Lothar hobbled his horse, took a book from his saddlebag and settled on the warm sand. Every few minutes he raised his eyes from the page, but the hours wore away and at last he stood and stretched and went to his horse, his fruitless vigil ended for another day. With one foot in the stirrup, he paused and made a last careful survey of the seascape smudged to bloody carnelian and dull brass by the sunset.
Then, even as he watched, the sea opened before his eyes, and out of it rose an enormous dark shape, in the image of Leviathan, but greater than any living denizen of the oceans. Shining with wetness, gleaming water streaming from its decks and steel sides, it wallowed upon the surface.
At last! Lothar shouted with excitement and relief. I thought they would never come. He stared avidly through his binoculars at the long sinister black vessel. He saw the encrustations of barnacle and weed, that fouled the hull. She had been long at sea, and battered by the elements. On the tall conning tower her registration numerals were almost obliterated. U-32.Lothar read them with difficulty, and then his attention was diverted by activity on the submarine's foredeck.
From one of the hatches a gun team swarmed out and ran forward to man the quick-firing cannon near the bows. They were taking no chances. Lothar saw the weapon traverse towards him, ready to reply to any hostile gesture from the shore. On the conning tower human heads appeared, and he saw binoculars trained towards him.
Hastily Lothar found the signal rocket in his saddlebag. Its glowing red fireball arced out over the sea, and was answered immediately by a rocket from the submarine hurling skyward on a tail of smoke.
Lothar flung himself on to the back of his mount and pushed him over the edge of the dune. They went sliding down, the horse squatting on its haunches and bringing down a slipping, hissing cascade of sand around them.
At the bottom of the dune Lothar gathered his mount and they went flying across the hard damp beach, with Lothar waving his hat, standing in the stirrups and shouting with laughter. He rode into the camp at the edge of the lagoon and sprang from the saddle. He ran from one of the crude shelters of driftwood and canvas to the next, who had come intimately to understand death and fear down there in the dark and secret depths. You have had a successful cruise, Kapitiin? One hundred and twenty-six days at sea and twentysix thousand tons of enemy shipping, the submariner nodded.
With God's help, another twenty-six thousand tons, Lothar suggested.
With God's help, and your fuel oil, the captain agreed, and glanced down at the deck where the first drums were being swayed aboard. Then he looked back at Lothar. You have torpedoes? he asked anxiously.
Content yourself, Lothar reassured him. The torpedoes are ready, but I thought it prudent to refuel before rearming. Of course. Neither of them had to mention the consequence of the U-boat, with her tanks empty, being caught against a hostile shore by an English warship.
I still have a little schnapps, the captain changed the subject, my officers and I would be honoured. As Lothar descended the steel ladder into the submarine's interior, he felt his gorge rise.
The stench was a solid thing, so that he wondered that any man could endure it more than a few minutes. It was the smell of sixty men living in a confined space for months on end, living without sunlight or fresh air, without the means of washing their bodies or their clothing. It was the smell of pervading damp and of the fungus that turned their uniforms green and rotted the cloth off their bodies, the stench of hot fuel oil and bilges, of greasy food and the sickly sweat of fear, the clinging odour of bedding that had been slept in for I26 days and nights, of socks and boots that were never changed and the reek of the sewage buckets which could only be emptied once every twenty four hours.
Lothar hid his revulsion and clicked his heels and bowed when the captain introduced his junior officers.
The overhead deck was so low that Lothar had to hunch his head down on his shoulders, and the space between the bulkheads was so narrow that two men were forced to turn sideways to pass each other. He tried to imagine living in these conditions and found his face beading with cold sweat.
Do you have any intelligence of enemy shipping, Herr De La Rey? The captain poured a tiny measure of schnapps into each of the crystal glasses and sighed when the last drop fell from the bottle.
I regret that my intelligence is seven days old. Lothar saluted the naval officers with a raised glass, and when they had all drunk went on, The troopship Auckland docked at Durban eight days ago for bunkers. She is carrying 2,000 New Zealand infantry, and was expected to sail again on the 15 th - There were many sympathizers in the civil service of the Union of South Africa, men and women whose fathers and family had fought in the Boer War, and had ridden with Maritz; and De Wet against the Union troops. Some of them had relatives who had been imprisoned and even executed for treason once Smuts and Botha had crushed the rebellion. Many of these were employed by the South African Railway and Harbours Authority, others had key positions in the Department of Post and Telegraphs. Thus vital information was gathered and swiftly encoded and disseminated to German agents and rebel activists over the Union government's own communications network.
Lothar reeled off the list of arrivals and sailings from South African ports, and again apologized. My information is received at the telegraph station at Okahandia, but it takes five to seven days for it to be carried across the desert by one of my men.
I understand, the German captain nodded. Nevertheless, the information you have given me will be invaluable in helping me plan the next stage of my operations. He looked up from the chart on which he had been marking the enemy dispositions which Lothar had given him, and for the first time noticed his guest's discomfort. He kept his expression attentive and courteous, but inwardly he gloated, You great hero, handsome as an opera star, so brave out there with the wind in your face and the sun shining over your head, I wish I could take you with me and teach you the true meaning of courage and sacrifice!
How would you like to hear the English destroyers go drumming overhead as they hunt you, how would you like to hear the click of the primer as the deat -c arge sinks down towards you? Oh, I would enjoy watching your face when the blast beats against the pressure hull and water squirts in through the cracks and the lights go out. How would you like to smell yourself shit with fear in the dark and feel it running hot and liquid down your legs? Instead he smiled and murmured, I wish I was able to offer you a little more schnapps- No, no! Lothar waved the offer aside. This corpsefaced creature and his stinking vessel disgusted and sickened him. You have been most gracious. I must go ashore I and supervise the loading. These Schwarzes, you cannot J trust them. Lazy dogs and born thieves, all of them. They understand only the whip and the goad. Lothar escaped thankfully up the ladder and in the conning tower sucked the sweet cool night air greedily into his lungs. The submarine captain followed him up.
Herr De La Rey, it is essential that we complete bunker- i ing and stores before dawn, you realize how vulnerable we are here, how helpless we would be, trapped against the shore, with our hatches open and our tanks empty?
If you could send some of your seamen ashore to assist with the loading- The captain hesitated. Placing his valuable crew on land would make him more vulnerable still. He weighed the odds swiftly. Way was all a gambler's throw, risk against reward, for the stakes of death and glory.
I will send twenty men to the beach with you. He made the decision in seconds, and Lothar, who had understood his quandary, nodded with reluctant admiration.