ‘Both engines full astern together.’
And before the ship could answer her helm or the drag of her propellers, she ran into a log four feet thick and a hundred feet long. A log as unyielding as a reef of solid granite that stopped her dead in the water and crunched in her bows.
The men in the well of her bridge were thrown into a heap of tangled bodies on the deck. A heap from which the bull figure of Flynn Patrick O’Flynn was the first to emerge. On stockinged feet he made for the side of the ship.
‘Flynn, where are you going?’ Sebastian shouted after him.
‘Home,’ said Flynn.
‘Wait for me.’ Sebastian scrambled to his knees.
The engines roaring in reverse pulled the torpedo-boat back off the log-boom, her plywood hull crackling and squeaking, but she was mortally wounded. She was sinking with a rapidity that amazed Sebastian. Already her cockpit was flooding.
‘Abandon ship,’ shouted the commander.
‘You damned tooting,’ said Flynn O’Flynn and leaped in an untidy tangle of arms and legs into the water.
Like a playful seal the torpedo-boat rolled over on its side, and Sebastian jumped. Drawing his breath while he was in the air, steeling himself against the cold of the water.
He was surprised at how warm it was.
– 69 –
From the bridge of H.M.S. Renounce, the survivors looked like a cluster of bedraggled water rats. In the dawn they floundered and splashed around the edge of the balloon of stained and filthy water where the Rufiji had washed them out, like the effluent from the sewer outlet of a city. Renounce found them before the sharks did, for there was no blood. There was one broken leg, a fractured collar bone and a few cracked ribs – but miraculously there was no blood. So from a crew of fourteen, Renounce recovered every man – including the two pilots.
They came aboard with their hair matted, their faces streaked, and their eyes swollen and inflamed with engine oil. With a man on either hand to guide them, leaving a trail of malodorous Rufiji water across the deck, they shuffled down to the sick-bay, a sodden and sorrowful-looking assembly of humanity.
‘Well,’ said Flynn O’Flynn, ‘if we don’t get a medal for that, then I’m going back to my old job – and the hell with them.’
‘That,’ said Captain Arthur Joyce, sitting hunched behind his desk, ‘was not a roaring success.’ He showed no inclination to whistle ‘Tipperary’.
‘It wasn’t even a good try, sir,’ agreed the torpedo-boat commander. ‘The Boche had everything ready to throw at our heads.’
‘A log boom—’ Joyce shook his head, ‘good Lord, they went out with the Napoleonic War!’ He said it in a tone that implied that he was a victim of unfair play.
‘It was extraordinarily effective, sir.’
‘Yes, it must have been.’ Joyce sighed. ‘Well, at the very least we have established that an attack up the channel is not practical.’
‘During the few minutes before the tide swept us away from the boom I looked beyond it, and I saw what I took to be a mine. I think it certain that the Boche have laid a minefield beyond the boom, sir.’
‘Thank you, Commander,’ Joyce nodded. ‘I will see to it that their Lordships receive a full account of your conduct. I consider it excellent.’ Then he went on, ‘I would value your opinion of Major O’Flynn and his son – do you think they are reliable men?’
‘Well …’ the commander hesitated, he did not want to be unfair, ‘– they can both swim and the young one seems to have good eyesight. Apart from that I am not really in a position to give a judgement.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you are. Still I wish I knew more about them. For the next phase in this operation I am going to rely quite heavily on them.’ He stood up. ‘I think I will talk to them now.’
‘You mean you actually want someone to go on board Blücher!’ Flynn was appalled.
‘I have explained to you, Major, how important it is for me to know exactly what state she is in. I must be able to estimate when she is likely to break out of the delta. I must know how much time I have.’
‘Madness,’ whispered Flynn. ‘Stark raving bloody madness.’ He stared at Joyce in disbelief.
‘You have told me how well organized is your intelligence system ashore, of the reliable men who work for you. Indeed it is through you that we know that the Germans are cutting cordwood and taking it aboard. We know that they have recruited an army of native labourers and are using them not only for wood-cutting, but also for heavy work aboard the Blücher.’
‘So?’ Into that single word Flynn put a wealth of caution.
‘One of your men could infiltrate the labour gangs and get aboard Blücher.’
And Flynn perked up immediately; he had anticipated that Joyce would suggest that Flynn Patrick O’Flynn should personally conduct a survey of Blücher’s damage.
‘It might be done.’ There was a lengthy pause while Flynn considered every aspect of the business. ‘Of course, Captain, my men aren’t fighting patriots like you and I. They work for money. They are …’ Flynn searched for the word. ‘They are …’
‘Mercenaries?’
‘Yes,’ said Flynn. ‘That’s exactly what they are.’
‘Hmm,’ said Joyce. ‘You mean they would want payment?’
‘They’d want a big dollop of lolly – and you can’t blame them, can you?’
‘The person you send would have to be a first-class man.’
‘He would be,’ Flynn assured him.
‘On behalf of His Majesty’s Government, I could undertake to purchase a complete and competent report on the disposition of the German cruiser Blücher, for the sum of …’ he thought about it a moment, ‘ … one thousand pounds.’
‘Gold?’
‘Gold,’ agreed Joyce.
‘That would cover it nicely.’ Flynn nodded, then allowed his eyes to move across the cabin to where Sebastian and Rosa sat side by side on the day couch. They were holding hands, and showing more interest in each other than in the bargainings of Flynn and Captain Joyce.
It was a good thing, Flynn decided, that the Wakamba tribe from which Commissioner Fleischer had recruited the
majority of his labour force, affected clean-shaven pates. It would be impossible for a person of European descent to dress his straight hair to resemble the woollen cap of an African.
It was also a good thing about the M’senga tree. From the bark of the M’senga tree the fishermen of Central Africa decocted a liquid in which they soaked their nets. It toughened the fibres of the netting and it also stained the skin. Once Flynn had dipped his finger into a basin of the stuff, and despite constant scrubbing, it was fifteen days before the black stain faded.
It was finally a good thing about Sebastian’s nose. Its new contours were decidedly negroid.
– 70 –
‘A thousand pounds!’ said Flynn O’Flynn as though it were a benediction, and he scooped another mugful of the black liquid and poured it over Sebastian Oldsmith’s clean-shaven scalp. ‘Think of it, Bassie, me lad, a thousand pounds! Your half share of that is five hundred. Why! You’ll be in a position to pay me back every penny you owe me. You’ll be out of debt at last.’
They were camped on the Abati river, one of the tributaries of the Rufiji. Six miles downstream was Commissioner Fleischer’s wood-cutting camp.
‘It’s money for jam,’ opined Flynn. He was sitting comfortably in a riempie chair beside the galvanized iron tub, in which Sebastian Oldsmith squatted with his knees drawn up under his chin. Sebastian had the dejected look of a spaniel taking a bath in flea shampoo. The liquid in which he sat was the colour and viscosity of strong Turkish coffee and already his face and body were a dark purply chocolate colour.
‘Sebastian isn’t interested in the money,’ said Rosa Oldsmith. She knelt beside the tub and, tenderly as a mother bathing her infant, she was ladling the M’senga juice over Sebastian’s shoulders and back.
‘I know, I know!’ Flynn agreed quickly. ‘We are all doing our duty. We all remember little Maria – may the Lord bless and keep her tiny soul. But the money won’t hurt us either.’
Sebastian closed his eyes as another mugful cascaded over his head.