"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, Mr." 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
HMS. 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.
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 gun dog reacts to the scent of the bird. "Sailing orders,"
he whispered, at last. At last!" There was a heavy south-east swell battering Cape Point, so the sea spray reached the beam of the lighthouse on the cliffs above. A flight of mal gas 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.
"Revolution s 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 HMS. 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. "The fog condensed on the grey metal of the bridge, so the foot plates were slippery underfoot. It soaked into the overcoats of the men huddled against the rail, and it de wed in minute pearls on the eyebrows and the beard of Kapitan 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.
Toredeck 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 de fences 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 Blitcher 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 J 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.