Brown on Resolution (20 page)

All through the night the three ships drove on southwards through the Pacific. The Germans had no friends at sea within two thousand miles, and they were acutely and uncomfortably conscious of the menacing, silent presence of the British ships which were following after them, like Death on his pale horse. Twice already that night, in the hope that the shadowy cruiser which had hovered after them was within range, had they switched on searchlights and blasted the night with a salvo, but each time they had gained no profit from the performance save for the very definite comfort of noise and action. It seemed to temper down in their minds the terrible inevitability of the morrow.

But it could not be said that discipline was faltering. German naval
esprit de corps
was of new but sturdy growth. Every single man on board (for the rumour had run round, as lower-deck rumours will) knew that a battle cruiser was close upon them and that further resistance was hopeless, yet no word was breathed of surrender and hardly a man would have given his vote in favour of surrender. A young navy cannot afford to begin its traditions with a record of that sort. German sailors must fight to the death, so that those that follow after might have at least a glorious failure to look back upon. Four hundred men must die for that sole purpose; at least let it be recorded that they died not unwillingly.

With the first faint beginnings of daylight Captain Saville-Samarez gave orders to reduce speed below the nineteen knots at which
Leopard
had been ploughing through the sea since her junction with
Penzance
. He was going to take no chances, with those stringent passages from his instructions running in his mind. Daylight was not going to find him anywhere nearly in range of
Ziethen
’s 6-inch guns. Even he, phlegmatic and confident though he was, had found the tension and excitement too great for sleep. He had been pacing about all night, the while the crackling wireless was sending through the relay ships to the Admiralty in Whitehall the glad news that one at least of the German Pacific Squadron was within the grip of the British Navy. Before dawn a reply had reached him, and he knew that the KCB he desired would be his by the end of the year—if only he did what was expected of him.

And when daylight was almost come Captain von Lutz on
Ziethen
’s bridge knew that his last hope was gone. Far away on the horizon, almost dead astern, his powerful glasses could make out through the clear atmosphere the unmistakable tripod mast of a Dreadnought battle cruiser. There was death in that insignificant little speck. Still there was some chance of doing damage.
Penzance
lay closer in, on the starboard quarter.
Ziethen
wheeled, with her guns reaching up to extreme elevation. As the sun’s disc cleared the sea a crashing salvo broke forth from her side, but the range was too great. The columns of water where the shells fell rose from the surface of the sea nearly half a mile from the target. Five seconds later
Penzance
, in obedience to an irritated signal from
Leopard
, had turned away and was racing out of danger at her full twenty-seven knots, clearing the range for the 12-inch guns.

On
Leopard
’s bridge stood Captain Saville-Samarez. The conning tower was no place for him during this affair. The whole business would be as dangerous as shooting a sitting rabbit; and Captain Saville-Sarnarez had taken
Leopard
into Heligoland Bight astern of
Lion
, and from the bridge had seen
Mainz
blown to pieces by the shattering salvoes. Now he saw
Ziethen
swing eastwards, racing towards the level sun in one last hope of distracting the aim of the English gtmners. But
Leopard
turned eastward too, steering a parallel course with the sun dead ahead and her guns training out to port. Eight 12-inch guns composed
Leopard
’s main armament; and the 12-inch gun had twice the range of the 6-inch gun and fired a shell eight times as heavy, with a shattering effect twenty times as great.

Leopard
turned two points to port to get
Ziethen
comfortably within range, resumed her original course, and battle began. One gun from each turret volleyed forth in its deafening, appalling thunder, and four 12-inch shells went soaring forth on their ten-mile flight. Each shell weighed half a ton, and between them contained enough explosive to lay all the City of London in ruins. Woe betide
Ziethen
with her half-hearted attempt at armour plating and her fragile upper works!

“Short,” said the Gunnery Commander up in the gunnery control tower, watching with detached professional interest the shooting of his beloved guns. “Up two hundred.”

The other four guns bellowed in their turn, and the half-ton shells shrieked out on their flight—ten miles in half a minute, reaching two miles up in the air as they went.

“Short,” said the Gunnery Commander again. The four immense columns of water were well this side of the racing armoured cruiser. “Up two hundred. This blasted climate’s played Old Harry with the cordite!”

Punctually at twenty-five second intervals the salvoes blared forth from the fifty-foot-long turret guns.

“Over,” said the Gunnery Commander. “Short. Hit. Hit. Hit. Over.”

Three times in a minute and a half
Ziethen
was struck by a ton of steel containing a ton of high explosive. The wretched ship’s upper works were shattered and flung about, the steel plates were twisted and torn as though were sheets of paper in a giant’s hands. One shell burst fair and true on the breech of a starboard side 6-inch gun, wiped out the gun’s crew and pitched the gun overside. But there was still life in the ship; the black cross still streamed out on its white ground from the tottering mast. Round she came, trying feebly to close with the enemy—just as, five days before,
Charybdis
had tried to do. But
Leopard
did as
Ziethen
had done then; she turned away at full speed, keeping her distance while the target moved slowly back abaft the beam. It was a hopeless effort to seek to close even to 6-inch gun range; there was no chance at all of being able to use torpedoes with effect.

“Hit,” said the Gunnery Commander. “Over. Hit. Hit. My God!”

The 12-inch shells had blasted away great holes in the unarmoured upper works; one had blown a gap in the horizontal protective deck. The Gunnery Commander saw her lurching through the waves, smoke—furnace smoke, and shell fumes, and smoke from fires—pouring from every crevice; but she was still a ship; she still moved, she still floated; she might still fire her guns. But two shells from the last salvo crashed through the protective deck and burst amid her very vitals. Boilers and magazines alike exploded in one huge detonation. The rending flash was visible in the strong tropical sunshine for a tiny instant as the ship blew apart before the merciful black smoke bellied out and hid everything from view. Then, as this cleared before the fresh breeze, there was nothing to be seen, nothing.
Ziethen
had gone the way of
Good Hope
and
Monmouth
, the way
Scharnhorst
was to go, and
Defence
and
Black Prince
, armoured cruisers all, sunk with all hands by gunfire. Twelve salvoes had done it—hardly more than five minutes’ firing. Every man on board had perished, including two Englishmen, the leading signalman and Ginger Harris whom Brown had tended; but of course the English ships did not know of their existence on board—and never would.

The black smoke eddied away, upward and to one side, and
Leopard
and
Penzance
raced for the spot where
Ziethen
had been. They found little enough: a dead man—half a man, rather—a few floating bits of wreckage, and nothing else. Iron ships stripped for action have little enough on board that will float. Then
Leopard
’s triumphant wireless proclaimed the news far and wide—a welcome little victory, come just in time to counter the depression resulting from the defeat of Coronel, the sinking of
Cressy, Hague
and
Aboukir
, and the depredations of
Emden
. It was England’s proclamation of the mastery of the seas, to be confirmed within a week by
Sydney
’s fortunate encounter with
Emden
, and within a month by Sturdee’s annihilation of von Spee, where once again 12-inch guns blew armoured cruisers to destruction.

Then Captain Saville-Samarez was free to turn his ship back to England, to the misty North Sea for which he pined, and the prospects of ‘The Day’. He was to take
Leopard
into the clamorous, bloody confusion of Jutland when the battle cruisers raced into action with
Lion
leading, and he was to stand watch and ward with the others amid the tempestuous Shetlands, but that was his great day. As he had foreseen, he became known as ‘the man who sank the
Ziethen
’. But nobody was to know to whom the destruction of that ship was really due.