They had to have light. Lothar built a bonfire of driftwood on the beach, but built a screen between it and the sea, trusting on this and the hovering fog banks to shield them from any searching English warships. By the diffused glow they loaded and reloaded the lighters and rowed them out to the submarine. As each drum of fuel oil was tunnelled into the vessel's tanks, the empty canister was holed and thrown overboard to sink into the kelp beds, and gradually the long slim vessel sank lower in the water.
It was four in the morning before the fuel tanks were brimming, and the U-boat captain fretted and fumed on his bridge, glancing every few seconds towards the land where the false dawn was giving a hard knife-edge to the dark crests of the dunes, and then down again to the approaching lighter with the long glistening shape of a torpedo balanced delicately across the thwarts.
Hurry. He leaned over the gunwale of the conning tower to urge on his men, as they fitted the slings around the monstrous weapon, gingerly took the weight on the straining tackle and swung it on board. The second lighter was already alongside with its murderous burden, and the first lighter was thrashing back towards the beach, as the torpedo was eased gently into the forward hatch and slid into the empty tube below deck.
Swiftly the light strengthened and the efforts of the crew and the black guerrillas became frantic as they fought off their fatigue and struggled to complete the loading before full daylight exposed them to their enemies.
Lothar rode out with the last torpedo, sitting casually astride its shining back as though upon his Arab, and the captain watching him in the dawn found himself resenting him more fiercely, hating him for being tall and sungilded and handsome, hating him for his casual arrogance, and for the ostrich feathers in his hat and the golden curls that hung to his shoulders, but hating him most of all because he would ride away into the desert and leave the U-boat commander to go down again into the cold and deadly waters.
Captain, Lothar scrambled out of the lighter and climbed the ladder to the bridge of the conning tower.
The captain realized that his handsome face was glowing with excitement.
Captain, one of my men has just ridden into camp. He has been five days reaching me from 0kahandja, and he has news. Splendid news. The captain tried not to let the excitement infect him, hands began to tremble as Lothar went on.
but his jk, The assistant harbour master at Cape Town is one of our men. They are expecting the English heavy battle cruiser Inflexible to reach Cape Town within eight days.
She left Gibraltar on the Sth and is sailing direct. The captain dived back into the hatch, and Lothar suppressed his repugnance and followed him down the steel ladder. The captain was already bending eagerly over the chart-table with the dividers in his hands firing questions at his navigating officer.
Give me the cruising speed of the enemy "I" class battle cruisers The navigator thumbed swiftly through intelligence files. Estimated 22 knots at 26o revolutions, captain. Hal The captain was chalking in the approximate course from Gibraltar down the western coastline of the African continent, around the great bulge and then on to the Cape of Good Hope.
Ha! Again, this time with delight and anticipation. We can be in patrol position by i8oo hours today, if we sail within the hour, and she cannot possibly have passed by then. He raised his head from the chart and looked at his officers crowded around him. but not an An English battle cruiser, gentlemen, ordinary one. The Inflexible, the same ship that sank the Scharnhorst at the Falkland Islands. A prize! What a prize for us to take to the Kaiser and Dos Vaterland Except for the two lookouts in the wings, Captain Kurt Kohler stood alone in the conning tower Of U-32 and shivered in the cold sea mist despite the thick white rollneck sweater he wore under his blue pea-jacket. Start main engine secure to diving stations! He bent to the voice tube, and immediately his lieutenant's confirmation echoed back to him. Start main engine. Secure to diving stations. The deck trembled under Kohler's feet and the diesel exhaust blurted above his head. The oily reek of burned fuel oil made his nostrils flare.
Ship ready to dive! the lieutenant's voice confirmed, and Kohler felt as though a crushing burden had been lifted from his back. How he had fretted through those helpless and vulnerable hours of refuelling and rearming.
However, that was past, once again the ship was alive beneath his feet, ready to his hand, and relief buoyed him up above his fatigue.
ordered. New courseRevolutions for seven knots, he 270.1 As his order was repeated, he tipped his cap with its gold-braided peak on to the back of his head, and turned his binoculars towards land.
Already the heavy wooden lighters had been dragged away and hidden amongst the dunes; there remained only the drag marks of their keels in the sand. The beach was empty, except for a single mounted figure.
As ohler watched him, Lothar De La Rey lifted the wide-brimmed bat from his brazen curls and the ostrich feathers fluttered as he waved. Kohler lifted his own right hand in salute and the horseman swung away, still brandishing his bat, and galloped into the screen of reeds that choked the valley between two soaring dunes. A cloud of water fowl, alarmed by the horseman, rose from the sur- J milled in a gaudily coloured cloud face of the lagoon and above the forbidding dunes, and the horse and rider disappeared .
Kohler turned his back upon the land, and the long pointed bows of the U-boat sliced into the standing cur tams of silver fog. The hull was shaped like a sword, a broadsword I70'feet long, to be driven at the throat of at 6oo-horsep the enemy by her gre ower diesel engine, and Kohler did not try to suppress the choking sense of pride that he always felt at the beginning of a cruise.
He was under no illusion but that the outcome of this global conflict rested upon him and his brother officers in the submarine service. It was in their power alone to A it break the terrible stalemate of the trenches where two vast armies faced each other like exhausted heavyweight boxers, neither having enough strength left to. lift their arms to throw a decisive punch, slowly rotting in the mud and the decay of their own monstrous strivings.
It was these slim and secret and deadly craft that could still wrest victory out of despair and desperation before the breaking-point was reached. If only the Kaiser had decided to use his submarines to their full potential from the very beginning, Kurt Kohler brooded, how different the outcome might have been.
In September I9I4, the very first year of the war, a single submarine, the U-9, had sunk three British cruisers in quick succession, but even with this conclusive demonstration, the German high command had hesitated to use the weapon that had been placed in their hands, fearful of the outrage and condemnation of the entire world, of the simplistic cry of the beastly underwater butchers.
Of course, the American threats after the sinking of the Lusitania and Ara C wit t e ass of American lives had served also to constrain the use of the undersea weapon.
The Kaiser had feared to arouse the sleeping American giant, and to have its mighty weight hurled against the German Empire.
Now, when it was almost too late the German high command had at last let slip the U-boats, and the results were staggering, surpassing even their own expectations.
The last three months of 1916 saw more than 300,000 tons of Allied shipping go down before the torpedoes.
That was only a beginning; in the first ten days of April alone, another incredible 250,000 tons was I917, destroyed, 875,000 tons for the full month, the Allies were reeling under this fearful infliction.
Now that two million fresh and eager young American troops were ready to cross the Atlantic to join the conflict, it was the duty of every officer and seaman of the German submarine service to make whatever sacrifice was demanded of him. If the gods of war chose to place a British heavy battle cruiser of such illustrious lineage as t the Inflexible on a converging course with his battered little vessel, Kurt Kohler would gladly give up his own life and the lives of his crew for an opportunity to empty his torpedo tubes at her.