Brown on Resolution (16 page)

On board
Ziethen
work was suspended temporarily—another triumph to Brown’s credit. Too many skilled ratings had been lost already for the Captain to order his remaining ones to take the chance of the bullets which Brown was sending at intervals through the screen. Instead he decided to turn
Ziethen
away from the point of attack, and to turn an unwieldy armoured cruiser, with her five hundred feet of length, and listing badly at that, in a lagoon wherein the tide was swirling in a whirlpool, was an operation calling for care and consuming much time. The two anchors had to be raised, the propellers set in motion, and
Ziethen
gently nursed into position, one anchor dropped, the set of the current combated, and then the other anchor dropped—and good holding ground was scarce in that fathomless crater. Altogether it was an hour before the delicate operation of mooring was completed and the delicate operation of lowering the new plates into position was resumed. Brown heard at length the clatter of the riveting, and he knew that the delays he had imposed upon
Ziethen
were ending at last.

But the labours of the landing party were still in full blast. The Lieutenant found it hard to move any sort of force along the island. His two hundred men were scattered over a mile of almost impossible country, and the problem of supplies suddenly leaped into prominence and added another burden to the Lieutenant’s overloaded shoulders. Every man had landed with a day’s water; they had been violently exerting themselves for nearly twenty-four hours, and nine men out of ten had consumed the last drop of their water several hours back. The Equatorial sun, mounting steadily higher, called the attention of everyone to his overwhelming thirst. The unhappy Lieutenant signalled to his captain that he could not hope to move without water. Captain von Lutz signalled back in blistering fashion, but the Lieutenant, under the spur of most dire and urgent necessity, held to his contention. The Captain, raging, sent off water to him round the island, and his Commander as well, to take over control, under strict orders not to return without bringing back Brown, dead or alive.

For the moral situation was serious. No captain could dream of setting out on a long and arduous cruise with a crew in such a temper as
Ziethen
’s was. Thirty-four men killed and wounded (their loss alone would be a serious nuisance with prize crews to be thought of) and two ignominious reverses had upset discipline to a tiresome extent. If
Ziethen
were to sail away without taking vengeance on Brown the crew would lose all respect for their officers. And discipline would be under severe strain on a raiding voyage, with its necessary accompaniments of coaling at sea, and loot, and imminent prospects of a fight. Captain von Lutz, weighing all factors in the situation, decided that Brown must die, even though killing him meant prolonging their dangerous sojourn in the vicinity of land and postponing their ravening onslaught upon British shipping.

So the water was sent, and the Kapitan-Leutnant took over the command; and he did not find it an easy burden. To distribute water among his scattered, weary command, each individual of whom was stuck where he was nearly as effectively as a fly upon a flypaper, consumed hours of time and much of the strength of the twenty men he brought as reinforcements. It was afternoon before he was ready to make his first move, and by that time the riveting on
Ziethen
was completed and she was a whole ship again, ready to steam out of Resolution. Brown could now credit himself with further delays to her—all the length of time, in fact, which he occupied in dying.

The Commander acted with energy. He sent his casualties—heat-stroke, broken ankles, cut feet—down the cliff to where the first landing had been made. There the men Brown had wounded the day before at last received attention and water: the dead and wounded were sent back to the ship for attention or burial, but all this was in rear of the Commander’s headquarters and main line of assault. Having purged his force of its weaker elements, the Commander proceeded to make his way along the crest of the island, while a boat with full crew lay ready to dash to any point to which it might be signalled, and another one landed more men across the opening of the lagoon to cut off any attempt Brown might make to evade attack again. The Commander, thrusting aside with contempt the expostulations of the Lieutenant he had superseded, still did not realize the hopelessness of movement on the land, or, if he did, he did not care how much time the business consumed as long as it was done thoroughly. From
Ziethen
’s bridge he had watched the failure of the first frontal assault, and he was not going to throw away another dozen lives in that fashion. These long, weary flanking movements were the alternative, and he accepted it stoically. All the same, a day of little water and a night of no rest had taken most of the heart out of his men, and it was woefully slow progress that he made. Night came down and found his men still tangled utterly in the crevasses of Resolution. It found Brown, too, lodged in his cleft in the cliff, tormented with thirst, running a dry tongue round his cracked lips, agonized by the pain in his hands and feet, bitten in every part of his body by the vicious flies, but all the same without a thought of surrender. That simply did not occur to him. It was not consonant with his heredity nor with his childhood training.

H
ERR
H
ANS
S
CHMIDT
lay sleeping peacefully and noisily in his porch in Panama. He lay on his back; when he went to sleep his hands had been crossed upon his stomach, but with the passage of time they had slid down the incline until now they lay on his chest, so that his attitude was entirely one of peace and resignation. Beside him Frau Schmidt slumbered just as peacefully and not quite as noisily; for the Schmidts believed in maintaining the good old tradition of the family double bed despite the heat of the tropics.

Verily was Herr Schmidt entitled to the blissful sleep which comes of a sense of completed duty. He was head of the German unofficial representatives on the Pacific coast, and all his work so far had been thorough and successful. He had gleaned from stray references the strength of Admiral Craddock’s squadron and he had reported it to Admiral von Spee, and the result had been obvious at Coronel. At Guayaquil and Callao he had colliers ready to sail on the instant—one of them, thanks to lavish expenditure of funds and jugglery with papers, actually under the British flag. Should von Spee decide to return northwards from Coronel he would find abundance of best Welsh steam coal awaiting him, or if
Ziethen
turned up unexpectedly, there would be the same kindly reception ready for her. Everywhere German agents were seeking bits of news to report to him, so that he could piece them together and pass them on. He knew all about the British battle cruiser in the West Indies, and he could name the ships which were watching lest German commerce destroyers should push out of American Atlantic ports; he did not know, all the same, about Admiral Sturdee’s fleet which was fitting out in England, but for that he bears no blame. The discovery of the object of this squadron was the business of the central organization, which failed lamentably. No, Schmidt had done everything that could be expected of him, and he was fully entitled to the blissful sleep which encompassed him and which was about to be so rudely interrupted.

The telephone at the bedside rang sharply, and Schmidt started up, blinking himself into rapid wakefulness. Beside him his wife muttered heavily, humped over on her side, and clawed her tangled hair out of her eyes. She switched on the light while Schmidt pulled back the mosquito net and reached for the telephone instrument.

The first sounds to reach his ear were apparently meaningless gibberish, but it seemingly did not disconcert him. He uttered gibberish in reply, and with password and countersign thus exchanged his agent could safely pour forth his news into Herr Schmidt’s receptive ear. This torrent of rapid German was of an import which made Herr Schmidt start in surprise.

“What?” he demanded. “Where are they now?”

“They were going through Gatun when I tried telephone first, sir,” came the answer. “They must be almost at the Cut now.”

“But why did I not hear of this at once?” demanded Herr Schmidt savagely.

The voice at the receiver fell away into a placatory whine.

“I couldn’t, sir. Really, sir. Those two Englishmen here were too closely after us. They’ve taken Schulz. I’m sure they have. I’ve told you about them often before. I simply couldn’t get a line to Panama before this. They were all too busy, sir.”

“Rubbish!” exploded Herr Schmidt. “You Gatun set are a gang of cowards and worse. You say you don’t even know the battle cruiser’s name?”

“No, sir. Couldn’t get it anyway. But it’s a battle cruiser for certain. Twenty thousand tons. And the light cruiser’s the
Penzance
. ”

“Bah!” said Schmidt. “Get her name at once. And all about her—where she comes from and what she’s doing. If you can’t do that in Gatun you’re not on my pay list any more. Report again in two hours’ time.”

Schmidt slammed down the receiver and heaved himself out of bed. His hairy legs protruded beneath his brief nightshirt, and there was a hint of hairy chest at its open throat. He put on his thick round glasses with one hand and reached for his trousers with the other. While pulling on his trousers he thrust his bare feet anyhow into his shoes. Then, with a growl at his wife, he went clattering out of the house to the garage. Three minutes later, in the growing light of dawn, his car was roaring out of Panama with its headlights blazing, while Schmidt, thick body bent, grasped the wheel in his big hairy hands. Out of Panama he went, with his car leaping madly over the fantastic bumps and hollows of the country road. He tore through the ruins of Old Panama and onward where the road degenerated into a mere track at the spot where the Canal Zone adjoined the Republic of Panama. A steady hand and powerful wrists were necessary to hold the car to the track, but burly Hans Schmidt was a brilliant driver. He swung aside on to an even narrower path where the undergrowth crashed beneath his wheels and tore at the body. Uphill he went, his foot steady on the accelerator, until the path ran into a small clearing beyond which stood a tall half-ruined building which, nevertheless, by its patching and by the condition of its courtyard, showed signs of recent occupation. Here Schmidt stopped the car, and with an agility unexpected in one of his bulk he scrambled out and rushed into the building and up the rotten stone stairs.

The tall room at the top of the tower was modern in its furnishings; indeed, the modernity was carried to an extreme pitch, for the main parts of the furniture comprised a receiving and transmitting wireless plant of the highest possible power. The old ruined tower, once a fortress which had been taken and sacked by Morgan and his buccaneers two and a half centuries ago, was now one of the central ganglia of the German Pacific secret service. On a camp bed at one side of the room lay a young man, half asleep at the table by the instruments sat another, with the receivers on his ears. They both looked up when Herr Schmidt entered, but they were treated with scant courtesy. Schmidt’s first action was to jerk head and thumb back to the door, and they rose slowly to obey. The one with the instruments offered Schmidt the pad bearing the messages recently intercepted—all sorts of messages, in code and
en clair
, mercantile and military—but Schmidt cast it aside after flipping through its pages and running an eye over the messages.

“Outside,” he growled, “quickly.”

They went, shambling, while Schmidt threw himself into the chair, adjusted the receiver, and began tuning in the instruments with his thick hands, making the adjustments for a general call with steady delicacy. From a pocket at the back of his trousers he produced a small book printed on fine paper, and with a stub of pencil and a scrap of writing-paper he made a note or two, constantly referring to the book. Soon the message he had in mind was written in code on the paper; with his heavy face upturned to the ceiling he memorized it, and then, striking a match he burnt the piece of paper bearing his notes. The code book was thrust back into his pocket, and above it, inside the pocket, he adjusted the fish-hook which was fastened in the lining. The unwary hand which dived into that pocket in search of Germany’s most secret naval code would be lacerated and torn excruciatingly. Then Schmidt set about broadcasting his message, sending it out again and again. His sub-stations at Callao and Valparaiso would take it in and relay it; the cables would bear it by devious routes back to Germany. Von Spee on the Chilean coast would receive it; the
Ziethen
lost somewhere in the Pacific, would take it in as well. Hour after hour Schmidt sent out that message, sitting in his grotesque garb of nightshirt and trousers while the sweat ran down his unshaved cheeks and heavy jowl. It was not the sort of message he could trust to subordinates.

For the tremendous naval strength of England was to be exerted against von Spee’s squadron. There were to be no more attempts to engage him with armoured cruisers or obsolete battleships. There was a new power at the Admiralty—Fisher, who had become First Sea Lord at the time of the disaster at Coronel. Von Spee was to be hounded down and exterminated. Battle cruisers were to be used, the most deadly enemies of the armoured cruiser. Admiral Sturdee was to be sent from England with
Invincible
and
Inflexible
and half a dozen modern cruisers round the Horn to sweep northwards up the Pacific. But this part of the plan was unknown to Schmidt—it was unknown to any German until von Spee at the Falklands saw the tripod masts of the battle cruisers and read his death in that sight. The southward sweep was what concerned Schmidt at the moment.

HM battle cruiser
Leopard
had been stationed for three weeks already in the West Indies; there she could guard against von Spee, or any detachment from his force, passing the Panama Canal and ravaging the rich English shipping of the Caribbean and the Gulf and there also she could be ready to cut off any movement of the Germans northward round the Horn. But to the new personality at the Admiralty any such defensive attitude was distasteful and obnoxious.
Leopard
must be used offensively. Let her pass the Canal herself instead of waiting for the Germans to do it; let her seek out the enemy instead of waiting passively for the enemy to come within her grasp. It was the truer, more decisive strategy, and the orders were passed to
Leopard
on the same day that the other orders were given to Admiral Sturdee.