‘Orion – that’s Manderson, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And who has Bloodhound?’
‘Little, sir.’
‘Good,’ Sir Percy nodded with satisfaction. ‘A six-inch cruiser and a destroyer should be able to deal with Blücher,’ and he smiled again. ‘Especially with a hellion like Charles Little handling the Bloodhound. I played golf with him last summer – he damn nigh drove the sixteenth green at St Andrews!’
The flag-captain glanced at the Admiral and, on the strength of the destroyer captain’s reputation, decided to permit himself an inanity. ‘The young ladies of Cape Town will mourn his departure, sir.’
‘We must hope that Kapitan zur See Otto von Kleine will mourn his arrival,’ chuckled Sir Percy.
‘Daddy likes you very much.’
‘Your father is a man of exquisite good taste,’ Commander the Honourable Charles Little conceded gallantly, and rolled his head to smile at the young lady who lay beside him on a rug, in the dappled shade beneath the pine trees.
‘Can’t you ever be serious?’
‘Helen, my sweet, at times I can be deadly serious.’
‘Oh, you!’ and his companion blushed prettily as she remembered certain of Charles’s recent actions, which would make her father hastily revise his judgement.
‘I value your father’s good opinion, but my chief concern is that you endorse it.’
The girl sat up slowly and while she stared at him her hands were busy, brushing the pine needles from the glorious tangle of her hair, readjusting the fastenings of her blouse, spreading the skirts of her riding-habit to cover sweet legs clad in dark, tall polished leather boots.
She stared at Charles Little and ached with the strength of her want. It was not a sensual need she felt, but an overpowering obsession to have this man as her very own. To own him in the same way as she already owned diamonds, and furs, and silk, and horses, and peacocks, and other beautiful things.
His body sprawled out on the rug with all the unconscious grace of a reclining leopard. A secret little smile tugged at the corners of his lips and his eyelids drooped to mask the sparkle of his eyes. His recent exertions had dampened the hair that flopped forward onto his forehead.
There was something satanical about him, an air of wickedness, and Helen decided it was the slant of the eyebrows and the way his ears lay flat against his temples, but were pointed like those of a satyr, yet they were pink and smooth as those of an infant.
‘I think you have devil’s ears,’ she said, and then she blushed again, and scrambled to her feet avoiding Charles’s arm that reached out for her. ‘Enough of that!’ she giggled and ran to the thoroughbred hunter that was tied near them in the forest. ‘Come on,’ she called as she mounted.
Charles stood up lazily and stretched. He tucked the tail of his shirt into his breeches, folded the rug on which they had lain, and went to his own horse.
At the edge of the pine forest, they checked their mounts and sat looking down over the Constantia valley.
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she said.
‘It is indeed,’ he agreed.
‘I meant the view.’
‘And so did I.’ Twice in the six days he had known her, she had led him up this mountain and subjected him to the temptation. Below them lay six thousand acres of the richest land in all of Africa.
‘When my brother Hubert was killed there was no once left to carry it on. Just my sister and I – and we are only girls. Poor Daddy isn’t so well any more – he finds it such a strain.’
Charles let his eyes move lazily from the great squat buttress of Table Mountain on their left, across the lush basin of vineyards below them, and then on to where the glittering wedge of False Bay drove into the mountains.
‘Doesn’t the homestead look lovely from here?’ Helen drew his attention to the massive Dutch-gabled residence, with its attendant outbuildings grouped in servility behind it.
‘I am truly impressed by the magnificence of the stud fee,’ Charles murmured, purposefully slurring the last two words, and the girl glanced at him in surprise, beginning to bridle.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It is truly magnificent scenery,’ he amended. Her persistent efforts at ensnaring him were beginning to bore Charles. He had teased and avoided more artful huntresses.
‘Charles,’ she whispered. ‘How would you like to live here. I mean, forever?’
And Charles was shocked. This little provincial had no understanding whatsoever of the rules governing the game of flirtation. He was so shocked that he threw back his head and laughed.
When Charles laughed it sent shivers of delight through every woman within a hundred yards. It was a merry sound with underlying tones of sensuality. His teeth were very white against the sea-tan of his face, and the muscles of his chest and upper arms tensed into bold relief beneath the silk shirt he wore.
Helen was the only witness of this particular performance, and she was helpless as a sparrow in a hurricane. Eagerly she leaned across the space between their horses and touched his arm. ‘You would like it, Charles. Wouldn’t your
She did not know that Charles Little had a private income of twenty thousand pounds a year, that when his father died he would inherit the title Viscount Sutherton and the estates that went with it. She did not know that one of those estates would swallow her father’s own three times over; nor did she know that Charles had passed by willing young ladies with twice her looks, ten times her fortune, and a hundred times her breeding.
‘You would, Charles. I know you would!’
So young, so vulnerable, that he stopped the flippant reply before it reached his lips.
‘Helen,’ he took her hand. ‘I am a sea creature. We move with the wind and the waves,’ and he lifted her hand to his lips.
A while she sat, feeling the warm pressure of his lips upon her flesh, and the burn of tears behind her eyes. Then she snatched her hand away, and wheeled her horse. She lifted the leather riding-crop and slashed the glossy black shoulder between her knees. Startled, the stallion jumped forward into a dead run back along the road towards the Constantia valley.
Charles shook his head and grimaced with regret. He had not meant to hurt her. It had been an escapade, something to fill the waiting days while Bloodhound went through the final stages of her refit. But Charles had learned to harden himself to the ending of his adventures – to the tears and tragedy.
‘Shame on you, you heartless cad,’ he said aloud, and touching his mount with his heels ambled in pursuit of the galloping stallion.
He caught up with the stallion in the stable yards. A groom was walking it, and there were darker sweat patches on its coat, and the barrel of its chest still heaved with laboured breathing.
Helen was nowhere in sight, but her father stood at the stable gates – a big man, with a square-cut black beard picked out with grey.
‘Enjoy your ride?’
‘Thank you, Mr Uys.’ Charles was noncommittal, and the older man glanced significantly at the blown stallion before going on.
‘There’s one of your sailors been waiting for you for an hour.’
‘Where is he?’ Charles’s manner altered abruptly, became instantly businesslike.
‘Here, sir.’ From the deep shade of the stable doorway, a young seaman stepped out into the bright sunlight.
‘What is it, man?’ Impatiently Charles acknowledged his salute.
‘Captain Manderson’s compliments, sir, and you’re to report aboard H.M.S. Orion with all possible speed. There’s a motor car waiting to take you to the base, sir.’
‘An untimely summons, Commander.’ Uys gave his opinion lounging against the worked stone gateway. ‘I fear we will see no more of you for a long time.’
But Charles was not listening. His body seemed to quiver with suppressed excitement, the way a good gundog reacts to the scent of the bird. ‘Sailing orders,’ he whispered, ‘– at last. At last!’
&nbs
p; There was a heavy south-east swell battering Cape Point, so the sea spray wreathed the beam of the lighthouse on the cliffs above. A flight of malgas came in so high towards the land that they caught the last of the sun, and glowed pink above the dark water.
Bloodhound cleared Cape Hangklip and took the press of the South Atlantic on her shoulder, staggered from it with a welter of white water running waist-deep past her foredeck gun-turrets. Then in retaliation she hurled herself at the next swell, and Charles Little on her bridge exulted at the vital movement of the deck beneath his feet.
‘Bring her round to oh-five-oh.’
‘Oh-five-oh, sir,’ repeated his navigating lieutenant.
‘Revolutions for seventeen knots, pilot.’
Almost immediately the beat of the engines changed, and her action through the water became more abandoned.
Charles crossed to the angle of the flimsy little bridge and looked back into the dark, mountain-lined maw of False Bay. Two miles astern the shape of H.M.S. Orion melted into the dying light.
‘Come along, old girl. Do try and keep up,’ murmured Charles Little with the scorn that a destroyer man feels for any vessel that cannot cruise at twenty knots. Then he looked beyond Orion at the land. Below the massif of Table Mountain, near the head of the Constantia valley a single pin prick of light showed.
‘there’ll be fog tonight, sir,’ the pilot spoke at Charles’s elbow, and Charles turned without regret to peer over the bows into the gathering night.
‘Yes, a good night for pirates.’
– 42 –
The fog condensed on the grey metal of the bridge, so the footplates were slippery underfoot. It soaked into the overcoats of the men huddled against the rail, and it dewed in minute pearls on the eyebrows and the beard of Kapitän zur See Otto von Kleine. It gave him an air of derring-do, the reckless look of a scholarly pirate.
Every few seconds Lieutenant Kyller glanced anxiously at his captain, wondering when the order to turn would come. He hated this business of creeping inshore in the fog, with a flood tide pushing them towards a hostile coast.
‘Stop all engines,’ said von Kleine, and Kyller repeated the order to the helm with alacrity. The muted throbbing died beneath their feet, and afterwards the fog-blanketed air was heavy with a sepulchral hush.
‘Ask masthead what he makes of the land.’ Von Kleine spoke without turning his head, and after a pause Kyller reported back.
‘Masthead is in the fog. No visibility.’ He paused. ‘Foredeck reports fifty fathoms shoaling rapidly.’
And von Kleine nodded. The sounding tended to confirm his estimate that they were sitting five miles off the breakwater of Durban harbour. When the morning wind swept the fog aside he hoped to see the low coastal hills of Natal ahead of him, terraced with gardens and whitewashed buildings – but most of all he hoped to see at least six British merchantmen anchored off the beach waiting their turn to enter the congested harbour, plump and sleepy under the protection of the shore batteries; unaware just how feeble was the protection afforded by half a dozen obsolete ten-pounders manned by old men and boys of the militia.
German naval intelligence had submitted a very detailed report of the defences and conditions prevailing in Durban. After careful perusal of this report, von Kleine had decided that he could trade certain betrayal of his exact position to the English for such a rich prize. There was little actual risk involved. One pass across the entrance of the harbour at high speed, a single broadside for each of the anchored merchantmen, and he could be over the horizon again before the shore gunners had loaded their weapons.
The risk, of course, was in showing Blücher to the entire population of Durban city and thereby supplying the Royal Navy with its first accurate sighting since the declaration of war. Within minutes of his first broadside, the British squadrons, which were hunting him, would be racing in from all directions to block each of his escape routes. He hoped to counter this by swinging away towards the south, down into that watery wilderness of wind and ice below latitude 40°, to the rendezvous with Esther, his supply ship. Then on to Australia or South America, as the opportunity arose.
He turned to glance at the chronometer above the ship’s compass. Sunrise in three minutes, then they could expect the morning wind.
‘Masthead reports the fog dispersing, sir.’
Von Kleine aroused himself, and looked out into the fog banks. They were moving now, twisting upon themselves in agitation at the warmth of the sun. ‘All engines slow ahead together,’ he said.
‘Masthead,’ warbled one of the voice-pipes in the battery in front of Kyller. ‘Land bearing green four-oh. Range, ten thousand metres. A big headland.’
That would be the bluff above Durban, that massive whale-backed mountain that sheltered the harbour. But in the fog von Kleine had misjudged his approach; he was twice as far from the shore as he had intended.
‘All engines full ahead together. New course. Oh-oh-six.’ He waited for the order to be relayed to the helm before strolling across to the voice-pipes. ‘Guns. Captain.’
‘Guns,’ the voice from far away acknowledged.
‘I will be opening fire with high explosives in about ten minutes. The target will be massed merchant shipping on an approximate mark of three hundred degrees. Range, five thousand metres. You may fire as soon as you bear.’
‘Mark three hundred degrees. Range, five thousand metres. Sir,’ repeated the pipe, and von Kleine snapped the voice-tube cover shut and returned to his original position, facing forward with his hands clasped loosely behind his back.
Below him the gun-turrets revolved ponderously and the long barrels lifted slightly, pointing out into the mist with impassive menace.
A burst of dazzling sunshine struck the bridge so fiercely that Kyller lifted his hand to shield his eyes, but it was gone instantly as the Blücher dashed into another clammy cold bank of fog. Then as though they had passed through a curtain on to a brilliantly lit stage, they came out into a gay summer’s morning.
Behind them the fog rolled away in a sodden grey wall from horizon to horizon. Ahead rose the green hills of Africa, rimmed with white beach and surf and speckled with thousands of whiter flecks that were the buildings of Durban town. The scaffolding of the cranes along the harbour wall looked like derelict sets of gallows.
Humped on the smooth green mirror of water between them and the shore, lay four ungainly shapes looking like a troop of basking hippo. The British merchantmen.
‘Four only,’ muttered von Kleine in chagrin. ‘I had hoped for more.’
The forty-foot barrels of the nine-inch guns moved restlessly, seeming to sniff for their prey, and the Blücher raced on, lifting a hissing white wave at her bows, vibrating and shuddering to the thrust of her engines as they built up to full speed.
‘Masthead,’ the voice-tube beside Kyller squawked urgently.
‘Bridge,’ said Kyller but the reply was lost in the deafening detonation of the first broadside, the long thunderous roll of heavy gun-fire. He jumped involuntarily, taken unawares, and then quickly lifted the binoculars from his chest to train them on the British merchantmen.
All attention, every eye on the bridge was concentrated ahead, waiting for the fall of shot upon the doomed vessels.
In the comparative silence that followed the bellow of the broadside, a shriek from the masthead voice-pipe carried clearly.
‘Warships! Enemy warships dead astern!’
‘Starboard ten.’ Von Kleine raised his voice a little louder than was his wont, and still under full power, Blücher swerved away from the land, leaning out from the turn, with her wake curved like an ostrich plume on the surface of the sea behind her, and ran for the shelter of the fog banks, leaving the rich prize of cargo shipping unscathed. On her bridge von Kleine and his officers were staring aft, the merchantmen forgotten as they searched for this new threat.
‘Two warships.’ The masthead look-out was elaborating his sighting report. ‘A destroyer and a cruiser
. Bearing ninety degrees. Range, five-oh-seven-oh. Destroyer leading.’
In the spherical field of von Kleine’s binoculars the neat little triangle of the leading destroyer’s superstructure popped up above the horizon. The cruiser was not yet in sight from the bridge.
‘If they’d been an hour later,’ lamented Kyller, ‘we’d have finished the business and …’
‘What does masthead see of the cruiser?’ von Kleine interrupted him impatiently. He had no time to mourn this chance of fate – his only concern was to evaluate the force that was pursuing him, and then make the decision whether to run, or to turn back and engage them immediately.
‘Cruiser is a medium, six or nine-inch. Either “O” class, or an “R”. She’s four miles behind her escort. Both ships still out of range.’
The destroyer was of no consequence; he could run down on her and blast her into a burning wreck, before her feeble little 4.7-inch guns were able to drop a shell within a mile of Blücher, but the cruiser was another matter entirely. To tackle her, Blücher would be engaging with her own class; victory would only be won after a severe mauling, and she was six thousand miles from the nearest friendly port where she could effect major repairs.
There was a further consideration. These two British ships might be the vanguard of a battle squadron. If he turned now and challenged action, engaged the cruiser in a single ship action, he might suddenly find himself pitted against imponderable odds. There could very well be another cruiser, or two, or three – even a battleship, below the southern horizon.
His duty and his orders dictated instant flight, avoiding action, and so prolonging Blücher’s fighting life.
‘Enemy are streaming their colours, sir,’ Kyller reported. Von Kleine lifted his binoculars again. At the destroyer’s masthead flew the tiny spots of white and red. This time he must leave the challenge to combat unanswered. ‘Very well,’ he said, and turned away to his stool in the corner of the bridge. He slumped into it and hunched his shoulders in thought. There were many interesting problems to occupy him, not least of them was how long he could run at full speed towards the north while his boilers devoured coal ravenously, and each minute widened the gap between Blücher and Esther.