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Title: Count Luckner, the sea devil
Author: Lowell Thomas
Illustrator: Count Luckner
Release date: June 3, 2024 [eBook #73765]
Language: English
Original publication: Garden City: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc, 1927
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COUNT LUCKNER, THE SEA DEVIL ***
[Frontispiece: Count Felix Von Luckner, the most romantic and
mysterious figure of the World War, with powerful hands tears a
telephone book into four parts.]
COUNT LUCKNER,
THE SEA DEVIL
By LOWELL THOMAS
_ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS_
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC,
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE
& COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE
COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
CONTENTS
I. We Meet a Flying Buccaneer
II. Felix Runs off to Sea
III. Saved by an Albatross
IV. Salvation, Kangaroos, and Fakirs in Australia
V. Wrestling Champion of Sankt Pauli
VI. The Tragic Cruise of the "Cæsarea"
VII. The Beach Comber's Adventure with the "_Panther_"
VIII. Pitfalls for the Sailor, and the Canary
That Spoke Low Deutsch
IX. The Runaway Comes Home
X. From Pig-Sty Cleaner to Kaiser's Protégé
XI. In the Cameroons and the Fairy of Fuerteventura
XII. Fake Norwegians for a Pirate Cruise
XIII. Running the British Blockade in a Hurricane
XIV. We Capture the "Gladys Royal" and the "Lundy Island"
XV. Raiding Along the Equator, and an Interrupted Honeymoon
XVI. Windjammer vs. Steamer
XVII. The Last Cruise of the Poor Old "Pinmore"
XVIII. The Life of a Modern Buccaneer
XIX. How We Made Our Prisoners Walk the Plank
XX. The Battle of the Falkland Islands
XXI. Racing the Enemy Around Cape Horn
XXII. Raiding the Pacific
XXIII. Shipwrecked in Southern Seas
XXIV. Castaways on a Coral Atoll
XXV. Let's Go Raiding Again!
XXVI. From the Society Islands to the Cook Islands in an Open Boat
XXVII. Through a Sea of Floating Brimstone to Fiji
XXVIII. Caught by the British at Wakaya
XXIX. Jailed in Fiji While the Others Escape to Easter Island
XXX. The Escape from New Zealand to the Smoking Isle
COUNT LUCKNER,
THE SEA DEVIL
COUNT LUCKNER
THE SEA DEVIL
I
WE MEET A FLYING BUCCANEER
It was on a flying field in Central Europe that I first saw the "Sea
Devil." We were on our way from London to Moscow by air, and had
come as far as Stuttgart with stops at Paris and Basle. While
waiting for the mechanics to tune up the big Fokker monoplane in
which we were to cover the next stage to Berlin, we lunched in the
little tea room on the edge of the flying field, kept by the widow of
a German pilot killed in the war. Suddenly, through an open window,
from off to the east in the direction of Munich and Ulm, we heard a
familiar drone, and a moment later a silvery monoplane darted from a
billowy cloud bank, the rays of the afternoon sun glistening now from
one wing and now from the other. In a series of sliding swoops, with
motor off and noiseless except for the whistle of the propeller, it
dropped gently on to the turf and sped across the field.
Uniformed aërodrome attendants ran over, leaned their spidery metal
ladder against the glistening duraluminum fuselage, and opened the
cabin door. Two passengers descended, a giant of a man and a dainty
slip of a woman. The former, who climbed down first, was tall, of
massive frame, with huge shoulders, and altogether one of the most
powerful-looking men I had ever seen. After him came the little
blonde, who looked for all the world like a fairy who had arrived on
a sunbeam. Putting her slipper to the top rung of the ladder she
jumped into her escort's arms.
What a voice that man had! It boomed across the flying field like a
foghorn or the skipper of a Yankee whaler ordering his men aloft.
As they came toward us, he walked with a rolling seaman's gait. In
his mouth was a nautical-looking pipe, and his jovial weather-beaten
countenance suggested one who goes down to the sea. He wore a naval
cap cocked over one eye, and a rakish light brown chinchilla coat,
called a "British Warm."
Every pilot and mechanic on the field stopped work and saluted the
couple. The mariner who had dropped from the sky saluted in all
directions after the cheery but somewhat perfunctory manner of the
Prince of Wales. One could see that he was accustomed to doing it,
and presumably was someone of more than local fame. He even saluted
us, as they passed into the little restaurant, although he had never
set eyes on us before and we had not saluted him. But the newcomer
seemed to take the whole world, including strangers, into the compass
of his rollicking friendliness. We were still sitting on the veranda
when they came out and drove off for Lake Constance. He called, or
rather bellowed, "_Wiedersehen, wiedersehen_," to everybody, as he
squeezed into the door, and the frame of the limousine bent under his
weight. The man simply radiated personality, and turning to the
commandant of the Stuttgart Plug Platz, who stood near me, I said:
"Who is that?"
"That? Why that's the Sea Devil."
"And who may the Sea Devil be?"
"Why, the Sea Devil is Count Luckner, who commanded the raider
_Seeadler_. The young lady is his countess."
I remembered the _Seeadler_ vaguely as a sailing ship that had broken
through the British blockade and played havoc with Allied shipping in
the Atlantic and Pacific during the latter part of the war.
Certainly, this Sea Devil looked the part of a rollicking buccaneer.
I thought the age of pirates had vanished with the passing of Captain
Kidd and the Barbary Corsairs, but here was one of the good old
"Yo-ho, and a bottle of rum" type.
My wife and I continued our aërial jaunt across Europe, via Berlin,
Königsberg, and Smolensk, to the capital of the Bolsheviks, but later
on, while flying back and forth across Germany on our way from
Constantinople to Copenhagen and from Finland to Spain, whenever we
dropped down out of the skies in Germany we heard more of this Sea
Devil. That first encounter with this modern buccaneer had aroused
my curiosity, and each new yarn that I heard made me keen to see more
of him. Incidentally, we found that he and his dainty countess were
doing almost as much flying as we were, although entirely within the
borders of Germany and Austria. Cities were declaring half holidays
in his honour, and apparently this Sea Devil was more of a popular
hero than even the great Von Hindenburg. As for the youth of
Germany, they fairly idolized him, and crowds of boys met him at
every aërodrome.
There were other German sea-raiders during the World War that most of
us remember far more vividly than we recollect the _Seeadler_. They
were the _Emden_, the _Moewe_ and the _Wolf_. But these three were
either modern warships or fast auxiliary cruisers, while this giant
count with the foghorn voice and the sea legs had run the blockade in
a prehistoric old-fashioned sailing ship. That, together with an
almost unbelievably adventurous personal story, made romance
complete. Added to which we discovered that he had the unique and
enviable reputation of disrupting Allied shipping without ever having
taken a human life or so much as drowning a ship's cat.
Upon returning home from his buccaneering cruise the Count of course
received a score of decorations, and his own government signally
honoured him in a way that has rarely happened in German history. He
was presented with a cross that places him outside the scope of
German law. Like the kings of old, he "can do no wrong"--at any
rate, not in his own country. He was even called to Rome and
decorated by the Pope as "a great humanitarian."
When we encountered him at Stuttgart, he was on a sort of triumphal
tour of Germany, exhorting the youth to prove worthy of their
inheritance, and in cheery seaman's language he was telling the boys
and girls to keep up their courage, "stay with the pumps, and not
abandon the ship." They in turn seemed to look upon him as a modern
Drake or John Paul Jones.
Upon our return from Moscow, we learned more and more of this Count
Felix von Luckner: that he was a member of an old and famous military
family, a descendant of a Marshal of France, who had run away to sea
as a boy, and then served for seven years before the mast, roaming
the wide world o'er under an assumed name as a common jack-tar,
suffering the beatings, starvation, shipwreck, and other hardships
that the sea visits upon its children. We heard how during his turns
ashore he had even joined the Salvation Army in Australia, had become
a kangaroo hunter, a prize-fighter, a wrestler, a beach-comber and a
Mexican soldier, standing on guard before the door of Porfirio Diaz's
presidential palace. Long since given up as dead, he had been listed
by the _Almanack de Gotha_ as missing.
Then, one day, after he had fought his way up from a common seaman to
the rank of an officer of the German Navy, he returned to his family.
A series of life-saving exploits had brought him fame, with the
result that he became the protégé of the Kaiser. As an officer
aboard the _Kron Prinz_, the finest ship in the Imperial Navy, he had
survived the Battle of Jutland.
Then came his golden chance. Shortly after Jutland, he was
commissioned to perform the audacious feat of taking a sailing ship
through the British blockade in order to raid Allied shipping.
The _Seeadler_ maintained a destructive career for months, ranging
the South Atlantic and Pacific, dodging cruisers and sinking merchant
vessels. She scuttled twenty-five million dollars' worth of
shipping, and wrought incalculable damage by delaying hundreds of
cargo vessels from venturing out of port, and raising the rates of
marine insurance. After a cruise as full of excitement and thrills
as the voyages of Captain Kidd and Sir Francis Drake, the Count's
raider was wrecked on the coral reefs of a South Sea isle. From then
on, the Sea Devil and his crew adventured from atoll to atoll in the
far-off Southern ocean, passing from one surf-beaten shore to another
in open boats or in ships they contrived to capture.
We were sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, one
evening, when again I saw that magnificent nautical figure. A mutual
friend introduced us, and that evening my wife and I listened to
great stories of the sea, told with a manner of inimitable vigour,
sailor-like jollity, and dramatic inflection. After that, we met
often, sometimes on board his trim schooner the _Vaterland_, on which
he was setting out to sail round the world, and again at my home near
New York, where the Sea Devil and his countess came. On these
occasions, I got the complete story of his life and his buccaneering
experiences on the most adventurous cruise of our time.
The Count is a born actor; in fact, I verily believe him to be the
finest actor I have ever seen. If he had not run away to sea, what a
career he might have had on the stage! But his inborn flair for
pantomime was only to be heightened by life at sea. Sailors are
vigorously expressive men, full of mimicry, and blustery actors of
parts. You seldom see a sailor with the phlegmatic stolidity that
you find in lumpish landlubbers. When the Count tells you he raised
a marlinespike, he jumps to the fireplace, seizes a pair of tongs,
and illustrates with it. When he tells how he knocked a man cold in
Fiji for spitting in a sailor's face, he acts out the whole affair.
As a sailor, he had spent long years before the mast under the Union
Jack and the Stars and Stripes. So he told his tale to me in racy
sailor's English. He has one amusing peculiarity of speech. Nearly
every other word is the expletive, "By Joe!" In explaining this, he
remarked that the language of the sea consists principally of a
blistering string of oaths. He said these oaths had become so much a
part of him after seven years before the mast that for a long time
afterward he was unable to express himself without using sulphury
profanities. Of course, this caused him much embarrassment and
trouble when he returned from his long voyages and attempted to
qualify as a naval officer. It caused particular consternation when,
after his years at sea, he returned to the bosom of his stately and
highly respectable family. In fact, he had to submit himself to a
long and rigorous course of self-discipline to extract the blazing
nautical oaths from his common speech. He achieved this in his
English diction by a resort to the expression, "By Joe." Whenever
one of these hair-raising oceanic apostrophes came leaping on to his
tongue, he had trained himself so well that it automatically changed
itself into "By Joe." This habit still clings to him as a salty
reminder of fo'c'sle days.
At the time when Count Luckner was raiding the seas, I had been
thrown in contact with the most picturesque adventurer that the World
War had brought forth--Lawrence of Arabia. Here, in the Sea Devil,
was his naval counterpart. They were the two great adventurers of
the two respective sides during the World War. While Colonel
Lawrence, mounted on a ship of the desert, led raids across the sands
of Araby, Felix von Luckner scoured the seas in a windjammer.
Lawrence led Bedouins on fleet Arabian horses and racing camels,
romantic people travelling in the most romantic way known to land.
The Sea Devil commanded sailors before the mast on a sailing ship,
romantic people travelling in the most romantic way known to the sea.
In each, adventure climbed close to its highest summit.
Lawrence was a man slight and frail, diffident, silent, and
soft-spoken, who might have been taken offhand for the most bashful
of youths, a most erudite scholar, an archæologist whom the war
caught practising his profession among the antiquities of Assyria and
Babylon. War and its forays must seem the last degree removed from
this studious and utterly cerebral spirit. One could find no greater
contrast to him than in this brawny sea rover with the booming voice
and blustery manner, who raided the seas from Skagerrak and Iceland
to Fiji and the Marquesas.
The ex-Kaiser, the ex-Crown Prince, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, Von
Tirpitz, and sundry others of our late enemies, have given us their
personal accounts of the part they played in the World War. But none
had a tale to tell like Count Felix von Luckner. With me the story
lies close as a companion piece to the story of Lawrence of Arabia,
and I pass it on to you in the words of the Sea Devil and, I hope,
with something of the tang of the sea.*
* The reader will notice that in Count von Luckner's narrative, the
precise chronological order of events is occasionally not observed.
The map used as lining paper in this book shows the route of the
_Seeadler_ and the names and dates of ships sunk, and other events in
their chronological sequence.
II
FELIX RUNS OFF TO SEA
Take a windjammer out as a cruiser? Sneak through the blockade and
go buccaneering on the high seas?
"By Joe!" I thought, "that's something."
It was a romantic thing all right in this day and age, when the
sailing ship is getting to be something of a relic of the fine old
times, the heroic age of the sea. But it wasn't because I had read a
lot of sea stories and had become fascinated with the old world of
rigging and canvas. I had been there myself, had been there good and
proper.
The reason I was assigned to the command of the _Seeadler_ was
because I was the only officer in the German Navy who had had actual
experience with sail. I was born Graf Felix von Luckner and was now
a lieutenant commander, in the Imperial Service, but I had spent
seven years of my early life as a common jack-tar before the mast.
The fo'c'sle was as familiar to me as charts are to an admiral. That
was why this windjammer cruise of war meant so deuced much to me, why
it hit so close and was so personal.
I cannot make that part of it clear without telling you something of
my early life at sea, a thing or two about the old days when sailing
before the mast was all they say--and more. It's a yarn about
shipwreck, storm, and cantankerous captains. So, sit yourself down
there, by Joe, while I light my pipe and weigh anchor.
My first mental picture of life at sea dates away back to the time
when I was a little fellow living in quiet, charming old Dresden. I
saw a bill of fare from the liner, _Fuerst Bismarck_. By Joe, there
were fine delicacies on it. I read it until my jaws began to move.
So that was how people feasted at sea? Ah, then, how wonderful it
must be to be a sailor. Perhaps, some day, I might become the
captain of a great steamer where they had meals like that. The more
I thought of it, the better I liked the idea, and from then on I had
my mind set on going to sea. I read of the voyages of the wily
Odysseus and of Sindbad the Sailor. On the river near our home I
built a boat of an old box and christened it the _Pirate_.
"Oceans, straits, and gulfs are all very fine, but of what concern
are they to a Von Luckner?" asked my father. "You are to be a
cavalryman."
You see, my great-grandfather had started the cavalry tradition among
us Von Luckners. They had tried to make a monk of him, and had put
him in a monastery. But he didn't like that job, and among his
fellows at the monastery he was called "Luckner libertinus." When he
was thirteen years old, he ran away and joined the army of the Turks,
in a war against the Austrians. In those days, the cavalrymen all
had boys to feed and look after the horses, carry munitions, and
clean rifles. So, while still a mere lad, my great-grandfather
became a professional soldier, a soldier of fortune. After he had
learned a lot about the Turks, he left them and joined the Austrians.
That was when he was fifteen years old. Later on, he joined the
Prussian Army, as a lieutenant of cavalry, under Frederick the Great.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: On board the _Cæsarea_, the skinflint captain and part
of his crew, Phelax Leudige standing fifth from the left. ~ The
wreck of the Cæsarea.]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, he formed his own regiment, which became famous throughout
all Europe as "Count Luckner's Hussars." They had their own
specially designed brown uniforms, and as mercenaries they fought in
any war that came along. In those days, it was the custom for
soldiers to fight for whoever could afford to pay them. The King of
Hanover was in the habit of buying regiments, and my
great-grandfather sold him his on the condition that it was still to
be known as "Count Luckner's Hussars." The King broke his word. So
my warlike ancestor went to the King's castle, boldly charged him
with treachery, then took off his mantle and tunic covered with the
decorations that the King had given him and threw them into the open
fire.
"Henceforth I will fight against you," he shouted.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: The runaway sailor came home at last, but not until he
had worn the Kaiser's uniform with honour. He dropped the name
"Phelax Leudige," and after completing his studies and examinations
saved five lives, became famous, and was promoted, to the rank of
Lieutenant-Commander in the Imperial Navy.]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shortly after this, he joined forces with the King of France, and
then, during the French Revolution, he continued to serve the new
French government as the commander of the Army of the Rhine. When
the _Marseillaise_ was written, it was dedicated to him because he
happened to be the commanding general in the region where this
immortal song was composed. After winning a number of important
victories in Belgium, he was made a Marshal of France.
When the campaign was over, he led his army to the outskirts of
Paris, and then, accompanied only by his aides, he went into the city
to demand the back pay that was due to his soldiers. But instead of
getting it, he was treacherously seized and sent to the guillotine.
You see, it was cheaper to kill him than pay him. Although always a
Royalist at heart, he was above all a soldier, and fought faithfully
and valiantly for any monarch or government willing to hire his
famous regiment. All our histories tell of him and his gallant deeds.
From then on, all Luckners became cavalrymen. It seemed to be in the
blood. My grandfather, an officer, was accidentally killed while on
a hunting expedition. My father fought in all the wars from 1848
down to the World War. In 1914, when he was ninety, he wanted to
join up again. He insisted that he was still able to do patrol duty,
because his eyesight was unimpaired and he was still a horseman.
When the general staff refused his request on the ground that he was
too old, he was very angry.
"It is because I am so old that they _should_ take me," he said.
"Let me serve as an example to the younger soldiers. I have fought
in many wars, and will be living proof to them that the surest way to
live a long and healthy life is to be a soldier."
Ships, harbours, the seven seas had nothing to do with a Von Luckner.
My father scoffed at my talk of becoming a sailor, so I never spoke
to him any further about it. He tried to tell me what a fine
cavalryman I would make, and asked me to promise that I would wear
the Emperor's uniform with honour.
Now, in Germany, unless you had a good education, there was no hope
of your ever becoming an officer. And the courses were stiff.
Instead of studying, I preferred to read your American Indian
stories, especially those of James Fenimore Cooper. I knew the names
of many of your famous Indian chiefs, and as a youngster I dreamed of
voyaging to America to hunt buffalo.
My father hired a tutor to cram me with book knowledge, but after six
months that worthy went to him in despair and said:
"It is no use; the boy doesn't learn. There is a devil in him."
Next they put me in a private school in the country, thinking that
association with other boys would fill me with ambition to learn.
Instead, I learned how to fight. Although only ten years old, I was
a husky young devil, fond of sports, and ready for anything that
would provide a thrill. My father thought the teacher was too soft
for me, so he sent me off to another school, where the teacher was a
strong man and something of a ruffian himself. By Joe, how that man
used to pound me! My father also gave me many lickings, and I
considered he was entitled to do so. But this other man? Well, I
stood it from him just once. Then, when the second beating came, I
ran away. For eight days nobody knew where I was. I lived in the
fields like an animal, eating apples and other fruits. Then they
found me. My poor father was ready to give me up as hopeless, but I
still had a true friend, my grandmother. She told my father he had
been far too stern with me, and said to him: "Give me the boy, Henry.
A little kindness may still make a good lad of him."
"You are welcome to try," responded my father, "but you will only
spoil him the more."
Well, Grandmother had the right idea. She made a bargain with me.
There were thirty-four boys in my class at school, and in my studies
I always stood thirty-fourth.
"My lad," she said, "study conscientiously and I will give you fifty
pennies every time you advance a place. I will continue doing this
until you are at the head of the class!"
I couldn't figure right then how much I stood to make. I never was
much at arithmetic. But I guessed it would be considerable, and I
considered Grandmother a good fairy.
I studied with all my might. The next examination came, and others
were ahead, but not I. I was in despair. My grandmother encouraged
me, and I studied still harder. Another examination came, and I
moved up four seats! She gave me two hundred pennies, and I felt
like a millionaire. But at the following examination I dropped back
two seats. She was not discouraged with me and said she hardly
expected me to go ahead without a few rebuffs. I was afraid she
would demand a rebate for the places I had lost, but she did not. I
now saw myself clear of all financial difficulties. By going ahead
with an occasional dropping back, my income would be endless.
I turned into quite a despicable swindler, but it was not out of pure
avarice. I had formed the idea of breeding rabbits and had set my
eye on a fine rabbit sire that would cost me several marks. To get
the sum needed I would have to be promoted several seats which, I
reasoned, could be easily done, especially with occasional slidings
back. But I had bad luck and got no more promotions. What was to be
done? I needed the money. So I told Grandmother that I had been
promoted two places. I got the pennies. Another week I told her I
had gone ahead three places; another week one; and still another week
four. The intricacies of finance and greed led me to a series of
fake promotions that soon landed me at the head of the class. I had
the cheek to put on that I had gained that honour.
Of course, Grandmother was happy and very proud of the success of her
policy of kindness with me. One day, she happened to meet my school
superintendent and could not resist expressing her elation.
"And what do you think of our Felix? Here he has progressed to the
first place in his class by that simple method of mine of giving him
fifty pennies for every form he moves up. I tell you, there is
nothing like kindness. It takes a grandmother to handle a boy."
In utter astonishment, the superintendent replied:
"What, Felix in first place? That's some misunderstanding. So far
as I know, Felix is in thirty-fourth place."
My grandmother rushed home and began to overwhelm me with reproaches.
It happened that she had two bulldogs, one thirteen and the other
fourteen years old. They suffered from asthma. The wheezing dogs
started a commotion in the next room. That diverted her attention
from me, and she bustled out to see what was the matter. When she
returned, her flare of temper had subsided, and she merely said
laconically and finally that she was through with me. "In you there
is a devil," she cried.
She did not tell my father of the adventure, for fear it would make
her ridiculous. All he knew was that, when Easter came, I was
promoted on probation, with the accompanying suggestion that it would
be best if I left school. So he sent me to a school in Halle, a city
of Prussian Saxony, and engaged a private tutor to coach me in
addition.
The end of my school days now came speedily. My father, perhaps
taking a leaf out of my grandmother's book, resorted to a promise.
If I were promoted, I would be allowed to visit my cousin, who lived
on an estate in the country, a thing that I wanted very much to do.
When the examinations came, my father was away. He had left me with
the tutor, who was to permit me to depart for my cousin's estate if I
gained the promotion. As usual I flunked the examination, and came
home angry and sullen. The tutor met me, eagerly asking whether I
had been promoted. I bit my lips and lied impudently. I said I had
been promoted, but that the superintendent was away and had not been
able to sign my report, which would be mailed later. The tutor,
delighted that his coaching had been so successful, gave me immediate
permission to leave for my cousin's.
I took my father's big boots, his water boots, his little coat, his
trousers, his sport shoes. I was big for my thirteen and a half
years, and they would fit me. My brother and I each had a savings
bank. I had eighty marks in mine. He had one hundred and ten marks
in his. I took my savings and forty marks of his. I would repay him
later.
I was away. Where? If I had a devil in me, surely it must be a sea
devil, because I now dreamed of nothing but the sea. I had promised
my father to wear the Emperor's uniform with honour. I would not
return home until I wore the Emperor's naval uniform, and with
honour. I was firm in my decision about this.
I was all excited when I stepped off the train in Hamburg. Here was
the great seaport town, and here was I, a lad going to sea. In the
railroad station I saw a large sign advertising the Concordia Hotel
with the prices of accommodations listed, from fifty to seventy-five
pfennigs a cot. That seemed a little high to me, but never mind. A
porter took my baggage. I was well dressed, and he treated me with a
good deal of respect. When I directed him to the Concordia, he
looked at me.
"So you are one of those fellows driving out to sea?" He changed
instantly from polite German to common, vulgar, Low German in
addressing me.
I had stumbled on the sailors' favourite hotel, but sailors didn't
seem to be held in much respect by porters.
When I got to the Concordia, I soon discovered that sailors do not
frequent palatial hostelries. It was a "rear house," situated in a
back yard. Here in America you would call it a "sailors' flop." I
asked the clerk for a cot, for seventy-five pfennigs. He showed me
into a room where there were six cots. I remonstrated that, when I
paid the highest rate, I didn't want to sleep in a room with five
other people. He laughed and replied that if I was not satisfied
with five companions he would give me a fifty-pfennig room with
forty-nine companions. I chose the five.
My first evening I spent along the famous Hamburg water front, Sankt
Pauli, known to sailors the world over. There was the gigantic
"Vanity Fair," or White City with all its lights and excitement.
Here I saw all manner of seafaring folk, from Malays to West Indians.
In front of some of the amusement halls stood African Negroes in
weird costumes.
At the shipyards, where I offered my services as a cabin boy, I was
told that, since I was only thirteen and a half years old, they would
have to have a written permission from my father before they could
engage me. So I decided I had better address myself directly to
captains aboard their ships. When I went to the part of the harbour
where sailing ships rode at anchor, I found it an immense basin with
a forest of masts, and the vessels moored at considerable distance
offshore.
While gazing longingly at them and wondering what to do next, I came
upon an old man and got into conversation with him. He was a
salt-bitten tar. For thirty-five years he had sailed before the
mast. Now, in his old age, he operated a little ferryboat. So I
asked him to row me out to one of the ships. The old tar handled his
jolly-boat with amazing skill. Never before had I seen anyone scull.
As I gazed up at the lofty masts all around us, old Peter told me
that sailors had to climb these in storms when it was impossible for
a greenhorn to hold on.
I went aboard several ships, but the captains also insisted on my
showing them permission from my father. After I had been turned
down, old Peter saw that my spirits were at low ebb. When I admitted
to him that I had run away from home, it seemed to touch the sympathy
of the old wanderer. But when I told him my father was a landowner
and a count, he looked at me in awe.
"A count? Why, that ranks next to a king!"
He could hardly get over it--a count's son running away to become a
sailor before the mast! The tragedy of it made him take such an
interest in me that we instantly became warm friends, and he asked me
to come and share his humble quarters. From then on, for a week, I
spent most of my time with old Peter Boemer.
"For thirty-five years, for my whole life," he pleaded in his broad
Hamburg dialect, "I was a sailor. What have I now? All I am is
captain of this little rowboat, carrying people for a few pfennings a
trip. Go back to the Count, your father, and when he gives you a
licking for this, thank him for every lick."
I must go home. He was certain of that. He must persuade me to go
home. But the idea of notifying my parents never occurred to him.
That would be squealing, and squealing is not a virtue among sailors.
I saw him every day for a week, and notwithstanding all of his
unanswerable arguments, still I refused to go home. At last he saw
that it was hopeless to plead with me any longer, so he agreed to
help me get on a ship without having any papers.
He got me a post as cabin boy aboard the _Niobe_, a craft the memory
of which grows more vivid with the passing of the years. Then he
insisted upon seeing to it that I was properly outfitted for the sea.
Under his direction, I expended the last of my money for warm
underclothing, oilskins, a sheath knife, tobacco, and a pipe. I was
very proud of the pipe. He took me to his room high up in a dingy
house on a dingy street. Suspended from the ceiling was a stuffed
flying fish. On a wall hung the painting of a ship on sail canvas.
I was filled with admiration when Peter told me he had painted it
himself. In a cage was a parrot, as old and dishevelled as Peter.
He had brought it from Brazil, and it spoke only Portuguese. On the
bureau were Chinese curios and other souvenirs of long voyages.
"And this is my sea chest," he said, as he hauled forth an ancient
weather-beaten but staunch box, and emptied out of it various
examples of his own weaving and knitting.
"Every sailor needs a sea chest," he continued. "It is watertight
and will float. For thirty-five years it travelled with me around
the world. It is yours now, by Joe, and I hope it will serve you as
well as it served me."
That old sea chest was destined to serve me well as long as I had it.
I lost it when I ran away from the lighthouse at Cape Leeuwin,
Australia.
He put me aboard the _Niobe_, that never-to-be-forgotten argosy,
showed me to my bunk, and fixed my mattress and bolster.
"You are born a count"--he shook his head--"and you become a sailor.
Count and sailor don't go together. It is like a Paris shoe on a
Russian peasant's foot. You are Count Felix von Luckner no longer.
You must change your name."
Then and there I rechristened myself, took the name of my mother's
family, and called myself Phelax Luedige. Under that name I sailed
the seas for seven years.
My last gift from old Peter was a motto. Putting his hands on my
shoulders he said:
"My boy, always remember, one hand for yourself, and one for the
ship."
By this he meant that, when aloft, I must hold on with one hand and
work with the other. But the motto had a wider meaning than that.
In every channel, sea, or backwater of life--one hand for yourself
and one for the ship.
I stood at the rail while the tug towed the _Niobe_ out of the
harbour. Old Peter, with his marvellously skilful stroke, sculled
alongside the slowly moving vessel all the way out past the piers of
Sankt Pauli.
"My boy, God speed you," he shouted. "This is as far as I can go. I
will never see you again. It's hard on old Peter to see you go away."
I wanted to shout something in return, but tears were streaming down
my cheeks.
Peter had carefully packed my sea chest, and when I opened it I found
his picture right under the lid. Across the bottom he had scrawled,
"Don't forget your old Peter."
The low coast gradually melted into the haze. Years were to pass
before I should return to my homeland and to the friend who had
helped me get to sea.
III
SAVED BY AN ALBATROSS
The Russian full-rigged ship _Niobe_, bound for Fremantle, Australia,
was an old craft, dirty and mean. I have seen many another like her,
but she was a classic. Her captain, too, was something of a classic.
When old Peter spoke to him about taking me, although I had no
permission from my parents, he replied:
"I will take him provided he doesn't want any pay!"
I didn't want any pay, but should have preferred a more
agreeable-looking shipmaster. He had a sour, sallow face with a long
goatee, half Mephisto, half Napoleon III. He hated Germans.
I knew no Russian. The others knew no German, except the captain.
He knew it brokenly, just enough to abuse me. The helmsman spoke a
little English. I had learned a few words of English in school. I
never did learn Russian. That language has always been a puzzle to
me. During the long trip of eighty days on the _Niobe_ I was among
people whose talk between themselves, and nearly all of whose speech
addressed to me, I couldn't understand.
I discovered the helmsman's knowledge of English the first day out.
I was delighted to find that here was at least one sailor with whom I
could converse. He asked me questions. What was my father?
"A farmer," I replied.
"Well, then," quoth he, "it will be just the right thing if I appoint
you chief inspector."
That sounded important, and I walked a little stiffly as he led me
down the deck. We came to a pig pen where there were half a dozen
large and particularly filthy porkers. The chief inspector's office
was that of cleaning the pig sty.
"And besides," the helmsman added cordially, "I will appoint you
superintendent of the starboard and larboard pharmacies." I promptly
discovered that in the language of the sea a pharmacy was a latrine.
In cleaning the sty, I was not allowed to let the pigs out. I had to
go in there with them, and it was very narrow quarters. The
unspeakably dirty animals rubbed against me constantly while I
laboured with pail and brush. The sewage was so deep that it filled
my shoes. I had only two pairs of trousers. Soap and water were not
to be wasted. I grew filthier than the pigs. And then there were
the "clinics."
Everyone kicked me because I looked like a pig and smelled like one.
They called me "Pig." For food I had to go around and eat what the
sailors left on their plates. They said that was the way pigs were
fed. For breakfast, instead of coffee and rolls, there was vodka
with stale bread to soak in it. I got the leavings of this. The
salted meat, of which I got the scraps, was so strong that I could
scarcely force it down my throat. I often thought of that bill of
fare from the Fuerst Bismarck, which had lingered in my thoughts. I
had made a mistake there, by Joe.
I was afraid of the masts. I dreaded the thought of going aloft.
But I said to myself that I must get used to it. So I climbed
desperately every day, a little higher, a little higher, always
practising. Finally, one day, I got to the crow's nest, halfway to
the top. I thought that was fine. I felt so proud I called down for
the others to see where I was.
"Any old sea cook can get that far," the helmsman shouted back
scornfully.
That hurt me and made me all the more determined to learn how to go
aloft as the sailors did. I kept trying, and I watched the other
apprentices skipping nimbly high up in the rigging.
We had a storm rounding the Cape of Good Hope, followed by a heavy
swell. All the sails had been reefed except the storm sail, and we
were ready to set the main topsail. Eager to show how much I had
learned about going aloft, I climbed up to help unfurl the canvas. I
forgot old Peter's advice: one hand for the ship, the other for
yourself. The sail, filled with a sudden gust of wind, blew out like
a balloon. I fell. I grabbed hold of the gasket, the rope that
holds the sail to the yard, but it burned through my hands. I
dropped ninety feet on to the braces, the ropes that hold the yard.
If I had struck the deck, I would have been killed. At that moment
the ship heaved with a swelling wave, and I was thrown out into the
sea.
The _Niobe_ was tearing along with a speed of eight knots. I came up
astern. The wash in her wake swirled me around, but I could see a
sailor throwing me a life preserver. I couldn't find it. The waves
were too high. I sank, and when I came up I saw the ship a long,
long distance away, it seemed. I threw off my heavy oilskins and sea
boots, although there seemed little use trying to save myself by
swimming. Even if they did put out a lifeboat, they would never be
able to find me in that heavy sea.
Above me hovered several albatross, those huge white birds that seem
to think everything floating is for them to eat. They swooped down
upon me. I was ready to sink, but still had enough strength to fight
at them, waving with one hand and then another. A great white form
swooped down. A bird's talons seized a human hand. And I in turn
clutched at it. A drowning man grasps a straw, even a bird. The
albatross beat the air with its wings, frantically trying to rise. I
still kept my grip on its claw. The huge bird was keeping me afloat.
Then the albatross began to strike at my hand with its beak. It hurt
and wounded me badly. I have the scars on my hand to this day.
Still I held on.
"Phelax," I said to myself, "you will never get back to your ship,
but maybe another ship will find you if you don't let go."
The other albatross were flying above, circling around, watching the
strange proceedings.
It seemed to me as though my hand had been torn away by the repeated
striking of that beak. Then, all at once, a swell lifted me high
above the other waves, and I saw a lifeboat coming. I let go of the
albatross, and he was glad to get away, by Joe. He shot up into the
air to join his companions. That bird had saved my life, and so had
his friends. The sailors could never have found me had they not seen
those birds hovering above me. They knew that I must be swimming
there.
In the boat I said to myself that I supposed the captain would be
happy to see me back again. When we came alongside, he stood up
there above, pointing down at me.
"You, you ----! Come up here! I wish to ---- you had stayed out
there and that we were rid of you! Look, my sails are blown away,
blown away."
In the commotion caused by my going overboard, he had lost two sails.
I sat down there in the little boat with the blood flowing out of my
hand and trembling. The sea was high, and the lifeboat danced up and
down while the sailors made vain efforts to swing it over the davits.
In a wild toss the boat rose as high as the ship's gunwales. I was
so excited that I made a crazy jump, hit the deck, and was knocked
unconscious.
A moment later, the boat was smashed against the ship's side. The
sailors were pitched into the water, nine of them. For a while, it
seemed that some of them would drown, and it was only after a
struggle that the last of them managed to catch a rope and clamber on
deck.
I lay stunned. The captain leaned over me and shouted in my face.
"You German dogs like to guzzle. Wake up and take some of this!"
He put the neck of a vodka bottle in my mouth and let the liquid fire
trickle down my throat. Next day I was too sick to stand on my feet.
The captain ordered me out of my bunk and to work. I tried but
couldn't get up. Then he beat me, saying I was a drunken loafer.
Later I learned that when I had fallen overboard the quartermaster
immediately called for volunteers to man the lifeboat. The captain,
who had never dreamed of sending help to me, shouted to him, shaking
a harpoon:
"If you lower the boat, you will get this harpoon in your belly."
As a matter of fact, they were not obliged to send a boat for me. A
captain need not attempt the rescue of a man overboard if it is
liable to endanger the lives of others of his crew.
The quartermaster, however, calmly walked away, got his volunteers,
lowered the boat, went after me, and left the captain in a towering
rage.
The shock of that experience brought on a sort of nervous spasm which
made my hands shake. I was like that for four years, and even to-day
I sometimes have nightmares and dream of falling from a mast, of the
albatross, of the captain and the vodka.
I lay in my bunk and thought it over. I had been Count Felix von
Luckner, of a titled, landowning family, descendant of a long line of
military officers and of an illustrious Marshal of France. Now I was
a mere cleaner of the pig sties and the latrines, fed like a pig on
scraps left by others, cursed and beaten and considered by the
captain to be carrion not worth saving from the sea. I said to
myself:
"You put yourself in this fix, by Joe, and you've got to take your
humiliation and punishment like a man."
So this was the life at sea? Certainly, it was not what I had
expected. I wondered if I had made a mistake. Well, mistake or no
mistake, I had promised my father to wear the Emperor's uniform with
honour, and I would not go home until I wore the Emperor's naval
uniform with honour. But how far away from me now seemed epaulettes
and gold braid.
The _Niobe_ did not put in at a single port on our way out. After we
passed through the English Channel, until we reached Western
Australia, we saw nothing save sky and sea, the sky light or dark,
the sea in quiet or in storm. In fact, we only came in sight of land
once. This was when we sighted an island somewhere off the African
coast. I could see palms, rows of palms, and white houses with red
roofs and green shutters. I stood at the rail and gazed. What joy
it must be to walk and breathe on that green island. It seemed an
abode of all happy things. I was sure that living there must be a
fairy princess. I was very much of a boy, and I had been reared on
German stories. I was wretched, and yonder was a land so fair. It
must be the haunt of a fairy princess. I stood with my elbows on the
rail and my chin on my hands and dreamed of her.
Singular that I should have then thought of a fairy princess. A few
years later, I visited that same isle. By then I had become a naval
officer of the Kaiser. I wandered all through its palm groves,
remembering how once I had sailed past it, the miserable cabin boy of
the _Niobe_, and had had visions of a fairy. This time I did indeed
find a fairy princess there, and promptly lost my heart to her. We
became engaged, and a little later she became the guardian angel of
the raider in which I sailed the seas. She was a visitor on the
isle, and her name was Irma.
But my fairy princess was only a wild fancy as I stood at the rail of
the _Niobe_. The dreamy bit of land with its graceful palms and
pretty houses grew small in the distance as the wind bellied out the
mainsail and swept us on toward Cape Verde. Finally, I was left
gazing at a speck that vanished on the horizon. And still I remained
motionless and in my trance, until a howl cracked my ears and a kick
nearly split me in two.
"Get along there, you loafer," roared the captain.
But the latter part of the voyage was not so bad as the first. I was
getting used to mistreatment, and was rapidly developing into a
hardened seaman. The captain remained brutal, and so did most of the
men, but there were several who grew kind toward me, among them the
boatswain and the helmsman. So I began to experience some of that
comradeship of the sea for which a sailor will endure many a hardship.
Finally, after eighty days at sea without touching at a single port,
we sailed into the harbour at Fremantle. I had always thought of
Australia as a land of kangaroos, of black aborigines with bows and
arrows, and of bushrangers. But Fremantle turned out to be as
commonplace and bleak a port as you could hope to see. However, I
met some sailors off a German ship, and the sound of my native
language and association with my countrymen made me happy. They took
me to the Hotel Royal. They went there to drink beer and I to share
their company. But the proprietor had a daughter, and I transferred
my interest to her. She was what you call a bonnie lassie, and she
listened to my chatter. After I told her my story, she urged me to
desert from my ship. She even talked to her father about me and got
him to take me on as a dishwasher. That was all right. Dish-washing
had been perhaps the most elegant of all the jobs assigned to me on
the _Niobe_. But I could not abandon old Peter's sea chest. So the
German sailors helped me to smuggle it off the ship. The _Niobe_
sailed presently. Luckily, the captain did not ask the police to
find me, as he had a right to do. Maybe he considered himself lucky
to get rid of me.
IV
SALVATION, KANGAROOS, AND FAKIRS IN AUSTRALIA
About the only amusement I could find in Fremantle was listening to
the Salvation Army band. They had a hall where they had preaching
and where bums and sailors stood up and told lurid tales of their
experiences. Then they all sang songs. It was the songs I liked. I
couldn't tell much about the words, but the tunes were lively and the
big drum fascinated me. This music was altogether different from the
music back home in our churches at Dresden. But what interested me
most of all was that this Salvation Army post had a gramophone. I
had never seen one before. I had come to Australia expecting to find
a wilderness of kangaroos and savages, and here was this marvellous
product of civilization.
"By Joe, Felix," I said to myself, "everything in the world is
different from what you thought."
I couldn't shake off the notion that this gramophone was a hoax. I
thought somebody hidden must be talking into that horn. I could not
get near enough to investigate. The place was always crowded, and
only those who "got religion" were allowed up front. So I persuaded
a friend of mine from a German boat to keep me company, and we went
up at a big meeting and offered ourselves for salvation. We gave
testimony of our past sins and told what bad sailor lads we had been,
and then we signed a pledge never to touch strong drink.
The gramophone was O.K., I found, and that made the Salvation Army
O.K. with me. I became enthusiastic, somehow, or other, with the
songs and excitement. I actually "got religion." I joined up, and
they gave me a job putting moth balls in clothing donated by
charitable people. At any rate, I no longer had to wash dishes, and
here was an army in which I might become a lieutenant. I remembered
how my father had wanted me to become a lieutenant in the German
Army. Why not become a lieutenant in the Salvation Army instead? I
used to daydream and build castles in the air like this while placing
those moth balls in the piles of old clothes.
Since I was converted and saved and stood on holy ground, I felt I
should tell the whole truth. So, one night at a meeting, I got up
and testified and told my fellow soldiers of the Salvation Army that
my right name was Count Felix von Luckner. That made a sensation.
They immediately used me for advertisement. 'Halleluiah! We have
saved a German count from perdition," they announced. "Before he
came here he drank whisky like a fish. Now he is a teetotaller."
Well, by Joe, people came from all over town to see the reformed
count.
They put me in a uniform and sent me out to sell the _War Cry_. I
sold a lot. People didn't mind buying the _War Cry_ from a count. I
thought I could become a captain. It was no trouble to leave whisky
alone, _because I had never tasted it in my life_. But I did like
lemonade and ginger ale, especially ginger ale, which I thought
contained alcohol because they offered it to me in the bars where I
sold the _War Cry_ and because it tasted so delicious. I thought I
was putting something over. They got on to it in the saloons and had
their joke with me.
"Count, have a ginger ale," they would call whenever they saw me, and
I would wink and drink it down. I thought they were laughing because
I had put one over, and I laughed too.
I got tired of it. I got tired of everything except the sea. I was
a sailor, I reasoned, and the only lieutenant I could ever be was a
naval lieutenant and the only kind of captain a ship captain. The
Salvation Army people were very good to me. They said I was too
young to be a sailor, but that they would get me a job somewhere near
the sea. So they found me a job in a lighthouse. It was almost like
being at sea, they told me. All day I could look out and see fair
weather or storms with ships sailing at peace or rolling and heaving.
I became assistant to the lighthouse keeper of the Cape Leeuwin
Beacon, which is south of Fremantle and the biggest light on the
southwest Australian coast. "Assistant"--what a fine title! And
"beacon," a word that meant everything to the ships driven by the
fury of the storm. Wasn't I a sailor who knew all about that from
experience? Well, they put me to cleaning the "windows"--that is,
the lenses. The thousands of prisms of the reflector astonished me
not a little. Each day I wound up the weights for the revolving
apparatus. The rest of the time, when I was not sleeping, I kept
watch. There were three other lighthouse keepers, who lived in
little houses on the cliff. They passed the days playing cards and
fishing. They had pushed all of their duties on to me. For doing
their work I got ninepence a day!
The daughter of one of the lighthouse keepers was named Eva. She was
pretty and very charming. One day I kissed her. It was an innocent
kiss, but we were in a bad place, a room with a locked door, but
which was open on the side of the sea and looked down on the beach.
One of the men was fishing there and saw us. He hurried to Eva's
father. Soon there was a cursing and knocking at the locked door.
We were terrified. The threats and banging grew more violent. I
threw the door open, dashed out and away, frightened half out of my
wits.
I left behind me all my belongings. That was how I lost the sea
chest that old Peter had given me. It was too bad. Late that night
I sneaked back and made off with one of the horses. It was worth
about thirty shillings, which I figured was about the value of the
luggage I had to abandon.
I rode to Port Augusta, and for a time worked in a sawmill. The work
was frightfully hard. The pay seemed good, thirty shillings a day,
but the cost of living was so high--one had even to pay for
water--that it left only a few shillings out of a day's pay. The
work was lucrative only for Chinese coolies, with their low standards
of living. I was able to save sixty shillings and then couldn't
stand it any longer.
One day I met a Norwegian hunter who had been shooting kangaroos and
wallabies and selling their skins. I gave him my money, and my watch
that I had brought from Germany, and he gave me his rifle. Then I
went into the forest and became a hunter, or at least tried to.
After a month, the solitude got on my nerves, and I left the
kangaroos in full possession of their native bush.
In Port Augusta I watched a steamer discharge its passengers.
"Oh," I said, "what kind of a crowd is that?"
They were a troupe of Hindu fakirs. Unable to withhold my curiosity,
I went up and talked to them. When they learned that I was a sailor,
they said I was exactly the man they needed for pitching their large
tents, currying the horses, and distributing advertisements, and the
like. They explained that their trade was similar to mine, since
they were always on the move, only they travelled on land.
They had with them several dark-eyed Hindu girls who looked
bewitching. I joined the fakirs.
We travelled from one end of Australia to the other. I pitched their
tents and booths in public places. Handling the canvas did remind me
a little of my work as a sailor. In Fremantle, when I went around
passing out handbills, I heard on all sides:
"Hello, Count. No more Salvation Army, eh? Have a ginger ale."
I found the ginger ale as good as ever.
The fakirs made a mango tree grow before your very eyes. It is one
of the classic tricks of India. It was my task after the show was
over to clear the place where the tree had miraculously grown. I
could never find any sign of preparation. A bowl of water would be
brought in and shown to the spectators. The fakir would sit down in
such a way as to hide it from the audience. In a little while he
would step aside and the bowl would be filled with live goldfish. I
could never discover any mechanism for this. A fakir would say to a
spectator:
"That is a valuable ring you have on your finger. You must not lose
it, But, look, you have lost it already. I have it on my finger."
And, indeed, he would have it on his finger.
There was a little Malayan girl with whom I flirted, thinking I could
learn the secret of the tricks from her. At first she was very shy,
but then became more friendly. She did tell me how some of the magic
was done, but only some of the minor effects. I learned them quite
well, and to this day can perform them. The major spectacles, she,
herself, thought were miracles. It seems to me impossible for any
European ever to learn the more important secrets of these sorcerers.
The old masters, accustomed to be worshipped as beings endowed with
supernatural powers, hold themselves inaccessible. The two chief
fakirs of our company, with their long beards and a poise made
perfect by lifelong training of the will, made a sublime picture.
One Sunday morning I sat on the beach washing my clothes. Three men
came up, stopped and gazed at me. They looked me over as though I
were beef on the hoof. I have always been big-framed and powerfully
muscled, with an arm like iron, and shoulders as wide as a barn door,
bulging with sinews.
"How old are you, boy?"
I replied that I was nearly sixteen.
"How would you like to learn boxing?"
"Very much," I replied, "because if I knew how to spar, I would be
less likely to get a thrashing."
They took me to a school of boxing, where I was submitted to another
examination. They gave me six pounds sterling and agreed to train me
for the prize ring. In return, I was to box for Queensland,
exclusively.
That began a strenuous time for me. I was put to work with all kinds
of gymnastic apparatus to harden my body, particularly chest and
stomach, to resist blows. I went through three months of that kind
of training before I was allowed to try a boxing pass. Then I
practised sparring with an experienced boxer. I was told that, after
I had progressed far enough, I would be sent to San Francisco for
additional training and would make my debut there as "the Prize Boxer
of Queensland." It all looked very rosy. I liked boxing and do to
this day.
An American craft was in port, the _Golden Shore_ a four-masted
schooner plying between Queensland and Honolulu. She was later put
on the San Francisco-Vancouver-Honolulu run. They needed hands and
offered to take me as an able-bodied seaman at the excellent pay of
forty-five dollars a month. From cabin boy to able-bodied seaman in
one jump--that was an inducement, by Joe. The usual line of
succession is: cabin boy, yeoman, 'prentice seaman, able-bodied
seaman. I guess I was made to be a sailor, because that promotion
looked bigger than anything else in the world. I quit my boxing and
shipped aboard the _Golden Shore_.
In Honolulu I came upon a mystery, a fantastic mystery. It sounds
unbelievable. I, myself, cannot explain it. Someday I hope to meet
someone who can. One of the cabin boys aboard the _Golden Shore_ was
a German named Nauke. He was a violin maker by trade who had lost
all his money and put to sea. We became fast friends. At Honolulu,
Nauke invited me to go ashore with him. He brought along a can of
condensed milk, a delicacy he knew I liked. We went sightseeing, and
one of the sights was that of royalty. We stood outside of the
palace grounds and watched the Hawaiian potentate while he had tea.
He sat in a reed chair, and a couple of his wives stood beside him.
A well-dressed gentleman who seemed to be on a stroll came up to us
and began to talk to us in English.
"Don't waste your time on anything like that," he said. "Why not see
the hula-hula dance?"
Nauke and I said all right, because the hula-hula was just what we
did want to see.
The gentleman asked whether we had any better clothes to wear, to
which we responded that we had not.
"It doesn't matter," he said, "I will provide you with a suit each."
He took us to a carriage drawn by four mules, and we all got in. I
remarked to Nauke that the gentleman seemed to be a man of means.
The gentleman turned his head.
"You mustn't talk so much," he said in German.
We came to the sugar plantations outside the town. The carriage
stopped. Our host led us to a field path, until finally we came to a
European house that had an air of distinction. Young colts grazed
within a fence. Through the large windows of the stately villa I saw
a row of large black tables such as are used in Germany, in a lecture
room. Our host told Nauke to wait outside, and got a piece of cake
for him. I whispered to Nauke not to go away.
I felt very strange on entering the house. The man showed me into a
room next to the hall with the many tables. He was about to lock the
door. I asked him not to. In the room was a long black table like
those I had seen in the other room. The man said he was going
upstairs to get a measuring tape. While he was gone, I noticed that
under the table were two long narrow boxes with heavy locks on both
sides. What if I should end in one of those boxes! But I was
confident. What had I learned boxing for?
The stranger returned with a tape. He measured my arm. Unlike a
tailor, he measured from wrist to shoulder instead of from shoulder
to wrist.
"Thirty," he announced, repeated it once, and muttered several other
numbers between his teeth.
He pulled my coat halfway down my back, thus hindering my arms. He
remarked that the light was poor, and turned me so that my back was
toward the outer door. I could hear a creaking that told me someone
was moving behind that door. I noticed on the floor below the lower
part of the table a disorderly pile of old clothes which looked as
though they might be sailors' togs. The gentleman took off my belt
and laid it on the table. Attached to the belt was my knife case.
It was empty. I wondered where my knife might be. I remembered
having it that morning. I had peeled potatoes with it. My blood
froze as between empty bottles on the window sill I saw a chopped off
human thumb with a long sinew attached. The gentleman was about to
let down my trousers, which would have kept me from running.
I jerked my coat back into place, knocked the man down with a heavy
blow, grabbed my empty knife case from the table, kicked open the
nearest door to the open, and jumped out, shouting for Nauke. He
appeared, still munching his piece of cake. We ran out into the
plantation and threw ourselves down among the cane. There was the
sound of a whistle and of galloping horses and running men. They
were hunting for us along the roads. We groped our way among the
fields, and, after losing our way several times, finally reached the
beach.
We looked up an English-speaking policeman and told him our story.
He shrugged his shoulders and said it would take a special force of
detectives to discover how many sailors had mysteriously disappeared
on the islands. Our captain merely remarked that we deserved a good
thrashing for going ashore. We sailors on the ship laid a plan to
take the plantation by storm on the following Sunday, and gathered
our weapons for the raid. But on Friday a quarantine was proclaimed,
due to some infectious disease that was spreading, and the raid was
off. In later times, I often inquired about the strange
circumstance, and heard tales of white sailors disappearing on the
islands, but never a solution of the mystery.
On board the _Golden Shore_ was a lad named August from Winsen on the
Luhe, in Germany. He and I talked over the ever-beguiling idea of
serving a master no longer, but of being our own masters. We knew
that fishing was considered good on the western coast of North
America, and we determined to go into business for ourselves as
fishermen. The _Golden Shore_ took her course to Seattle, and there
we were informed that the fishing was best around Vancouver. At
Vancouver we looked things over and came to the conclusion that the
ideal thing would be to live in a boat and hunt and fish by turns.
That would be a state of perfect independence. We used what money we
had to buy a rifle. Now all we needed was a boat.
At the fishing village of Modeville, a number of sailboats were
moored off shore. They belonged to Indians and half-breeds, whose
camp fires we could see and whose savage dogs barked out fierce
alarms. It was about dusk. Cautiously, we launched one of the
canoes on the beach and paddled out to one of the sailboats that had
taken our fancy. We got aboard quietly and cut the anchor rope. The
boat was set lightly for drying. There was only a slight breeze, and
we drifted very slowly. Somebody ashore saw the boat drifting. A
canoe came paddling out in leisurely fashion. We gave the sail a
hoist to get up more speed. The men in the canoe noticed this at
once. They yelled and paddled hard. We were in a fix. But as we
passed out of the lee of the high mountains, we got a windfall, the
sail bellied out, and the boat scudded swiftly along. From the shore
they fired at us with rifles, but we were away.
We sailed to Seattle, and there the sailors of a German boat gave us
a supply of food and some white lead with which to paint our boat.
We hunted and fished and got along, and then grew tired of it. We
were honest lads, and tried to return our boat secretly to Modeville.
We were caught and haled before a Canadian judge. He was lenient and
put us on probation for a few weeks.
That was my first adventure at piracy.
In Vancouver I signed on the four-masted English ship, the _Pinmore_,
on which I was now to make the longest uninterrupted voyage of my
life. It took us two hundred and eighty-five days to sail from San
Francisco around the Horn to Liverpool. We had rations for a hundred
and eighty days, and sea water got into our water tanks. We lay in
calms for long periods on our way south, and then were held back by
long-continued storms off Cape Horn.
It was as though that ship harboured a devil. We did not meet a
single craft that we could ask for provisions. None of the rain
clouds that went drifting past came near enough to provide us with
water. Between the half rations and the brackish water in our tanks,
six men died of scurvy and beri-beri, and the rest were so ill with
these dread diseases that their abdomens and legs swelled up as
though with dropsy. We used only the storm sails. None of us was
able to climb into the rigging. When at length we sighted England
off the Scillys, the last portion of peas had been distributed, and
when the tug hove up to us in St. George's Channel we all cried,
"Water, water!" We drank all the water that we could hold, and still
we were thirsty. Our bodies were dried up. I was a fortnight in
hospital.
I gave the _Pinmore_ a willing farewell, hoping never to see her
again. Strange how coincidence turns. I did see her again, a long
time later, from the deck of my raider _Seeadler_.
V
WRESTLING CHAMPION OF SANKT PAULI
When a German sailor came back from a cruise with a bit of money
burning holes in his pockets, Hamburg and the bright lights of Sankt
Pauli were his goal. When I left the _Pinmore_, I had a thousand
marks in my jeans. This was a new thrill, and I had it all changed
into silver, so that I could feast my eyes on it. Proudly I strutted
down Sankt Pauli water front, a full-fledged sailor, back from his
first cruise around the world. I swaggered like a veteran old salt.
But my thoughts were not of the gay amusement parlours of Sankt
Pauli. There was another mission that had brought me to Hamburg.
I went to the old house at the Brauerknechtergraben and climbed the
creaking stairs. The name Peter Breumer was still on the door. A
broken old woman answered my knock and ushered me in. From the roof
hung the flying fish. On the wall was the painting of the ship. The
ragged parrot was in its cage.
"Peter? He is dead. I live here now. I am his sister."
"Peter dead?"
"Yes, three years ago. And that's you, his boy, whom he helped to go
to sea. How often he said: 'Where may the boy be now?' But Peter is
gone."
I went to his grave at Ohlsdorf. It was shabby. I got a big iron
anchor and had a brass plate fixed on it with the engraving: "I did
not forget you.--Your boy." Then I placed it on Peter's grave, a
fitting monument for a sailor.
Since the raids of the _Seeadler_ the grave of old Peter has become a
kind of shrine where people visit, especially German children.
It was in December, and the festival called the Hamburg Dom was being
held. In Sankt Pauli were many diversions and shows. In one show,
Lipstulian the wrestler held forth. Fifty marks were offered to
anyone who could throw him. My pals said: "Go up there, Phelax. You
can beat him."
I said no. I had no desire to make myself conspicuous. On the
platform the wrestler drew himself up in his tights and taunted me.
"My lad, you had better bring along a bag in which to carry home your
bones."
I considered this an insult, and climbed on to the stand. The barker
outside shouted.
"Step inside, ladies and gentlemen. We have found a sucker who is
going to get his bones crushed."
Lipstulian paced the platform like a prize steer. I gave my purse to
our sailmaker to hold. Attendants escorted me to a little booth,
where they dressed me in a red and white shirt and pants and a belt.
When I stepped on to the platform Lipstulian looked at my bare arms
and became pensive.
It was not real wrestling, but merely a test of raw strength.
Lipstulian tried to jerk me to him and tip me over before the signal
had been given. That made me angry. I seized him, but could not
lift him. The sailors howled encouragement to me. One of my
shipmates offered me an additional fifty marks if I downed him. On
the third attempt I lifted him. He tried to support his foot against
a tent pole, but slipped. I threw him to the floor.
The barker howled that I had not put the champion on his back. That
found little favour with the audience. There was a tremendous din.
The sailors were ready for trouble. The manager paid me in silver.
He gave me, however, twenty instead of the promised fifty marks. I
did not protest. I felt good-natured. My shipmates were hoisting me
on their shoulders. They carried me to the nearest saloon, where, as
the victor, I treated the crowd again and again.
My shipmates took me to a photographer, where they had a picture made
of me in wrestling togs with the inscription on it--the Champion
Wrestler of Sankt Pauli. By Joe, but I was proud of that picture.
It was a visible indication that I had been somebody.
That night I sat looking at it. I had often wanted to write to my
parents. They must think me dead by now. I was ashamed to have them
hear from me as a nobody. But now ... I looked at the picture again.
On the back of that formidable representation of the Champion
Wrestler of Sankt Pauli I wrote: "To my dear father for remembrance,
from his faithful son Felix, 1902." I addressed an envelope.
Then my courage left me. The difference between that photograph and
our life at home, between the "Champion Wrestler of Sankt Pauli" and
the stately, severe Count Heinrich von Luckner, my father, came
vividly upon me and made my heart sink. I put the picture back in my
sea chest.
The remembrance came back to me how my father expected me to become
an officer in the Imperial Service, and how I had vowed that I would
never go back until I was a naval officer in the Imperial Service.
Let them think me dead until I was able to go home clad in the
Imperial naval uniform.
When I did return home as a naval officer, I jokingly showed my
father the photograph of the Champion Wrestler of Sankt Pauli. He
took it from me and for years carried it proudly in his wallet.
VI
THE TRAGIC CRUISE OF THE CÆSAREA
By Joe, I've got a real sea yarn to tell you now. Wait a minute till
I light my pipe, and I'll tell you about the voyage of the _Cæsarea_.
She was my first German ship. With a cargo bound for Melbourne, we
set sail from Hamburg. My friend Nauke was aboard, and again we were
comrades. The captain was a clever sailor, but an old skinflint.
The cook, who on German ships is called "Smutje"--smudgy, smutty--was
a good fellow, but was keen to please the miserly captain. Together,
they did wonders in skimping our food. On Monday we got peas, on
Tuesday beans, on Wednesday, for a change, yellow peas, on Thursday
brown beans, on Friday "blue Henry," which looked like coffee beans,
but smaller, on Saturday corned beef (bully beef), and on Sunday, as
a Sabbatical delicacy, we got a special dish called "plum and
dumplings." The fare never changed, and we were always hungry. Very
good, Smutje, you were an excellent fellow at heart, but that
penny-squeezing captain made a son-of-a-gun of a sea cook out of you,
and you are the hero of this tale.
One day I was sitting on a topyard. I could hear Smutje down in the
galley whistling "My Heart Is Like a Beehive," which was a song hit
of those days. I whistled along with him. My heart was like a
bee-hive, and girls were the bees and one of them was the queen bee.
I could see her floating in front of me. Yes, it was the same fairy
princess of my dreams whom I had seen in imagination from the deck of
the _Niobe_ on that first voyage when we sighted the Isle of
Fuerteventura in the Canaries. My fairy princess lived on that
distant tropic island of waving palms and white houses. So I
whistled as loud as I could the same tune that Smutje was whistling,
"My Heart Is Like a Beehive."
"What is that?"
I couldn't trust my eyes. I saw two arms thrust from the galley.
They supported a big tray, which they thrust on to the skylight of
the galley. The tray was heaped with a big stack of pancakes. What?
A thousand miles out at sea, and pancakes fresh and warm?
I slid down the rope, and tiptoed to the galley. I took that stack
of pancakes from the plate and slipped them inside my shirt, against
my breast. Then I climbed to the yardarm again. Whew! By Joe,
those pancakes were hot! They were burning into my flesh. When I
was halfway up the mast I thought I should fall down, but I kept
saying over and over, "Phelax, you are a sailor now, and a sailor
never winces." When I was aloft I laid the pancakes on the yard, and
ate them as fast as I could. There were fourteen of those pancakes.
Smutje was still whistling. "Ah, but just wait, you old sea cook,
and see what kind of a beehive your heart is in a few minutes!"
Two arms were thrust out of the galley, and very carefully, so the
flapjacks might not slide off, the empty platter was lowered. Next a
long shrill whistle and then a smothered cry:
"My flap jacks!"
Smutje came climbing to the roof of the galley, thinking that perhaps
with the rolling of the ship the flapjacks had slid off the plate.
Then he roared, cursing:
"Damned pack of thieves."
I called down from aloft.
"Who is a thief, Smutje?'
"Not you," he replied, "because you are working up there. But did
you see anybody take my flapjacks?"
"No, I haven't been looking that way, Smutje."
I slid down to talk with him, still amazed at the phenomenon of
encountering fresh, hot--very hot--flapjacks on the high seas.
"What was that you were talking about, Smutje? Flapjacks, how can
that be?"
"I will tell you, Phelax. You are the only honest fellow aboard."
"I know that, but go ahead."
"It is the captain's birthday to-day, Phelax. Nobody aboard can make
him a present except me. I fixed fourteen flapjacks for him. Is
that too much for the captain's birthday?"
"No, Smutje, it is not too much."
"And a delicious cranberry jelly to go with them."
"Cranberry jelly, Smutje?"
"Yes; a fine cranberry compote. Now, by Joe, Phelax, you know I am a
good fellow. I would say nothing if some son-of-a-gun stole one
flapjack, but, by Joe, I say the one who took the whole fourteen is a
son-of-a-gun, by Joe."
"I agree with your opinion, Smutje, he is a son-of-a-gun, by Joe."
"You are an honest fellow, Phelax, and I always give you the best.
That cranberry compote is no use to me now, anyway. You can eat it
because you are honest and because you will help me to find the
thief."
The compote was just what I needed, what I had missed. It should
have been spread between the pancakes, but still it was going to the
same place.
"How can I catch the thief, Smutje?"
"Watch to-night, and see who eats the least peas."
"All right, Smutje, I will watch."
"Be sure to catch him, Phelax, and now, because you are honest, here
is the cranberry compote."
It was delicious.
That night I reported to Smutje that each of the other men had eaten
approximately an equal amount of peas. It was not part of the
bargain to report that I had scarcely eaten any. I promised to
continue the hunt for the culprit, and Smutje was confirmed in his
opinion that I was the only honest man aboard.
The _Cæsarea_ docked in Melbourne, and there an important event
occurred. The captain invited the German consul to dinner, and then
took counsel with Smutje.
"We must have something good when the consul comes."
Smutje immediately fell in with the suggestion and replied: "Yes, on
such an occasion nothing is too good."
The captain restrained his enthusiasm.
"But there must not be too much expense."
"No, certainly not. Let us have ducks. That is something good and
does not cost much around here."
I heard the captain inviting the first mate to his table.
"But don't forget to put on a white collar, Mate. It is the consul
who is coming."
"Thank you, sir, thank you." And the first mate grinned all over his
face.
Then the captain tackled the second mate.
"I invite you to supper to-night at eight bells. The consul is
coming."
"Thank you, sir, thank you." The second mate wiped his mouth with
the back of his hand.
It was on a Saturday. I sat near the porthole of the galley,
patching my trousers and very busy at it. All the while I kept an
eye on Smutje preparing the ducks. They were roasted, stuffed with
prunes and apples, and I do love them that way. I was waiting for
the moment when Smutje would go aft to get something.
I didn't see the captain. He was sitting on the bridge reading his
newspaper, apparently. He had made a hole in the middle of the page,
through which he looked down into the open door of the galley and
kept his eye on the ducks. At first he did not see me. The mast was
in the way. Then he happened to lean to one side, and caught sight
of me near the porthole industriously mending my trousers.
Suddenly, a marlinespike came flying past me.
"You loafer, by Joe. What are you sniffing around the galley for?
And so you brought your pants along for wrapping purposes!"
I promptly moved on.
At night the consul came. The captain and the mates were all dolled
up. They had even cleaned their finger nails. In the cabin the
consul was the only one who was given a napkin. On the skylight sat
Nauke and I. We watched the ducks on the table. We had brought
along a boat hook, waiting for the moment when the consul should
leave.
The consul ate well, but the captain seemed to have very little
appetite. He took only one small helping of the duck. The two mates
held back out of politeness. It would have been bad manners for them
to eat more than the captain.
When the duck course was done the captain would not let the birds be
taken away, but kept them in his sight. When the consul left, the
captain had to escort him to the gangway, but he ushered the mates
out first, so that they would not have a chance to snatch a
drumstick, and, before he left the cabin, he had Smutje take the
ducks away to the pantry. Nauke and I watched all this from the
skylight. There was no chance for us to use our boathook.
The pantry, however, could be reached from the bull's-eye. We waited
till Smutje had gone to his bunk, and then stole our way to the
bull's-eye. I reached in. Good luck. The pantry was open. Smutje
must have forgotten to close it. The unfortunate part of it,
however, was that it was the captain who had left the pantry door
open. He had stolen down to have his fill of ducks, and at this
moment was sitting at a table with a bird before him. His back was
turned to the pantry.
I fished around and first got a big handful of plum and apple
stuffing, which I put in my pants pocket for safe keeping. I was
very quiet about it, and the captain heard nothing. I felt around
again, and found a whole, fine bird. It must have been my excitement
and delight which caused me to make a slight noise. The captain
looked around and saw the magnificent fowl suspended in midair and
going away. With half a drumstick in his mouth he yelled:
"My bird!"
Then he jumped, and grabbed my arm just as it was disappearing.
"Let go that bird," he howled, twisting my arm.
I let the bird go, and kept silent in spite of the pain, hoping that
he would let me go without learning who I was. He reached for a rope
and spliced my arm to the brass handle of the drawer. Nauke reached
into my pants pocket and took out the stuffing to save it from
destruction during the coming licking.
The captain came out.
"Oh, it's you, Phelax. You don't like ducks, do you? But you like
the rope's end."
With that, he gave me an awful beating with a rope's end. I howled,
by Joe.
Limping and sore, I went forward to get my share of the stuffing from
Nauke. He had eaten it all. That made me so angry that, in spite of
my soreness, I passed a good share of my licking on to him. Smutje
shook his head and remarked sadly that the society of thieves had
corrupted the only honest fellow aboard.
We took on a supply of sausages made out of pemmican that were to be
sewn up in canvas and whitewashed so they would keep. For this work
younger seamen are used, they being considered more honest and
unspoiled than the older hands. I was not in line for the job.
However, we slipped appropriate advice to the yeomen on the sly.
Broomsticks were cut up in lengths a trifle shorter than the
sausages. The two ends of sausages were cut off and spliced to the
ends of the pieces of broomstick. The dummies were then tied up in
sail cloth in such a way that the ends could be inspected. After
this they were whitewashed. When the captain carefully counted the
one hundred and sixty sausages and inspected the unmistakable sausage
ends of each one, he said: "Thank God, boys, that you are still
honest."
Later on he stormed and raged when he had to revise this good opinion.
We contrived to swipe a number of hams out of the galley. The
captain accused Smutje, which made that honest sea cook so indignant
that he deserted the ship at Newcastle. Now there was no cook, no
Smutje. The captain asked for volunteers, but none came forward.
Ships' cooks as a rule think themselves indispensable and
irreplaceable, and make the sailors think so, when in fact they often
cannot do more than cook pea soup and fry doughnuts.
"If nobody wants to be the cook," said the captain, "I shall have to
commandeer one. Phelax, can you boil water?"
"Yes, sir."
"Into the galley, then, and beware if you burn the peas."
I did not know how long my new job would last, so I immediately began
to eat until I was ready to burst. My first pea soup was a great
success. I took care, and, to make myself popular, put in a hambone
and half a bottle of the captain's red wine. The captain and the
crew all said:
"What a soup, Phelax! You are a master cook."
The next day the bean soup burned. I had heard that in a case like
that the thing to do was to put some soda in. I didn't know how
much, so I tried two handfuls, and then added half a bottle of the
captain's red wine. The soup still tasted good, and they said:
"Phelax, you are a born cook."
At six bells the soda had done its work, and I was fired from the
galley. The captain was sick for three days. Nauke was ordered into
the galley, and proceeded to do pretty well.
Four weeks after Smutje left us, we got him back. The harbour police
found him in a hotel where he had been hired as a chef. He should
have waited for deserting until the last day before sailing time, as
most men do when they clear out. There is less chance of recapture
then.
After discharging cargo at Melbourne, we took on a shipload of
Australian coal and set sail for Caleta Buena in Chile. I'll never
forget that part of the voyage, because I managed to pass New Year's
in a Chilean dungeon. After a spree ashore, I determined to go back
to the ship in a certain particular direction. I went in that
direction until I came to a wall. I climbed over it and fell into a
pig sty. Hearing the grunts of the porkers, the owner of the place,
a very dignified gentleman, came out. I told him I wanted to go to
my ship.
"I will escort you to your ship," he offered with grave politeness.
With no less politeness, I accepted his kindness.
He led me to a house, in front of which stood a police guard. I was
astonished, but he invited me to enter. I did.
"This thief has tried to steal my pigs," he told the police officers
inside.
"I want to get back to my ship," I protested.
They threw me into a cell, where there were a number of others,
sailors among them, who had been celebrating New Year's Eve too well.
I fell asleep on a bench. I awakened. A woman was being hurled into
the cell. I fell asleep, and when I became conscious again, I found
that the new arrival had taken a place beside me, and fallen asleep
with her head in my lap. I raised her from my lap, to place her on
the bench. She yelled, "_Robadores!--caramba._" The guard came in,
and the señora, still shrieking, told him that I had beaten her.
They seized me and threw me down a dark stairway into a dungeon. I
fell over a mule harness into a pile of saltpetre dust. I put my
head on the harness and fell asleep again.
I stayed there, in the company of many very tame rats, for three
days. Then the mate came and got me out. The captain had been
informed on the first day that I was in the calaboose, but he said:
"Oh, Phelax! We have three days in port, and it won't hurt him to be
by himself a little until we sail."
With a cargo of saltpetre, we headed for Plymouth, and off the
Falkland Islands were caught in a dreadful hurricane. At first we
were able to run before the wind. The _Cæsarea_ was good at
scudding, a fast boat with the wind behind her. The pull of the
water at the stern varies greatly with different ships. With some it
drags back heavily. With others it falls readily away. On the other
hand, you must not run before the wind too long, or you may be unable
to heave to at will, and your ship may be overwhelmed by seas
overtaking her from astern and raking her deck from stern to bow.
Well, aboard the _Cæsarea_ we were caught in just this peril. The
seas were breaking over her. We hung out all the hawsers we had to
catch the waves astern.
Then we reached the centre of the storm. From that howling hurricane
of wind and rain we passed suddenly into a deathly calm. In the sky
above the stars gleamed down. The sea was like a kettle of boiling
water. Stirred up from the outer edges it came pouring in toward the
centre. The danger is greatest in the vortex of a hurricane. The
water rushes upon the ship from all sides. Lacking wind, the vessel
cannot be steered. It lies helpless and tossing. The rigging cannot
forever bear the strain of the tremendous and convulsive jerking and
rolling. We lost our top-masts and topgallant masts. They had stood
in the blasting wind and the head-on plunging of the ship, but could
not sustain the dizzy reeling at the centre. For a full half hour we
stayed in that circle of death, with its peaceful air and starry sky.
It seemed as though the ship were turned inside out. Then, with a
sudden blow, we were in the rush and wild fury of the wind again.
The remainder of the rigging, now thoroughly weakened, came down,
except the mainmast and its lower yards. The wreckage fell over the
stern and tangled with the rudder. The deck was flooded and there
seemed little hope of our riding the storm, when, as suddenly as it
had burst upon us, the wind shifted eight points, and soon we were
out of the hurricane.
We reached Plymouth after one hundred and twenty days, and only the
older mate, Nauke, and I remained aboard for another voyage. Smutje
left, but before going ashore said to me:
"Phelax, God knows whether we will ever see each other again. We
have been good comrades ever since that scoundrel stole the
flapjacks. You are an honest fellow. Therefore, let us go ashore
and have a 'pain expeller.'"
"All right, Smutje," said I, and we went ashore.
At a bar the cookie ordered up two big "pain expellers." The glasses
had just been put in front of us, when I thought to myself, "Phelax,
if you are an honest fellow, surely this is the time to show your
honesty."
"Smutje," I said, "I know who took your flapjacks."
"You know? Who was it?"
"Me."
"You?"
"Yes, me."
He took his stick, took his hat, turned his back on me, and walked
right out, never touching his pain expeller. I looked at the two
glasses, and thought to myself:
"Phelax, it is the reward of your honesty. First for your honesty
you get the compote of cranberries. Now you get two pain expellers
instead of one--for your honesty."
Eleven years later, as an officer in the Imperial Navy, I went from
Kiel to attend a dinner in Hamburg. At the Hamburg railway station,
as I called for a taxi, I heard a voice quite close to me.
"Hello there, Phelax."
"Hello, Smutje."
"How have you changed, Phelax! Are you an officer in the Imperial
Navy?"
"Yes, Smutje."
"How have you changed, Phelax! Do you still remember your old
cookie?"
"You bet I remember you, Smutje."
"Well, how have you changed, Phelax!"
"By Joe, Smutje, I have an invitation to dinner, but I'd rather have
dinner with you. Come along."
I took him in the taxi to Hotel Atlantic, the finest in Hamburg.
Bellboys came to open the door and usher us in. Cookie looked around.
"This too, Phelax?"
"Yes, Smutje."
"How have you changed, Phelax!"
I ordered champagne and cigarettes brought to a private room. There
Smutje and I sat talking over old times. The waiter brought the
wine. Cookie looked at the waiter's evening clothes in awe and then
looked at me.
"How have you changed, Phelax!"
He essayed to grow friendly with the waiter, and ventured a familiar,
joking remark. But the pompous waiter disdained to talk to such a
fellow, ignored him, and turned to me.
"Do you wish anything else, Count?"
"Hey, Phelax, did you hear what he called you? Count! Are you a
count?"
"Yes, Smutje."
"How have you changed, Phelax!"
He thought for a while, and then gave me his two hands.
"You swiped my fourteen pancakes, Phelax. I haven't forgotten it. I
shall be proud all my life that a count swiped my pancakes."
The _Cæsarea_ took on a cargo for New York. It consisted chiefly of
chalk packed in barrels. Abaft we had a load of arsenic, three
hundred tons packed in small barrels, which, because of its great
weight, took up little room. It was a badly stowed, ill-balanced
load. Of our new crew, some were sent from Hamburg and some were
signed in England. These latter were stokers and trimmers who had
never been on a sailing ship before. They could neither steer nor
set sails. They received higher wages than we, and yet we had to do
all the work. As a consequence, we treated them pretty roughly.
Even our Hamburg cabin boys, whose duty it was to clean the sailors'
quarters, were loath to do this for the green hands who knew less
than they.
The captain had hopes of a fast run to New York, which certainly
seemed an easy jump after our trip through the latitudes of the
hurricanes. But we had storm after storm from the first day out, and
could make scarcely any headway at all. With our worthless crew, it
was particularly miserable and trying. Christmas came, and with it
the first fine weather and a fair wind. After a long time, we could
set the topgallant sails again. It was fine to see the deck dry once
more. The captain said:
"This is a sign from God. Let us celebrate Christmas properly."
So thankful was he that the old skinflint gave orders for Christmas
cheer regardless of expense. In sailor fashion, we made a Christmas
tree out of a broomstick and decorated it with coloured paper. The
captain sent down a ham and a bowl of punch. When the candles were
lit, a committee called on him to wish him a Merry Christmas and
invite him to look at the tree. He accepted, and came down jovial
and merry. Our new Smutje brought the flowing bowl, and we stood in
line, each glass in hand, ready to toast the captain.
Then a white squall struck us.
A squall is called white when you have not seen it coming. It hit us
square on the bow. The ship shivered from one end to the other, and
was pushed stern-wise. The foremast went overboard. Its yard
smashed upon my bunk. The main topmast followed. Everything went to
pieces. Only the lower masts remained. We tumbled on deck. The
captain ran to the steering wheel, where the helmsman had been
knocked down and could not get up. (He died two days later.) The
combers were sweeping over the ship. With axes we cut away the
wreckage. The sails on the lower yards, the only ones that were in
place, had to be braced into the wind. In four hours we had the ship
under control again. The green crew had hidden themselves below. We
were so enraged with them now that they did not dare to show their
faces.
The storm turned into a hurricane. It blew throughout Christmas
night and the next day. On the second afternoon of the storm, at
eight bells, the steerage deck broke under the heavy load of arsenic.
That broke several rivets, and the ship began to leak. We hurried to
shift the barrels. Several had burst. We did not realize our danger
from the arsenic dust. It produced terrible inflammation, and after
several days most of us were badly swollen and bloated.
Nevertheless, the arsenic was stowed again.
The ship started going down at the bow, and the carpenter reported
three feet of water in the hold.
"Clear the pumps!"
We pumped, by Joe. The water in the hold grew deeper. We pumped
until we grew weak. They gave us liquor to strengthen us. When we
felt we could go on no longer, the cry went up:
"Grog ahoy!"
The grog made us pump again, although we doubted that we would win
out.
A breaker came over the deck and swept away the galley. The cookie
was making coffee for us and warming himself at the fire. He went
overboard with his stove, pots, pans, and the coal box. He hung for
a moment on the chimney, crying out for help at the top of his voice.
There was no chance to save him. An old sailmaker next to me shouted:
"Smutje, you're all right. You've got plenty of coal for your trip
to the devil."
That joke in the teeth of death made me shiver, since death was so
close to us all.
We worked at the pumps for forty-eight hours. The water in the hold
rose higher and higher. We were at the end of our rope. The
constant drink, too, had worn us out. We could pump no longer. The
captain, harpoon in hand, threatened:
"The one who stops pumping, I'll harpoon him."
A voice from abaft sang out:
"Lookout! Breaker!"
At the pumps we could not see the comber, but we heard it roaring.
It broke over us. Six men were swept away from the pumps. Two were
washed straight overboard. A third was thrown against the shrouds.
His arm was smashed, and then he was washed overboard. Another's
skull was fractured. Still another was left on the deck in a heap
with several broken bones. I was lucky. There were several timbers
on the deck. I braced myself with one foot between two of them. The
wave drove them together and pinned my foot. I fell, and my leg
snapped. The timbers still held my foot, while the swirling water
tugged and twisted me as though it were determined to carry me into
the sea.
The mate released me with a crowbar, and the captain had me taken to
his cabin. My leg was bent like an L.
"We have lost seven men," he said, "and we cannot afford to lose
another. Carpenter!"
They tied me to one wall and fastened a block and tackle to the
drawer of the sideboard. They hitched the tackle to the foot of my
broken leg, and pulled slowly until the leg was straight and the
bones in place. By Joe, it hurt. The carpenter measured me and made
a pair of splints, which they fastened tightly to the leg. The
splints were long enough to act as a wooden leg, and I could walk
around, painfully, but enough to be of some use.
The _Cæsarea_ was sinking now. We cleared the lifeboats. But first
we poured out oil to calm the sea. The boats were swung overboard
and lowered into the water with long ropes attached to them. A man
tied a rope around his body, jumped overboard, and swam over to the
boat and climbed in. The next one followed and was hauled in by the
first one. They tied a rope to me and threw it to the men in a boat.
Then they threw me overboard, and the men pulled me to the boat. One
boat was under the command of the captain. The first mate had the
other. We could make no headway rowing, so we simply held the boats
against the heavy sea to keep them from overturning. In spite of my
broken leg, I did my share of the work. The boats drifted apart. I
was in the captain's boat. The mate's boat was lost and never seen
again.
The storm lasted for four days. We had a little hardtack soaked with
salt water, and a small supply of fresh water. It was bitterly cold.
What wood we might have burned was soaking wet. It was almost
impossible to sleep. On the fourth day, we sighted a steamer. Its
course would take it some distance away from us, but we were certain
that we could hail it. With great jubilation, we hoisted a pair of
pants on a mast as a signal. We were certain we saw the vessel
change its course. We were overjoyed. Nevertheless, the steamer
gradually disappeared.
All our food was gone now, and only a very little water was left,
which the captain, with an inflexible will, doled out in minute
quantities. The weather was fair now, and we could sleep. Our
thirst increased. We sucked our hands to start the spittle in our
mouths. We wanted to drink sea water, knowing that it would hasten
our end. The captain encouraged us:
"Don't throw away your young lives. Look at me, an old man. I won't
give up."
On the sixth day, we decided to draw lots to determine which one
should be sacrificed so the others might drink his blood. No one
proposed a start of the drawing of lots, each afraid that he would
draw the fatal number. The authority of the captain still preserved
a remnant of drinking water to be doled out. Late in the afternoon,
we defied him, seized the water, and drank the last drop.
The next morning we sighted a steamer. We waved feebly, and she bore
down upon us.
At that moment our last strength left us. We were delirious with
joy, but we could not move. We lay dumped in our boat. The ship,
the Italian steamer _Maracaibo_, came alongside, and dropped rope
ladders. We were as if asleep. The _Maracaibo_ had to get its
cranes out and hoist us aboard like pieces of freight. Afterward, we
were unable to remember how we had reached the steamer's deck. We
slept for sixteen hours. When we awakened, all the doctor would give
us was a little milk. Three of our men died. In New York, where we
arrived the next day, they went ashore and gorged on ham and eggs.
It killed them.
I was taken to the German hospital. My leg was in such condition
that at first they thought they would have to amputate it, but
finally the head surgeon decided that he might be able to save it,
and he did save it. After eight weeks I left the hospital and was
ready to go to sea again.
VII
THE BEACH COMBERS ADVENTURE WITH THE _PANTHER_
The leg I had broken aboard the _Cæsarea_ was scarcely well knit when
I broke the other leg. This was after I had shipped on the _Flying
Fish_. But let me jump ahead a few years and tell you this tale
exactly as I related it to the Emperor. That was after I had
realized my boyhood ambition and become a lieutenant commander in the
Imperial Navy.
H. M. S. _Kaiser_ was one of the proudest ships of the German Navy.
She was always kept spick and span. You can bet that she was shining
now. His Majesty was aboard for a visit. We sat in the saloon after
dinner, smoking, drinking, talking. For several days the Kaiser had
amused himself by having me tell stories of my adventures before the
mast. To-night the Emperor said to me:
"Luckner, what was your worst experience?"
I thought of the fight with the albatross, the scurvy and beri-beri
aboard the _Pinmore_, the flogging at the rope's end aboard the
_Cæsarea_, the three days in the dungeon in Chile, the setting of my
broken leg with block and tackle, the plan to draw lots and see whose
blood would be drunk in the drifting lifeboat.
"My worst time, Your Majesty? It was aboard Your Majesty's ship, the
_Panther_."
The _Panther_ was a small ship but a memorable one in the German
Navy. You will recall that it was the part she played in the Tangier
dispute of 1908 that nearly brought on a world war at that time.
Von Plessen, the stately old courtier, glared at me. An admiral
across from me scowled. The Emperor smiled.
"By thunder, you must tell me about it."
I told my story.
I had sailed on the Canadian schooner, _Flying Fish_, bound from
Novia Scotia to Jamaica with a cargo of lumber. We had already
entered the harbour of Kingston when the wind left us. While we were
becalmed, we made ready for discharging the cargo. The ship lurched
with a slight but unexpected roll. A beam slipped and fell against
my leg. The bone snapped just above the ankle. They took me to a
hospital ashore. On German ships, the owner is responsible for all
accidents aboard, but on Canadian ships, you pay your own hospital
bills.
"How much money have you?" they asked me at the hospital.
I replied that I had six pounds coming to me from the ship, which,
according to regulations, the captain would deposit for me with the
German consul, together with whatever articles of property I had on
the ship. The hospital was not expensive, and the surgeon said the
money would be enough.
Three weeks after I entered the hospital, they sent to the German
Consulate for my money. Only three pounds was to my credit there.
The captain of the _Flying Fish_ had sailed away, taking half of my
money with him. None of my belongings were at the Consulate either.
He hadn't even bothered to leave them for me. At the hospital, they
called me a liar and threw me out into the street. The plaster cast
was still on my leg and foot. For clothing I had only what I had
worn to the hospital, trousers, jacket, and one boot.
I could not walk unaided, but I dragged myself to a stick of bamboo,
which I broke into a length that I could use as a cane. With this
support I could limp along.
"Phelax," I said to myself, "you must go to the ocean. It is your
element. You must go to the beach."
I went to the sandy shore and lay there. When night came, I buried
myself in the sand and slept all night, slept well. In the morning,
I was half starved. I found some cocoanuts. Although terrible food
for an empty stomach, I tried to eat them. While sitting there
wondering what would become of me, a steamer arrived.
"Phelax," I said, "you are a sailor and there is a ship."
I took my stick and hobbled along the beach and down the long pier.
The ship was a British collier, and they were making ready to unload
coal. I went to the mate, told him what had happened to me, and
asked him for a chance. The plaster cast was still on, and below my
trouser leg my huge white foot looked like a club. In the hospital,
I hadn't had a haircut or a shave. My hair was long and matted. My
beard was half grown. My face was burned red from lying in the sun.
The mate eyed me up and down.
"You look like a bum, by Joe. Clear out, by Joe, get out."
So they kicked me out, kicked me off a dirty collier, by Joe.
The collier discharged its coal in bags, and I found an empty bag. I
was glad to have any new possession, even a gunny bag. I washed it
out on the beach, and at night used it for a pillow. I still had my
sheath knife, and a Negro helped me cut the plaster cast from my leg
and foot. Half of the skin went with it. The tropical sun burned
the raw flesh until it swelled and ached dreadfully. The coal sack
did me good service now. I stepped into it and wrapped the rest of
it around my leg. It was a stocking and a shoe for me.
I saw a Negro cutting bamboo and gave him a hand. He took me to his
hut and handed me sixpence and some maize to eat. It was cooked and
warm. For days I had had only cocoanuts to eat. It was delicious.
Rain began to fall, a heavy, tropical rain. It would not be good
sleeping on the beach that night. I asked him to give me shelter in
his hut. He looked at me just like the mate of that collier had
done. Although he wouldn't have me in his hut, he said I might sleep
in an old shanty covered with palm leaves where he kept his tools.
It was dry, but all night I could hear cockroaches running around, on
the walls, on the palm leaves, and big rats chasing them. Whenever I
fell off to sleep, they ran over my face. Next morning the Negro
gave me cooked maize again, and then we went out to cut bamboo.
Over the bay I saw a white boat, a wonderful white boat. It looked
like a yacht. Oh, by Joe, if I could only get a chance on a
beautiful boat like that. I hobbled down to the pier. The boat was
coming in. It was a warship. Then I recognized the flag, the German
flag. It was the _Panther_, the first German warship I had ever
seen. It was so white and clean, oh, home, so white and clean! I
was miserable and hungry, and there were my countrymen, a warship of
my country. I felt my tangled beard and my long tangled hair. I
looked down at my tattered clothes and the coal sack on my foot.
Could I go to my country's ship looking as I did? I only stood and
watched. Four officers in white uniforms came down the gangway and
down the pier. I went toward them to hear the sound of German, and
when I heard it I was never so ashamed of myself. They passed near
me, but did not look at me.
"Phelax," I said, "that was what you might have been if you had
stayed at home and studied those lessons."
I felt I could not look at the _Panther_ any longer, and went
wandering miserably around the town. It was dark. Three or four
sailors came down the street. They were talking and laughing. One
of them, a gigantic fellow, spoke in broad Saxon. When I heard my
native dialect, I thought to myself: "In the darkness nobody can see
how you look. It would be good to talk a few words in Saxon."
"Hello, _Landsmann_," I sang out, and I never let myself go so
broadly in the Saxon dialect as I did then.
He stopped and talked with me. He was a stoker on the _Panther_ and
hailed from Zwickau in Saxony.
Those fellows made me tell them about my plight. Could they spare me
a piece of bread? I asked.
"Sure," replied the Saxon. "Meet me at the end of the pier at six
bells. I have no more time now. I must go back on board."
I was at the end of the pier fifteen minutes ahead of time. The
Saxon came off the ship and gave me a great loaf of rye bread.
"Come to-morrow at the same time," he said, "and there will be
another loaf for you."
I did not sleep that night, but passed the hours on the beach eating
that bread. I nibbled it in slow bites so that I might not lose any
of the delight.
The Saxon gave me a loaf of bread every night, and finally said:
"To-morrow is Sunday, and on Sunday we have coffee and cakes aboard.
Come aboard the _Panther_ at half-past three to-morrow, and have
coffee and cakes."
"By Joe, mate, can I come aboard a German warship like this?"
"Never mind, boy, we'll receive you." And he persuaded me to do what
I wanted to do more than anything else.
When the sun rose the next morning, I started to make my toilet. The
beach was my dressing room. The ocean was both mirror and wash
basin. I scrubbed my hands and face with sand and water. I ran my
fingers through my hair and beard, trying to comb them. I tried to
smoothe the wrinkles out of my coat and trousers. I tucked the coal
bag around my leg and foot fifty times, to make it look its best. I
sneaked on board like a criminal. The sailors gave me a good
reception. Everybody sat on benches, and had coffee and cake. There
was a cannon under a tarpaulin. I tried to get a glimpse of it. I
was bashful and ill at ease. I felt as though I was among rich
people in a mansion.
The young officer of the watch passed and saw me. The sailors jumped
up, and stood at attention. I stood up, putting the foot with the
coal sack behind the other one to hide it. The officer called the
boatswain.
"In the future," he said, "I want you to see that no such tramps get
aboard. Throw this unspeakable creature off.
"Get out of here," yelled the boatswain.
I slunk across the deck to the gangplank like a beaten dog. I had
seen this beautiful ship. I had seen a German warship for the first
time. Poor castaway that I was, the sailors had welcomed me aboard.
Holy feelings had been aroused in me. And now...
I heard the sailors mutter. One of them said quietly to me:
"Don't worry, Phelax. We will get you fine clothes. The lieutenant,
we will take his pants. The boatswain, we will take his shirt. We
will give you a coat, shoes, and a cap. The barber will be there
too. At eight bells on the pier."
At eight bells on the pier they brought me the boatswain's blue
shirt, the lieutenant's white trousers, and the remainder of a highly
presentable outfit. The barber was along. He took me to the edge of
the pier and cut my hair. My long hair fell down into the water.
Then he shaved me. I could scarcely wait till morning to dress.
Every article of my new clothes that I put on made me feel more like
a millionaire, and when I threw away my coal bag and put on those
fine shoes, I walked like the finest dandy in Berlin.
I went to the captain in charge of the piers. My smart clothes got
for me an excellent post as dock inspector. After a month I went to
sea again. With my dock inspector's recommendation, I got a good
berth on the _Nova Scotia_, running between the West Indian islands.
The Kaiser listened to the story attentively, and when I had finished
he looked queerly at the other officers. There was a twinkle in his
eye.
"It would be appropriate and poetic," he said, "if Luckner went back
to the _Panther_ now."
So, a few months later, by order of the Emperor, I was transferred to
the _Panther_, which was stationed in the Cameroons. I went down to
Africa, and the moment I boarded the _Panther_ I went to the
fo'c'sle. None of the men I had seen there before were on the ship.
It was the custom to transfer officers and crews every three years.
I looked around, half expecting to see poor tattered Phelax sitting
there somewhere. I sat down where I sat before. Although an officer
now in a trim, white uniform with gold braid, in reality I was that
miserable beach comber Phelax, again. I dreamed I had the coal bag
on my foot once more. I reached down and felt smooth hose and a
smart shoe. I leaned back and dreamed of the coal bag.
VIII
PITFALLS FOR THE SAILOR, AND THE CANARY
THAT SPOKE LOW DEUTSCH
That's a sailor's life, glorious one day, miserable the next. I went
on month after month drinking down in deep draughts the experience of
the sea. A heady drink it is.
The sea is the sailor's power, yet he is always eager to get to port.
There are two places that are ever in his mind: his home, if he has
any, and the port where he will be paid off. For months Jack Tar
handles no money. He dreams of the wad of bank bills that will be
placed in his hands and of ways to spend it. Aboard, no magazine or
newspaper, no matter how old, is left unread. Old fashion plates go
from hand to hand. An evening suit with a waistcoat cut as low as
possible so as to show a vast expanse of festive shirt front arouses
a general discussion.
"Hans, my boy, look at that rig. What would your sweetheart in
Düsseldorf say if she saw you in that?"
Mail-order catalogues are thoroughly thumbed.
"What! a gramophone like that for forty marks? I must have it, and
all the latest songs."
They plan trips into the interior of the Fatherland.
"We will go to Munich in Bavaria. They say you can see the Alps from
there."
The homegoings are anticipated with elaborate talk.
"Won't the old woman be glad to see me, particularly when I unwrap
that silk dress I bought for her in Singapore."
The most disagreeable thing that can happen aboard a sailing vessel
is to be becalmed on the homeward voyage, and the nearer the home
port the more irritating it is. The captain begins to look for a
Jonah. The first unfortunate for him to vent his rage upon is the
helmsman. Nothing he does is right. The skipper is certain that as
long as that hoodoo is at the wheel there will never be any wind. He
is driving it away. Taking the helm himself, however, seems to do no
good. He calls the youngest cabin boy and orders him to scratch the
mainmast, which is supposed to bring wind. When this does not help,
he gives the boy a broom and chases him to the top of the mainmast,
to sweep the sky. Then he takes either an old pair of pants or an
old boot and throws it overboard. Wind must certainly come now. He
stamps down to his cabin and sits and smokes for a while awaiting the
wind. When he returns to the deck, the calm is still unbroken. He
starts in with the helmsman again, angered by the leering grin on the
face of the Jonah.
"Here, Jan, you are such a fine fellow. You take the helm, by Joe,
and see if you cannot get some wind up. You are good luck. You are
an old friend of St. Peter."
Presently, indeed, far away on the horizon you can see a slight
curling of the water. A slight breeze is coming.
"Jan, what did I tell you? You shall have half a pound of tobacco."
The other sailors watch these manœuvres with profound sympathy.
On shore everything is different from what Jack Tar expected. He has
had the experience a hundred times, but he always has it again. The
crowds do not give companionship. Everything is too much in a hurry.
What people talk about does not interest him. He is out of touch
with things. Besides, people do not sit and talk except for a little
while. Someone always interrupts, or people grow impatient and go
away, too much in a hurry. Jack Tar misses the usual hour for
intimate conversation, on watch at night. The sea heaves slowly.
The stars are bright above. The ship follows her course.
Conversation is never interrupted by outsiders, and you can talk as
long as the watch lasts.
Jack Tar is ever a mark for thieves. Aboard ship the comradeship of
man with man will not tolerate dishonesty. A theft between shipmates
is the worst of crimes. No sea chest is ever locked. On land Jack
Tar likes bright lights and gaieties, and there, for some reason, a
great abundance of swindlers are found to take him in. You go about
Sankt Pauli, all sails set. You join a group and find that a horse
has fallen down and broken its leg. You hear a groan. You turn
around, and somebody says:
"Please, young man, can't you tell me the shortest way to a pawn
shop?"
"A pawn shop? I don't know of any."
"That is too bad. I am forced to pawn the last heirloom from my dear
mother."
"What is it?"
"A diamond ring."
He takes the ring from his finger, kisses it, and hands it to me.
While I look at it, a well-dressed man sidles up and addresses me.
"I beg your pardon for having been curious enough to listen to your
conversation. It is luck for you that I happen to be a jeweller. I
should not like to see you taken advantage of. Real diamond rings
are seldom offered in the streets."
The first fellow gets mad:
"Do you think I would try to cheat anyone with the ring that belonged
to my sainted mother?"
"I have nothing to do with you. I am trying to protect this young
man."
The jeweller examines the ring through a glass, and then whispers to
me.
"Ask him how much he wants for it."
I ask, and receive the reply.
"Ten marks at least."
"He must have stolen it," the jeweller whispers again. "It is
valuable. Give him twenty marks for it to get it quickly. Then
follow me to my store, and I will give you a hundred."
Delighted at the opportunity to make some money on land, I give the
man twenty marks for the ring. He hurries away. I look for the
jeweller, whom I am to follow. He has disappeared. At a bona fide
jeweller's I am told:
"It is a rhinestone, not a bad value for three marks."
Tedje and I take in the Hamburg Dom. From the rows of booths come
promises of unparalleled sights. The sights we see in strange lands
don't interest us, but at carnivals ashore it is different.
"Step in, step in," a barker howls, "and see what nobody ever saw or
ate."
"What is it?" Tedje demands cautiously.
"Step in, and you will hear a canary bird talking Plattdeutsch, Low
German. Five hundred marks reward if the bird does not talk
Plattdeutsch."
We have never heard a canary bird talking any language, least of all
Plattdeutsch. We join the crowd going in.
A canary bird in a cage is brought on to the platform. An elegantly
dressed gentleman announces:
"Permit me to introduce this bird to you. His name is Hans."
"Never mind," shouts a sailor, "we want to hear him talk Deutsch."
"You will hear him, gentlemen. Hans--" and now he speaks in the
Plattdeutsch dialect--"Hans, tell me what I should smoke, a cigar or
a pipe." He pronounces the word pipe as "peep," in Plattdeutsch
fashion.
In response the canary bird twitters:
"Peep."
"There, you see, gentlemen, the bird has talked Plattdeutsch."
There is loud laughter, and we all go out and tell the other suckers
that the bird talked Deutsch. Why should we be the only fools?
Perhaps Jack Tar gets engaged to be married to the daughter of a
"crimp." That costs him all his money. Or he gets drunk and
everything is taken away from him.
Hein and Tedje meet back on their ship.
"Well, Tedje, how did Munich strike you?"
Tedje, who did not get away from the Hamburg water front, merely asks
in turn:
"Did you get your gramophone?"
Although the North Sea may not be exactly the sailor's friend, the
disillusioned tars are glad when sail is raised and they see water
all around them once more.
At sea the sailor is on terms of intimacy with nature. He is
friendly with the stars. He understands the clouds, and upon them he
relies to tell him about the weather. He knows most of the fishes he
encounters, although there are very few kinds that can be caught with
hook and line from deck. When a school of porpoises appears, the
command comes:
"Get the harpoons ready!"
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[Illustration: The prosaic American clipper, _Pass of Balmaha_, bound
for Russia with a cargo of cotton, by the alchemy of war became the
mysterious _Seeadler_ preying on Allied shipping until a coral reef
of the South Pacific ended its seven months' cruise of destruction.]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
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[Illustration: The _Seeadler_, that carried the modern buccaneer
whose dare-devil adventures were to out-rival the high-handed days of
the Spanish Main. From a sketch made from the photograph taken by
the captain of the _Antonin_. See page 167.
Engineer Krauss and the mechanical crew picked for the pirate cruise.]
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It takes a skilful harpooner to overhaul a porpoise on its darting,
leaping course. When one is taken, there is great rejoicing. Fresh
meat will be served on board.
Near the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Horn, and the Falkland Isles you
encounter many birds, albatross, cape pigeons, mulehogs, and all
varieties of gulls. They feed on the waste thrown overboard and
escort the ship halfway to Australia. You greet them as old friends
whom you met a year ago and are glad to see back again. The gull and
albatross are regarded as sacred, for it is the belief of the seaman
that some day he will return to earth as a gull or albatross. Each
one of these birds is the soul of a seaman. The white gulls are good
souls. The brown or black gulls are bad souls, the "sea devils."
When you are running before the trade wind south of the equator, the
appearance of the albatross is a great event in the monotony of the
voyage. Majestically the great white bird sweeps up and down, now
before the bow now behind the stern, and circles the ship. He is the
ruler of the Southern seas. It is a common belief among seamen that
nobody ever succeeded in bringing an albatross alive to the Northern
Hemisphere.
Sometimes off the coast of Africa hundreds of swallows that have lost
their way in a fog alight on a ship's rigging, exhausted. Sometimes
dozens of storks do. They never rise again. There is no suitable
food on board for them. It is pitiful to see them waste away and
drop dead on deck or into the sea. There is no help for it. They
die a seaman's death, like sailors adrift without food or water.
Our ship lay idle in Tampico. A comrade and I got shore leave. We
were allured by the romantic life of the lasso-throwing vaqueros,
with their herds of long-horned cattle, their fiery broncos, their
silver-mounted saddles. A German settler put two horses at our
disposal, and, to shame the idea that sailors cannot ride, we went
galloping around the country on a tour that lasted several days.
When we returned to Tampico, our ship had sailed.
In a country so rich as Mexico, it was not hard to make a living.
All you had to do was to stand around the market-place and lend a
hand. You earned enough to live and had a few coins left to squander
in the gambling houses. For a couple of weeks, we made our living by
carrying market baskets.
We joined the Mexican Army. Anybody could become a soldier. Life
was pleasant and lazy, although the quarters were poor. We were sent
to Mexico City, and there for several days stood on guard at the
palace of the great Porfirio Diaz, under whose dictatorship Mexico
was then enjoying her golden days.
We quit the army and worked on a railroad construction in the
interior. In a gang of Italians, Poles, Germans, and Jamaica Negroes
we transported sand, soil, and materials for railroad trestles. Then
we worked for a German who had a ranch on which he raised poultry and
fruit.
At Vera Cruz we signed on a petroleum tanker for Havana, and there
shipped on a Norwegian craft which made the old New York-Australia
run. The return voyage was via Honolulu to Vancouver, where we took
a cargo of lumber aboard for Liverpool. On this voyage I acquired a
fair knowledge of Norwegian, which was destined to play an important
part in running the British blockade with the _Seeadler_.
Back in Hamburg I tried my hand as a tavern keeper and bartender. I
frequented Mother Schroth's familiar old place. The _Frau_, a
typical old friend of Jack Tar ashore, suffered from asthma and had
put on too much weight altogether. She wanted to go to a watering
place. One of my pals, Ulhorn, and I, told her that we would take
over her place and run it while she was away. She was greatly
pleased.
It was easy enough to run the business, as only bottled beer was
handled. The food was brought from a near-by restaurant, each
portion in a pail, at sixty pfennigs a portion. All Ulhorn and I had
to do was to circulate among the guests and see that they drank
plenty of beer by drinking with them. In the evening a blind man
came and played the accordion.
Business boomed. The sailors came, and felt at home. We had to get
in an extra supply of beer. When we reckoned our accounts, however,
we were astonished to find that we had a deficit. We chalked on a
blackboard each bottle of beer that was drunk. That was all right so
long as we stayed sober. Then, when we began to feel good, we
allowed some of our guests to assist in the bookkeeping. They
chalked up their own accounts, but instead of increasing their scores
with every bottle of beer they drank, they reduced them. After a
short while at this, we quit with less money than when we started. I
decided that the saloon business was not the career for me.
After sundry other voyages, I shipped on the _Lisbon_, bound for the
Mediterranean. By now, a little sense had been knocked into my head.
I had saved 3,600 marks, which interest brought up to 3,800--enough
to see me through a period of special training that would enable me
to become a mate. This preparation called for a period of steamship
service and a course at a navigation school. The _Lisbon_ was a
steamer, the first on which I had served. My voyage on her marked a
turning point in my life.
IX
THE RUNAWAY COMES HOME
In the Café Niederegger in Lübeck I sat and drank my glass of beer, a
trifle self-conscious. I had registered in Professor Schultze's
School for Navigation, and felt that as a navigation student it was
required of me to affect better ways than I had followed when I was a
common sailor. I bought a decent wardrobe. I wore linen collars
now, and neckties that you tie, and a scarf pin that you thrust into
the necktie, instead of the eternally enduring celluloid collar which
you share on board with a friend who wants to go ashore, and the
indestructible tin necktie, made in America, with the scarfpin, a
tiny revolver, riveted to it. I was conscious likewise that I must
frequent better cafés than the saloons I had frolicked in as a
sailor. That was what had brought me to the Café Niederegger, famous
for its almond paste. The tables were covered with spotless white
cloths, the waiters wore frock coats, and on a table, as a final mark
of elegance, lay a handsomely bound book, the Almanach de Gotha.
Overcome with curiosity, I took up the volume and turned to the L's.
Yes, there were the Von Luckners, and there was Count Felix von
Luckner with the note attached--"missing." That was as I had
thought. At home they had given me up for lost, dead.
"Phelax," I thought, "perhaps it is you who will be missing before
long. Perhaps before many months are gone Count Felix von Luckner
will go home--as a naval officer in the Imperial Service."
For the present, I ordered another glass of Pilsener and drank to my
demise.
At Professor Schultze's school, I was faced with that old and almost
forgotten enemy of mine--study. I was past twenty now and more
ignorant than the average ten-year-old child. The professor was
tolerant and wise enough to expect almost anything, but I astounded
him. When he examined me in fractional arithmetic I did not know
what a fifth was. A half and a quarter I understood from the clock,
but a fifth was a quantity unknown to me. And I was to acquire
grammatical German, something of a general education, and the large
amount of higher mathematics and astronomy necessary in the science
of navigation. I should not have blamed the professor if he had
despaired and turned me away. I told him my history, begging him to
keep my identity secret, and he vowed, by Joe, that he would make a
learned navigator of me.
I lived quietly. My face lost its tan and roughness. Month after
month I had to buy smaller collars. I tried especially to keep my
hands clean. By and by they lost their tarry wrinkles and calluses.
I studied from morning till night. To reduce something to a common
denominator is no joke. The whole Schultze family helped me and
shared in my worries.
Examination day came, with all the professors in full dress. My
handwriting was still clumsy. With my hard, big hands I used the
bulkiest penholder I could find. It was as thick as a cane, an
instrument designed for victims of apoplectic stroke who would have
to grasp it with both hands.
Early one morning, a good citizen of Lübeck went out to water his
garden and saw a navigation student lying among his tomatoes.
"What are you doing there?"
The wretch, not knowing what to answer, merely asked in turn:
"What are you watering?"
For two days I had been celebrating the fact that I had passed the
examination.
Again I was tempted to rush straightway to my parents. Professor
Schultze had investigated quietly on his own account and found that
my father and mother were alive and well and that my brother, like
myself, had turned his mind to the sea. He was an ensign in the
navy. Once more I denied myself, and remembered my vow not to go
home save as a naval officer.
I got a post as petty officer aboard the Hamburg-South American liner
_Petropolis_. I bought white kid gloves and white shoes, and can
still see myself buying my first pair of cuff links. As I promenaded
the deck of the _Petropolis_ in my new uniform, I felt myself a god,
only my cuffs kept bothering me and saluting seemed queer. I read
all the learned books I could find, but there was much I could not
understand.
After three quarters of a year aboard the _Petropolis_, I was
eligible to enter the navy as a one-year service volunteer, for naval
training and study. That was a method of training mercantile marine
officers for naval service in case of war, of creating a class of
reserve officers. After I had served my year as a volunteer and had
mastered my studies, I would be entitled to wear a lieutenant's
uniform. I would walk out a naval officer in the Imperial Service.
A comrade and I took the railroad from Hamburg to Kiel to be mustered
in for volunteer service. It was the first time I had ever been in
an expensive railroad compartment. Opposite us sat a gentleman with
a pointed beard whom we took to be a naval officer. That made us
behave in very dignified fashion.
"Luckner," said my comrade, "is it not a fine view?"
"It is, indeed," I replied.
The gentleman with the pointed beard looked at me several times.
The daily drill at slow step on the parade ground at Kiel gave me a
great deal of pain in the places where my legs had been broken
before. An orderly came looking for a volunteer private named
Luckner. I was required to go to the station. My officer asked me
whether I had a relative at the station. I said, "No," and wondered
whether it was a police station. Which one of my sins had been
discovered?
I went to a red building and waited in an anteroom. A corporal bade
me enter an inner office. Admiral Count Baudissin wanted to see me.
How was I to behave in the presence of such a high dignitary? I
supposed the principal thing was to stand at attention. The admiral
was seated. He had gold braid on his sleeves. He was the same
gentleman with the pointed beard who had looked at me on the train.
I stood there at attention, elbows and hands held tight against me.
"Tell me, which Luckner are you?"
"The son of Heinrich Luckner."
"What is your first name?"
"Felix."
"He is missing."
"I am that Felix, sir."
"How did you get here?"
"I have passed my examination as mate, which entitles me to volunteer
service, I hope to become a reserve officer through good behaviour."
"How do you expect to pay your way?"
"I have 3,400 marks."
"You have earned that much?"
"Yes, sir."
"Why did you not write to your parents?"
"I want to go home an officer in the Emperor's service. I did not
write because I did not want my parents to know I was a common
sailor. I don't want them to know until I return home an officer."
Then the admiral said:
"I am your uncle Fritz."
"Eh," I thought, "what a noble uncle!"
I had never heard of this relationship. I rolled my eyes right and
left, not knowing whether to address the admiral as Uncle then and
there.
"Your Excellency," I said, "I wish it could be arranged that my
parents do not learn of my being here until I have qualified as a
reserve officer."
"Very well," he answered, "but you must not expect any help from me."
Not being able to say "Uncle," I replied:
"No, sir."
"Do not in any sense think that you are under my protection."
"No, sir."
"By the way, Felix, you may come to my house twice a week. My
daughter will teach you a little, my lad. You speak a dreadful
German."
I had considered myself, after all my studies, a tolerably educated
man, but lapses in grammar have been my bane, more than storms at sea
or shell fire during the war.
In the admiral's family, as a side line to my grammatical studies, I
was required to write out a history of my adventures, which I did
with judicious omissions, such as service in the Salvation Army and
stealing a horse from a lighthouse-keeper. Such details would have
spoiled my career at the outset.
I soon felt at home in the navy. There was a tremendous amount of
studying to be done in mechanics, engineering, and the mathematics of
gunnery. I was beginning to get used to study, as a slave gets used
to the treadmill.
One day I tried to prevent a boat collision, and was too confident of
my strength, alas. I was forced against an iron support, which
pierced my abdomen and tore my intestines twice. That sent me to the
hospital for a long spell. I was convalescing. A visitor brought
some plums to a ward mate. I was starving. I begged some of the
plums from him, and ate them. The next day, when the surgeon changed
my bandage, he was dumbfounded to find the plums in the bandage. My
imprudent act had caused a breaking of the intestines where they had
been sewn. It was necessary to sew them again. I was threatened
with arrest when I got well again, and a guard was placed over my bed
to see that I ate no more plums.
Instead of arrest, however, and possible trouble about getting my
commission, the naval authorities were kind enough to credit me with
the time I passed in the hospital. In due time, I was mustered in as
a reserve naval lieutenant. I called on my Uncle Fritz once more,
and started out for home. I wore my uniform, a cocked hat,
epaulettes, and a sword sash.
In Halle, the quiet home on the "Old Promenade" had changed not at
all in those eight years. I climbed the steps to the door, quite a
figure in my brilliant uniform. To the maid, whom I did not know, I
handed my visiting card, which she took inside. I heard the well
remembered voice of the old gentleman questioning:
"Naval Lieutenant Felix Luckner? There is no such man of our name.
But show him in."
I entered and said:
"Good-morning, Father. I hope I have kept my word to wear the
Emperor's uniform with honour."
He could not find anything to say to me. He called for Mother in a
choking voice.
She came down the stairs, looked at me for a moment, and sat down on
a step in weak surprise. Then she began to cry, and came running to
me. The old gentleman by now was wiping his eyes too.
Where had I been? What had I done? There were so many questions
that I could not answer half. We sat there, and I told as much as I
could. Soon the old gentleman had gathered his wits. He began to
boast.
"You see, my dear wife. Did I not always tell you 'He is a
Luckner--he will amount to something--do not worry about him'?
Behold I was right. He is a Luckner."
Telegrams were sent to sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, and aunts.
There was a great family reunion, and I was petted like a child.
X
FROM PIG-STY CLEANER TO KAISER'S PROTÉGÉ
More studying and then more studying. It seemed as though I never
would get through. I served as a mate with the Hamburg-American Line
for two years, and prepared myself for the captain's examination.
More mathematics, more astronomy, more mechanics. I plugged and
plugged. Study is no good, but you've got to do it. Finally, I was
ready for the test. I went to a school for a little more
preparation, and succeeded in passing the examination with flying
colours. I was proud, but I was also glad that there would be no
more studying for me now. I was eligible to become a captain. What
further rank was there to make me study again? I served the
Hamburg-American Line until 1911.
Then more school and studies!
I often spent an afternoon with several comrades sailing on the lower
Elbe near Neumuehlen. One day we saw a small catboat and in it a man
who obviously did not know how to sail. He was, in fact, a merchant
of Cologne possessed of more courage than sense. Pretty soon a
jibbing boom knocked him overboard. He couldn't swim, either. He
sank out of sight. I swam and dove for him. I got hold of him and
pushed him up above me, so that he would reach the surface before I
did. When I came up he seized me, wound his arms and legs around me,
and dragged me down. I struggled free, and everything turned black.
I came to the surface, caught my breath, and dove again for him. I
reached him, but an eddying current dragged us both down and down.
Luckily, he was unconscious now, and I was able to grasp him and
fight my way with him to the surface. I swam with my burden to
shore. I was in reaching distance of the pier when I collapsed. Men
waiting there pulled the drowning man out. An old gentleman claims
he fished me out with his umbrella.
A week later, I was called before the authorities who awarded
life-saving medals. They asked me to produce witness of my
life-saving feat. That formality was necessary before they could
give me a medal. I didn't want to bother producing any witnesses,
The matter was dropped there.
I had the good fortune to be able to rescue three other people from
drowning, and then a fifth. That occurred on Christmas Eve, 1911. I
attended a celebration in Hamburg, and returned late to get aboard my
ship, the _Meteor_. I waited on the slip for the ferry. Next to me
stood a customs official. It was bitterly cold. In the flickering
light I saw a man in the water some distance out. He was struggling
faintly. I started to throw off my great-coat. The customs official
held me.
"Are you crazy? Into that icy water? Is it not enough for one man
to drown?"
"But surely I cannot let that man go down."
I slipped out of my overcoat, which he held, and jumped. By Joe,
when I was in there I had the sensation of somebody holding a red-hot
wire around my neck. After a hard swim, I reached my man. It was
lucky for him that it was so cold and that he was so drunk. He was
perfectly rigid now. If you lie still, you don't drown easily. It
was no trouble to swim in with him, except that it was so cold. The
customs man pulled us on to the pier. I could never have got up
alone.
"What a crazy fool," the customs man said. "If I had not been here
you would have jumped in just the same, and you would have drowned."
They took us to a saloon, where they put us between blankets and gave
us grog. I soon got my strength back, likewise my man, an English
sailor named Pearson. He soon had his second load of liquor.
After that exploit, the Hamburg newspapers made much of me,
particularly since I still refused to bother about producing the
witnesses necessary before I could get a life-saving medal. The
editors denounced this instance of red tape. The controversy came to
the notice of Prince Henry of Prussia. A little while later, when I
took part in the yearly manœuvres for reserve officers, I received
an order to appear before him, and he asked me whether I should like
to enter active service. That, I replied, was my greatest desire,
but I was afraid I was too old. He kindly bade me not to worry about
that, and on February 3, 1912, I received the official dispatch:
"Count Luckner is ordered to the navy for active service."
By Joe, now I would have to study. I would have to learn in a few
months what cadets ordinarily learned in three and a half years. The
Emperor had heard of me from Prince Henry and had interested himself
in my case. My tuition was paid for out of his private purse. If I
did not make good marks in my classes, what kind of a Luckner ...
well, by Joe. This was the climax of my whole unhappy career of
study.
After an infantry course came a torpedo course. A torpedo has a
thousand complexities for the student to master. There were four
kinds of torpedoes. One had a hundred and fifty screws. You had to
memorize the names of all the parts and familiarize yourself with the
apparatus so well that you could put it together without help.
"Luckner," I thought, "you will never learn all that. You are as
stupid as when you were in the third grade."
I was afraid and felt pretty bad. I did not do so well with my
studies.
One of my teachers was Lieutenant Commander Pochhammer, whose father
was a professor of Italian literature. His especial subject was
Dante. He gave lectures to the naval students on the _Divine
Comedy_. Strange, I hated study, but I liked these lectures on Dante
and I liked to study Dante. I did not understand much of it, but I
found great pleasure in it. It was because of Beatrice, the Divine
Maiden. I thought she must be the same as my fairy princess.
Whenever Professor Pochhammer spoke of her in his lectures, or
whenever I read about her in the pages of Dante, I was reminded of
that fairy princess I knew must live on the green island the _Niobe_
had sailed by, the fairy princess I had dreamed of aboard the
_Cæsarea_, when old Smutje had whistled "My Heart Is Like a Beehive"
and I had taken up the refrain. The fairy princess, of whom I had
had visions many another time, had been a blessing to me before, and
surely, in a singular way, she was a blessing to me now.
My interest in Dante and Beatrice, as propounded by Professor
Pochhammer, made an excellent impression, not only on the professor
himself, but also on his son Lieutenant Commander Pochhammer and my
other teachers. For Dante's and Beatrice's sake they winked at some
of my most glaring deficiencies. They built up my confidence. I
passed the necessary examination. The Emperor ordered that my
commission be antedated, so that I might have seniority rights of a
longer service than I had actually rendered.
I was assigned to duty aboard the _Preussen_, and there, during my
leisure time, built models of sailing ships.
One night, in a Hamburg café, I sat talking with a friend, a
shipowner.
"When I crossed the harbour to-day," I said, "and saw the sailing
ships. I remembered how I used to sit on a spar while the sun was
setting and listen to a fellow playing a squealer. You know what a
squealer is? An accordion. I wish I could be a sailor back on a
ship again."
"Don't be foolish," my friend replied. "I have never yet heard of a
certified engineer wanting to go back to the anvil."
"But," I insisted, "I want to be a sailor again if only for a few
days, and you must help me."
I made him give me a muster certificate for one of his ships, the
_Hannah_, which was lying in port and taking on a crew. I went to a
seaman's supply store and bought a pair of overalls, a shirt, a blue
and white blouse such as sailors wear, a cap, a blanket, and a
mattress. The blanket and mattress I had sent to the _Hannah_. The
clothing I took with me. I took a cab, and bade the driver go to the
docks. Inside, I took off my naval uniform and packed it in the bag
I had with me, and donned my sailor's togs. At my destination, I got
out. The driver, a decent old fellow, opened his eyes wide.
"Are you the naval officer who got in?"
"Yes."
"Say, what are you going to do? You have changed your clothes so
they won't recognize you when they find you. You are going to drown
yourself."
Rather baffled, I tried to assure him that I had no intention of
drowning myself.
"No, don't tell me that. I know what you are going to do. Please
tell me your troubles. You should not throw away your young life
like that."
I had to give him a long and convincing story about some confidential
mission for the government that I was engaged in, the truth of which
statement I had to swear to solemnly. Then he agreed to leave me and
take my satchel back to the hotel. As he started his horse, he
turned around once more imploringly.
"You are surely not going to do it?"
I rubbed my hands in the dirt, rehearsed my old-time rolling sailor's
gait, and tried to forget my fine manners. I practised an especial
bit to see if I could still light my pipe and spit like a jack-tar.
Hands in pockets, I sauntered on to the ship.
"Ahoy there," I called to the mate, and handed him my muster
certificate.
After a few questions, he bade me the usual welcome.
"All right, Phelax Luedige, come on and get to work."
"No. In the morning I start."
You can tell an old-time competent seaman by his argumentative
independence. The mate gave me a bad look, but was convinced that I
would not go to work until morning.
I strolled back to the galley. The cook, a broad fellow with a red
beard, was standing there. I watched a little fellow washing dishes,
and thought:
"He is just as clumsy as you were once, Phelax."
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[Illustration: The Sea Devil overtakes the _Charles Gounod_.
The end of the _Charles Gounod_.]
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[Illustration: The fake armament of the raider frightens a Canadian
barque into submission.
Along came the _Antonin_ on her way from Chile to France with a
load of saltpeter. Her skipper was a savage old salt.]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
In the fo'c'sle two fellows were sitting on a box, smoking their
pipes. They were shirking work, just as I had shirked it. I
wondered whether they would find anything strange in me, and walked
up to them. One of them named Hein said:
"What's your name?"
"Phelax."
"I guess you have been ashore a long time."
"Why?"
"Your hair is cut so neat. Are you married?"
"No."
"Well, I am. My old woman was married three times before, but never
got the right mate. Now she says she has got the right one. How
happy she is. She is a laundress, and when we are in port here she
brings me my warm supper every night."
Now comes the mate.
"Get out of here and get to work. Phelax can unpack his things and
get to work."
"No, I told you not until to-morrow morning."
The captain came on board and asked the mate what kind of help he had
got.
"One who is mighty independent."
"Send him to me."
The cabin boy comes.
"Phelax, go over to the captain."
To the captain I say:
"Good-day, sir!"
"Good-day. How long have you been at sea?"
"Fifteen years."
"Do you know how to mend sails?"
"I know how very well."
"We have no time to mend sails at anchor. But you will have to do a
lot of sewing at sea."
"I have done it often."
The captain sizes me up as a fellow who knows his business and good
at the sail-mending which he is anxious to have done. He agrees that
I do not have to go to work until to-morrow morning.
Once again I eat bean soup, leaning over the table with a large
enamel pot, my "mug." After dinner I lie in my bunk, and ask:
"Is there no squealer?"
"Hein has one."
"Play, Hein, and I'll treat to a case of beer."
A motor boat selling beer is alongside. I buy a case, and we drink.
The squealer begins to wheeze, while the evening sun shines on the
water.
At half-past six Hein's laundress arrived. She was passably
good-looking except that she was all pitted with smallpox and her
hair stuck out like a flying jib. She certainly loved her Hein. She
brought him a pot of supper, some of which he divided among the rest
of us.
I noticed that Hein had some paint and a brush such as artists use.
Was he an artist? On the girl's arm he painted a big heart with an
arrow. In the middle of the heart he signed his initials. He had to
stop at times, because she could not bear the burn of the turpentine
in the paint.
"She is a fine girl," said Hein. "She stands for everything. She is
as true as gold."
She did not exactly look it.
Night came on, the stars appeared, and Hein's squealer gave forth
music. That was the life, a sailor's life.
On the following day I worked. I could not get along with the mate.
He thought me too independent, and tattled on me to the captain, who
restrained himself and had patience with me, since he did not want to
lose so experienced a sailor. At night Hein's laundress came again,
and the squealer sounded long and merrily.
On the third day my friend the shipowner came to the boat to get me.
I managed to say to him without being observed.
"Don't give me away. Have the captain meet us for dinner at the
hotel to-night."
The shipowner invited the captain, who accepted with alacrity.
That night at the Atlantic Hotel I dressed myself in full uniform,
and joined the shipowner and the captain in the dining room. In such
a glittering place, the captain was bashful.
"Captain Erdmann of the _Hannah_--Lieutenant Commander Count von
Luckner."
Erdmann eyed me curiously and then looked down for a long time,
turning his wineglass around in his hand. Evidently he thought he
saw a certain resemblance. In a little while, I stepped out.
"Is he a count?" the captain asked the shipowner.
"Yes."
"And just think, I almost made the break of telling him he looked
like a sailor aboard our ship. They might be twins, though. You
never saw such a resemblance."
"It would be dreadful indeed to say anything like that," responded
the other.
When I returned, we drank a little more and then I said to the
captain:
"Don't you recognize me?"
He squirmed.
"Well--yes--but----"
"You mean you don't recognize me?"
"But, Count, have I really met you before?"
"Of course, don't you remember me?"
He wrestled with a temptation to speak out, but fought it down.
"Yes, Count, you do look familiar to me. But where have we met?"
He sat there, as the saying goes, with both feet in the trough.
"Don't you know me from the ship?"
"Man, man, are you Phelax?"
"Captain, Captain," warned the shipowner.
"Oh, excuse me, excuse me," stammered the captain.
"Well, I am Phelax," I laughed. "I went aboard your ship to see how
it felt to be a sailor again."
"Well, well," stuttered the captain, "and now it is my turn to treat."
I told him my story, how I had been born a count, had become a sailor
and then an officer of sailing ships, and now was an officer of the
Imperial Service. He had tears in his eye.
"And my mate--think of it--my mate said you were too independent."
The old fellow became so enthusiastic that he insisted that we take a
trip through Sankt Pauli with him. We went, and had a high old time.
The captain got quite drunk, and he revealed a secret regret that
lingered in his mind. What a sail-mender he had missed!
"Who will believe it on board," he muttered, "when I tell them that
that my fine sail-mender turned out to be a count?"
XI
IN THE CAMEROONS, AND THE FAIRY OF FUERTEVENTURA
I have told of how the Emperor transferred me to the _Panther_, which
was then assigned to our West African station, the Cameroons. If my
being aboard the _Panther_ inspired, in itself, vivid recollections
of my past life, my service as an officer of the ship presently
brought me to another and far more delightful memory of my
sailing-ship days. This was an incident that not merely returned to
me in imagination, but one that brought to me that rarest gift of
fortune, a dream come true.
The events that preceded the climax of which I speak were such as to
provide the ever-striking qualities of contrast. The African jungle,
the pursuit of savage beasts, black warriors, an extraordinary black
king, fantastic war dances and all the unearthly sights and sounds
that are Africa, and then...
The commander of the _Panther_ was reluctant to have his officers go
big-game hunting in the interior and, as he said, risk their lives
uselessly. We were forbidden to take rifles on shore with us. But a
comrade and I smuggled our rifles out, and took a big canoe upstream.
With a dozen Negroes at the paddles, we raced against the sluggish
current of the Mungo River, between giant, overhanging walls of
trees. After eighteen hours, we reached Mundame. Our only
worth-while trophy so far was a crocodile--and crocodiles are hard to
shoot, too, as they dive with surprising speed. We had also shot a
few vultures, sea eagles, and monkeys. We could not quite bring
ourselves to eat the flesh of the monkeys, which the natives consider
a great delicacy. When wounded, a monkey cries and screams just like
a child, but when skinned it loses its half-human appearance and
looks like a big squirrel, or a woodchuck.
At Mundame the black people greeted us with eager cries:
"Massa, massa, plenty elephant."
We proceeded on an elephant hunt in which my friend Bryer and I must
have cut rather poor figures as sportsmen! Our chase of the great
beasts did not turn out to be quite what we had expected.
The elephants had broken into a Negro's plantation, and were not far
away. With each a Negro as a guide, we went into the thicket of
banana plants.
"Massa," my guide whispered eagerly, "massa, look, elephant."
I looked but could see no elephant. My guide kept repeating in tones
of excitement that gradually turned into despair.
"Elephant, massa, look, elephant!"
I could have looked for a year and would not have seen the fraction
of gray wall revealed between the leaves. Finally, the elephant
began to move, and I saw at least the great disturbance among the
foliage. I walked toward it, hoping to find some definite point of
the beast's anatomy to shoot at. The elephant moved away at about
the same speed, and I could get no closer to it. I came upon one of
those huge ant hills you find in Africa, and clambered upon it. I
now had a much better view.
"Ostriches!" I exclaimed.
There were many elephants plucking up at the bananas. Their trunks
reaching high and curving and wavering gave me the impression of
giant ostriches. One of the great beasts came out of the thicket
right in front of the ant hill on which I was standing. Several
others followed him. I remembered hastily that I must aim at the
head a little lower than the eyes. I point the gun, pull the
trigger, and then crash! The giant turned around in a circle giving
a tremendous bellow. With a roar and a great sound of rushing, the
beast plunged forward, right past the hill on which I was standing.
The rest of the herd followed and passed very near me. I nearly fell
off the ant hill, and made the deplorable blunder of losing sight of
the elephant I had shot at. Fortunately, the natives, who were to
get their share of the meat, did not allow themselves to become so
readily confused. They followed the wounded animal, and found it
with its tusks rammed deeply in the soil. It took several more shots
in the head to kill the brute.
Nobody travelling in the Cameroons in those days ever passed up a
chance to visit Banum Joja, the most intelligent chieftain in all
Southwest Africa. He was an advocate of what modern improvements he
could introduce into his kingdom, and had invented an especial
alphabet with which to reduce the native language to writing. He was
a great admirer of the Germans, and willed his beautifully carved
antique throne to a German museum.
We went the long distance by train from the coast to the interior
territories of Banum Joja. The palaver drums having advised him of
our arrival, the chief met us with his staff. A long procession of
cattle, goats, and other animals were paraded past us as a sign of
his wealth. The old boy himself majestically arrived in his royal
conveyance, a hammock carried by two slaves, slung on a long pole.
We were considerably surprised at the figure he made. He wore a
glittering cuirassier's helmet, a tremendous battle sword, and a
tight-fitting red hussar's tunic on the breast of which was pinned
the German Order of the Crown. His black, shiny legs, however, were
bare. His pride as a sovereign increased visibly as he observed our
surprise at his appearance.
In his palace, a large thatched hall surrounded by a high wall of
loam, Joja showed us vaingloriously the many smoke-blackened heads of
his ancestors' enemies and a large elephant's tusk decorated with the
lower jaws of slain foes. Pottery is highly developed in those
parts, for everywhere we saw vessels of clay. The only ornament in
the palace, besides the grisly trophies of war and massacre, was the
top of a European butter dish. It represented a setting hen. We
drank palm wine, which was excellent.
In the courtyard of the palace, Joja ascended a stairway in a great
hollow tree. Placed in the branches was the war drum which only the
King may beat. Majestically he clambered out to it, and under the
monarch's hand a muffled beat resounded. The four portals in the
wall of the corral opened and files of black warriors rushed in,
three thousand of them, a magnificent picture. They danced the war
dance, a methodical evolution in which they rushed against each other
with a tremendous clashing of shields. Then followed a
spear-throwing contest with extraordinary displays of skill. The
women entered, and there was another ballet, the women dancing around
the men and then the men dancing around the women. Amid general
rejoicings, the King treated his subjects to palm wine.
Joja arranged a buffalo hunt for us. A place is chosen where the
grass is brown and dry and fallen, else it would be so high that a
horse and rider might disappear in it. On this open hunting field a
dozen warriors take their place with big shields of buffalo hide. By
means of fire and beaters, the buffalo herd is driven toward them.
When they come to the open place, the male stares from the thicket
with his dull brown eyes. He seems to study the black warriors
waiting there. Now he sends his cows to safety through the thicket
surrounding the open place. Then he attacks. The warriors' spears
pierce him in the front. He comes thundering upon them, but with a
fabulous speed they have thrown themselves on the ground, covering
themselves completely with their staunch shields. The enraged beast
passes over them without harming them. He is powerless now. The
spears protruding from his front prop themselves against the ground,
making running difficult. He cannot attack without driving the barbs
farther into his flesh. He turns around. In a flash the Negroes are
up, and the beast receives spears from the back. He can neither
advance nor retreat now. He raves, wants to attack, the sweat
streams down him. He throws himself on the ground. Some of the
spears break off. But now the Negroes are on top of him, thrusting
their spears into him. He receives the final blow and is still.
Religion was a much discussed question in Joja's kingdom. The German
Evangelical missionary comes with Protestant theology. He asks
Joja's people to picture an invisible God. This they are unable to
do. The Catholic missionaries come, visiting the territories
previously covered by their Evangelical colleagues. They talk little
theology, but have a gorgeous display. A miraculous image is mounted
and decorated with mirrors. The Virgin Mary with the Child Jesus
sits in the centre. To the right are the Three Wise Men from the
East. These wise men are particularly interesting to Joja's
subjects, because one of them is a black king. The priest, in
gorgeous vestments, kneels before the beautiful display. The natives
think:
"This is a real God. He is much richer than the Evangelical
missionaries' God."
Joja was a skeptic toward the Christian religion. He asked me
whether our God was black or white, but thought He could hardly be
white, since He had made man in his own image and had made the black
people too. He asked me when Jesus had come to Earth. I told him.
Then he asked when America was discovered. I told him that. He
asked me why Jesus did not go there too and preach his gospel.
While I was in the Cameroons, a German squadron circling the globe
put in at Duala and anchored near shore. It consisted of the
_Kaiser_, the _King Albert_, and the _Strassburg_. The black
chieftains from the interior were entertained on the magnificent
ships. They particularly admired the cannon in the turrets as they
slowly swung around and fired. They asked whether the guns would
shoot over the Cameroon mountains. When this fact was affirmed,
their respect was great. The champagne with which they were served
increased their respect.
The English instigated the Haussa, a mercantile tribe that roams the
entire country plying trade, to spread the story that the ships were
English ships which the English had merely loaned to the Germans.
Having to take the _Panther_ back to Germany for overhauling, we
steamed north. Our first stop was to be for provisions at
Fuerteventura, one of the islands of the Canaries, a vacationing and
health resort. I was on watch. Straight ahead, a speck of land
appeared on the horizon, Fuerteventura, the island for which we were
bound.
It was a green island. Presently, through my glass, I could
distinguish waving palms and white houses, white houses with green
shutters and red roofs. A vague feeling made my heart jump.
"Luckner," I thought, "it is the same island, the island you saw when
you were a cabin boy aboard the _Niobe_, the island of the fairy
princess."
It was. There could be no doubt of it. So clear was memory
impressed by a great feeling that I could recognize individual houses
I had gazed upon seventeen years before while I had leaned on the
rail dreaming a happy dream.
"Luckner," I said, "you are Phelax once again. They call you 'pig,'
and you clean the pigs and the pharmacy. There is the island. Open
your eyes wide. Is it not lovely and beautiful?"
It was as beautiful as when I had seen it from aboard the _Niobe_.
The houses still looked pretty and clean. There were terraces with
gardens and white paths lined with palms.
"Phelax," I thought, "it is fit to be the home of the fairy princess.
It _is_ the home of the fairy princess. She must be there, with her
delicate blue eyes and golden hair, she whom you have thought about
all these years."
We put into port. I attended to my duties. The other officers asked
me why I was so preoccupied. I answered their questions silently to
myself.
"Phelax, now you must go and inspect your island. Perhaps you may
find your fairy princess."
I went ashore by myself, and sauntered over the island all day. It
was small, with gentle hills and an abundance of vegetation. Flowers
were everywhere. It was truly an island of flowers. I went on
through perfumed valleys and over breezy hills, lost in reverie, lost
in my former life. A kind of hypnotism was upon me.
"Phelax," I thought, "of course you do not see the fairy princess.
She is hidden beyond the flowers there. She will stay hidden. Is
she to come to Phelax, a common sailor? Or even if you were a naval
officer, would she come? She is too lovely for any mortal being."
So deep was I in fantasy that these thoughts inspired me to a sad
regret and resignation. When evening came, I returned to the ship
happy and yet downhearted.
That night we entertained on board members of the Royal Spanish Club
and their guests. Some came for dinner, some afterward. It was a
jolly meal. Then we gave an after-dinner entertainment, and I was
called upon to entertain and amuse our guests. During my days as a
sailor I was often in demand to amuse the company. The tricks I had
learned among the Indian fakirs in Australia I had retained and
cultivated. To this day I am somewhat skilful at various kinds of
sleight of hand. I put on Oriental robes and turban. My face,
freshly tanned by the sun of the Cameroons, needed no darkening. I
had learned from the fakirs the solemn mystical demeanour and slow
impressive movements that they cultivated. I must say that as I
appeared before the guests in the salon of the _Panther_ I cut quite
an Oriental, wonderworking figure.
I had performed several tricks and had come to the one in which I
snapped a ring on to a cane held at both ends by an assistant, when
two newcomers arrived and entered through a door not far from me.
"Luckner," I thought, "are you going crazy? Phelax, there is she,
your fairy princess."
She was on the arm of a stately old gentleman. She had the rosy
lips, the short, pretty nose, the childlike eyes, and the rich blonde
hair that had haunted my imagination. She came close to me and
watched me with an expression of interest and something of awe. As I
learned later, she thought I was truly an Indian fakir.
"Phelax," I said to myself, "she has come to you, your fairy
princess. She knows you are on her island, and she has come."
I tried to go on with my trick, but my hands shook and were clumsy.
I could not control them. Nor could I keep my eyes away from the
blonde girl who stood there.
"I'm sorry," I said to my assistant, one of our officers. "The other
ones went all right, but I can't seem to do this one. We've had
enough anyway."
"Ladies and gentlemen," he announced jocularly, "the great fakir has
reconsidered and thinks it would be wrong to disclose this last
marvellous trick. He feels that it is his duty to retain it and
exhibit it for the first time before his sovereign, the King of
England."
Everybody laughed. I went out and changed into my naval uniform as
quickly as I could. When I returned, I asked one of the other
officers to present me to the blonde young lady. I have never felt
so bashful as when I made my bow before her.
She was much amused at having taken me for a genuine Indian fakir,
and talked merrily. Her laughter was very sweet. She told me her
name was Irma. Her father owned great plantations on the island of
Sumatra. She was with him at Fuerteventura on a sojourn for his
health.
The remainder of my stay on the island was perfect happiness. Irma's
father entertained us officers at his bungalow. Irma and I were
together all of the time. We took long walks among the white houses
and through the green glades the sight of which had so gladdened poor
Phelax long years before. When the _Panther_ steamed north again, I
was happy with the assurance that Irma had given me that she and her
father were sailing for home in a short time and that I would see her
there.
I did see her there, and we became engaged to be married. The
_Panther_ was to sail for the Cameroons again on July 17th. We were
ready to start when we received an unexpected telegram from the
Admiralty--"Do not start." On August 1st, Germany declared war on
Russia, and the world was ablaze. I told Irma that our marriage must
be put off. It would be wrong to have her become the wife of a man
who might so soon leave her a widow. She wanted an immediate
marriage, but I was determined.
XII
FAKE NORWEGIANS FOR A PIRATE CRUISE
It was in a gay café in Hamburg. In 1916, war times were growing
hard in Germany, but still the cafés were astir with life and gaiety.
A naval officer on shore leave could soon find surroundings that
would enable him to forget the harsh life on dreadnaught and cruiser.
My friend Dalstroem and I, over glasses of Swedish punch, chatted for
an hour and then another hour. But our confab had nothing to do
either with battle cruisers going down or with destroyers lifted out
of the sea by exploding torpedoes, or the other sights I had beheld
off Skagerrak. We talked of sailing ships, by Joe, and of the years
I had served before the mast.
An orderly wedged his way through the crowd and handed me a message.
It was from the Admiralty, ordering me to report at Imperial
headquarters on the morrow. Such a summons to a mere lieutenant
commander was decidedly unusual, and of course I was itching with
curiosity. I never was any good at waiting.
The following morning found me in Berlin, entering the naval holy of
holies, standing expectantly at attention before an old German sea
lord with a face as stern as the cliffs at Heligoland. The orders I
had come to hear were barked at me quick and short.
"You are to take command of a vessel," said the admiral. "We want
you to run the blockade and raid enemy commerce. Since we have no
coaling stations, a sailing ship will be the best. Do you think you
can do it?"
"Allow me," I felt like saying, "allow me to throw my arms around
your neck, my dear fellow."
"Yes, sir! I'd like nothing better."
Good health and high spirits had given me boundless confidence. I
was the sort of fellow who believes he can do almost anything--at any
rate, anything with a sailing ship. The admiral replied that the
mission was mine. And it turned out that I had been picked for this
venture because I happened to be the only officer in the German Navy
who had served "in sail."
But what if we should slip through? What then? What could one lone
windjammer do against the naval might of John Bull and his allies?
What chance had a romantic clipper ship in this era of giant ocean
liners, of hush-hush armoured cruisers, of speedy destroyers, and
against the combined strength of Jellicoe and Beatty's
super-dreadnaughts? For that matter, what chance had a poetic
sailing ship against an ordinary tramp steamer?
Well, it may sound mad, but the sea lanes of commerce can even be
disrupted by a lone sailing ship in wartime. But whether the idea
was mad or not, I was itching for action and ready for anything.
"What," the admiral asked, "should you consider of the greatest
importance for the venture?"
"Luck," I replied.
"All right; then take the _Pass of Balmaha_. She has already carried
British prisoners for us. She has been lucky for us once, she may be
lucky for us again."
The Admiralty officials had picked the _Pass of Balmaha_ because she
was a staunch ship, an American clipper, built in Glasgow.[1] They
had also picked her because she had suddenly arrived in a German port
with an unexpected present of some British prisoners for us. We
sailors believe in good and bad omens, and we are right. Some ships
are lucky and some unlucky. If something has happened to indicate a
certain ship is lucky for you, take that ship. You want Lady Luck on
your side when you put to sea.
[1] See Note A, Appendix.
Now, about the past record of this Yankee clipper that was to be
converted into a German raider. The _Pass of Balmaha_ had sailed
from New York with a cargo of cotton for Archangel. Her commander
was a Captain Scott, a well-known American shipmaster, a big-hearted,
bushy-bearded, New England skipper with a very red face. Off the
Norwegian coast, a British cruiser hailed her. Uncle Sam was then a
neutral, and the blockade was getting tighter every month. The
British were becoming suspicious of everybody, including neutrals and
themselves. The overcautious commander of this cruiser, although he
had no grounds for suspicion, ordered the _Pass of Balmaha_ to turn
back to the search port of Kirkwall in the Orkneys.
"Bah!" said Captain Scott, "here I am with a cargo for your allies,
the Rooshians, and you patrol fellows order me back to Kirkwall.
What do yuh mean by such nonsense? The wind is agin me, it'll take
me three weeks to reach Scapa Flow and the Orkneys, and I'll be
several months late in delivering my cargo to the Rooshians. Are you
chaps trying to win a war or lose one?"
"Never mind," replied John Bull; "you do as you are told."
Leaving an officer and prize crew of six marines on board, with her
funnels belching columns of black smoke, the British patrol cruiser
continued on her North Sea beat. As soon as the _Pass of Balmaha_
had turned her nose toward Kirkwall and Scapa Flow, the British prize
officer ordered the American flag pulled down and the British flag
run up.
"Go to blazes," bristled the irate Captain Scott, and he refused to
obey.
"Right ho," said the Britisher, and he told his men to haul down the
Stars and Stripes and hoist the Union Jack.
"I wish the Germans would come," raged the Yankee skipper. And the
very next morning his wish was granted! A U-boat popped up to the
surface about a half mile away. Captain Scott waggled his beard in
the Englishman's face.
"Serves you right! With the Stars and Stripes up there, they
wouldn't bother us. Now they'll take us all to Germany. So far as
you chaps are concerned, the war is over right now. You will get
cocky, will you?"
The Britisher was alarmed. He saw visions of himself locked in a
Prussian prison for "the duration." So he climbed down from his high
horse in a hurry and meekly placed himself in Captain Scott's hands,
begging the Yankee still to try and save the day.
"I ought to let you go as prisoners, by Joe, but I don't want to lose
my ship," said Scott. "So go below with your men and hide in the
hold while I put my flag back where it belongs. Maybe they haven't
seen yours. Soon the submarine was alongside and one of her officers
climbed aboard. The Germans had seen the Union Jack, all right, but
they hadn't seen it hauled down. Now they found themselves on a ship
flying the American flag, and they were puzzled.
"What's this?" the submarine officer demanded of Scott. "First we
see a British flag, and now it's an American."
"You must be mistaken," replied the skipper, "this here ain't no
Britisher."
The officer was bewildered and suspicious, so ordered the _Pass of
Balmaha_ to head for Hamburg. Leaving only a German ensign aboard,
he announced that his submarine would follow close behind. Of
course, this was only a threat, for the U-boat soon vanished beneath
the waves.
Now the ensign grew worried. Something told him that everything was
not right on the _Pass of Balmaha_. Had he known there were seven
Britishers on board, he would have been still more worried!
"Captain," said he, "I am going to stay at your side all day and
sleep with you at night. I've a hand grenade here in my pocket. At
night I am going to fix it so that if anybody opens the door of our
cabin it will explode."
Naturally Captain Scott lost no time in whispering to his mate:
"Fasten down the hatches and don't let those Britishers come up. If
they do, our goose is cooked. Don't say anything to them, or there
will be trouble. This German smells a rat."
So the prize crew in the hold was kept there. Two days later,
outside the entrance to the harbour at Cuxhaven, another party of
Germans came aboard, so Captain Scott said to the U-boat ensign:
"You wanted to know what was wrong here? All right, now I'll show
you." Then he opened the hatches and yelled for the Britishers to
come up. The tall officer of the Royal Navy, one eye blinking and
the other be-monocled, put his head up first.
"I say, where are we now?"
"You're in Germany. If you had left my flag alone, everything would
have been all right. But you are prisoners now."
So you see how the _Pass of Balmaha_ turned out to be unlucky for
Englishmen and lucky for Germans. That was just the ship we wanted,
by Joe.
The American flag that the Englishman pulled down was still there
when I took her over. So I kept it as a souvenir. We lost the ship
in the South Seas, but not the flag. It served as mascot on two
other ships that I lost. But on my present world cruise I hope to
visit San Francisco and return it to the original owner and tell him
what a fine raider his clipper made.
Our hope was to run the blockade disguised as a neutral--a thing
entirely fair according to the laws of war. Although on land a
soldier must wear service uniform, at sea you can fly a neutral flag
and wear ordinary seaman's clothes. But you must hoist your true
colours before going into action with the enemy.
We altered that British-built Yankee clipper from stem to stern, with
concealed places for our guns, rifles, grenades, bombs, and other
armament, with special quarters for prisoners, two ultra-modern
500-horse-power motors to fall back on in case of calm or when in a
big hurry, a tank holding 480 tons of fuel oil, another tank
containing 480 tons of sweet water, and provisions for a cruise of
two years.
In addition to 400 bunks for prospective "guests," I had special de
luxe quarters made for "visiting" captains and mates. These were
spacious cabins to accommodate two or three. We also designed a
separate dining saloon for them, with an assortment of books and
magazines in French and English, and a gramophone with late English
and French records. War or no war, I still considered all sailors my
pals, and had my own ideas as to how our prisoners should be treated.
A sailor is a sailor, no matter what his nationality, and if I took
any prisoners I wanted them to feel as though they were my guests.
Then, of course, we had to arrange quarters for my crew of fighting
marines as well as for the regular seamen required on a clipper of
this size. Moreover, we had to do all this so it would not be
noticeable to uninvited visitors.
When the work was done, below deck, the _Pass of Balmaha_ was an
auxiliary cruiser, armed to the teeth. Above deck she was merely a
poetic old sailing ship loaded with a prosaic cargo of lumber.
Timber made the ideal cargo for our purposes, because a ship carrying
lumber loads her deck as well as her hold. The piles of lumber even
cover your hatches, so no one can go below until you unload. Hence
no search crew would be likely to inspect us carefully at sea. They
would either order us to Kirkwall, or let us go.
Norway exports lumber and Australia imports it. So we decided to
pose as a Norwegian clipper bound for Melbourne. Having served on
various Norwegian ships, I spoke Norse, and I knew I would have no
difficulty finding men for my crew who could speak it also. But
first I had secret doors and hatches cut in the floor of the closets
in the officers' cabins, and another under the stove in the galley.
From keel to top deck we converted this American three-master into a
mystery ship of trick panels and trick doors.
But what would happen if we were ordered into Kirkwall to have our
deckload of lumber shifted and our hold searched, you ask? Ah! we
were ready for that.
Of course, if an enemy patrol vessel picked us up, a special prize
crew of half a dozen men would be put aboard us to make sure we
headed for the right port. I would have sixty-four men of my own to
handle the small prize crew.
Dinner time would come. I would say to the Britishers: "Gentlemen,
may you dine well."
"Cookie," I would call, "serve up the best we've got."
On their way to my private captain's quarters, they would leave their
coats and weapons in the vestibule, within sight and just out of
reach.
Right in the middle of the meal, I would signal to my fighting men
hidden on the lower deck. Seizing their rifles they would jump to
their appointed places. At another signal, the crew above deck would
clamber up the iron masts, open small secret doors, reach down into
the hollow chambers where their arms and uniforms were hidden, and a
moment later German jack-tars would appear where humble Norwegian
sailors had been a moment before. We would not attempt to recapture
our own ship dressed in civilian togs.
Although the floor of my saloon where the prize crew would be dining
looked like any other floor, it was in reality an elevator! All I
had to do was press a secret button hidden behind the barometer in
the chart room. Presto! down would drop floor, prize crew and all.
Before a man jack could jump for a weapon they would find themselves
dining on the next deck below. With the difference that they now
would be gazing down the barrels of twenty German rifles.
Then I would step forward, throw open my greatcoat, and present
myself as the skipper of a wind jammer suddenly metamorphosed into
the commander of an auxiliary cruiser.
I had carefully arranged all this because I knew full well that
British naval men will put up a stiff fight even with all odds
against them. Most naval men will. Of course, it would be easy to
overpower a prize crew of only six or seven men, but I wanted to
avoid spilling any blood. It is better sport to capture men than to
take their lives. The Allies were calling us Huns, and I for one
wanted to show the world how wrong they were.
And now, by Joe, suppose a British cruiser seized us and then we
seized the British prize crew. Then supposing another cruiser should
pick us up! We might have to do a bit of fighting, maybe take to the
boats with our prisoners, and then sink our own ship. So we prepared
for this by placing bombs where they could be touched off at a
moment's notice. We had no intention of letting our raider fall into
enemy hands.
I felt that it was so important to keep all of our plans secret that
I even fooled the workmen who were altering the ship. Had they known
what we were up to, the rumour might have gotten out. There were
spies everywhere. You must admire the British. They had a great
espionage system, and they paid their spies well. We Germans were
stingy. Bah! That was one reason we bungled.
So I told everyone, including the foremen, that the _Pass of Balmaha_
was being transformed into an up-to-date training ship, to be used in
training mechanics' apprentices who later on were to run motors on
submarines and zeppelins. That alibi was to explain our two motors.
The war had shown that German cabin boys were deficient in knowledge
of nautical rigging. So I also announced that one purpose of this
sailing ship was to give them a chance to learn a little about
handling sails. As to the accommodations in the hold for prisoners,
and the bunks for our big crew, I explained that these were to be for
apprentices and cabin boys. I even put up signs marking off one part
of the ship "for 150 cabin boys," another "for 80 Apprentices," and
so on.
It would have looked suspicious for a naval officer to be directing
work of this kind with such infinite pains, so at the ship yards I
posed as Herr von Eckmann, Inspector for the Naval Ministry.
An old retired captain of the Ship Inspection Service happened to be
stopping in the same hotel. His love for his old profession caused
him to take a most embarrassing interest in my work. One day, he met
a bona-fide ship inspector and asked him whether he knew me.
"Von Eckmann? Let's see, I know everybody in the service. There is
no Von Eckmann on the roster."
"Then," blurted out the old captain, "he must be a spy. I always
said he had a typically English face. I'll watch him."
Through mistake, two letters came for me without the usual cover
address. Both of them gave my full name and rank. I argued with the
head waiter, trying to get him to give me the letters for delivery to
"my friend, Count Luckner." The old captain happened to be snooping
near by, although I didn't know it. By now, anything I did was
suspicious. He already had me hung and quartered as his country's
arch enemy.
"What did that fellow want?" he inquired of the head waiter.
"He asked me to give him the letters for Lieutenant Commander Count
von Luckner."
"Ha!"
I suspected nothing. That evening I took the train for Bremen. A
detective entered my compartment and demanded my papers. I gave them
to him.
"Count von Luckner," he exclaimed, astonished and embarrassed, "I
must have made a mistake. I am looking for a spy from Geestemunde."
I grew worried. Could it be that enemy secret agents were watching
the work on my auxiliary cruiser?
"Where was the spy reported?"
"He lives at Beermann's Hotel."
That was my hotel. The spy was watching me. I told him that I would
take upon myself the responsibility of saying that there were the
most urgent reasons why this spy must be caught, and that he must
wire his principals that the utmost vigilance must be used.
"We already have the railroad covered at both ends. But we will
increase our precautions," he replied. "The spy will surely be
caught."
In Bremen at Hillman's Hotel I was again stopped by a detective who
demanded my papers. Again my papers confounded and bewildered him.
"The description of the spy fits you exactly," he said.
Once more I urged that the headquarters of the secret police be
commanded to catch the secret agent at any cost.
At the Trocadero, I sat with a bottle of wine in front of me. A
provost officer with two men in uniform came up to me.
"Come with us. You are under arrest."
I flew into a rage at these repetitions of stupidity, as I thought
them to be.
"I am a naval officer."
"You are a spy. Come with us!"
The usual spy mania spread throughout the restaurant. Blows were
threatened, chairs were brandished, and there were shouts of "Kill
the spy, kill him!" on all sides. If the officers hadn't fought the
crowd off, I would have been badly beaten.
At headquarters I was shown a description and even a picture of
myself. So there was no doubt but what I was their man.
"Under what name does this spy travel?" I demanded.
"Under the name of Marine Inspector von Eckmann.
"Why, I am he."
"But you just said you were Count von Luckner."
I was compelled, with great injunctions of secrecy, to take them into
my confidence, and had them telephone the Admiralty for confirmation.
The prying old captain at Geestemunde soon took himself to other
parts--by request!
As I explained, my plan was to slip through the British blockade as a
neutral and if possible disguised as some other ship that actually
existed. There happened to be a Norwegian vessel that was almost a
dead ringer for the _Pass of Balmaha_. She was scheduled to sail
from Copenhagen. I decided that we would take her name, and sail the
day before she sailed, so that if the British caught us and
wirelessed to Copenhagen to confirm our story they would receive word
that such a craft had left port at the time we claimed. This other
ship was named the _Maleta_. For some time she had been discharging
grain from the Argentine. From Denmark she was to proceed to
Christiania and there pick up a cargo. Why not a cargo of lumber for
Melbourne?
I went to Copenhagen, donned old clothes, and got a job as a dock
walloper on the pier where the real _Maleta_ was moored. That
enabled me to study her. There was one thing that promised to be
difficult to counterfeit. That was the log book. This precious
volume contained the life history of the _Maleta_, when she left the
Argentine, what kind of cargo she carried, what course she steered,
the wind, the weather, observations of sun and stars, etc., etc.
That log book must be in the captain's cabin and I must have it. But
a watchman was stationed aft, so how could it be done?
I discovered that the captain and both mates were still in Norway
with their families. So it would be some days before the loss of the
book would be noticed--if I got it.
So one night, in the uniform of a customs inspector, I stole aboard
the _Maleta_. The watchman, as usual, was sitting near the captain's
cabin. The ship was moored to the pier with ropes fore and aft.
Stealthily I tiptoed to the bow and cut the ropes, not quite through
but almost. A stiff wind was blowing. The ropes cracked and broke.
The ship swung around. The watchman ran forward shouting, and at the
same moment I ran aft. Fumbling around the captain's cabin I at
first failed to locate the log. Finally, I discovered it under the
skipper's mattress. Shoving it beneath my belt, I slipped out.
On board now, and also on the pier, half a dozen men were shouting
and throwing ropes to haul her back so she wouldn't side-swipe a
near-by ship. I joined in the shouting, pretended to help them for a
minute, then clambered on to the dock and hurried off in the dark.
We now put on the final touches that were to turn the _Pass of
Balmaha_ into the _Maleta_. We painted her the same colour as the
_Maleta_, arranged her deck the same, and decorated the cabins with
the same ornaments. In my captain's cabin, I hung pictures of the
King and Queen of Norway and also of their jovial relative, King
Edward VII of England. The barometer, thermometer, and chronometer,
and all the other instruments were of Norwegian make. I had a
Norwegian library and a Norwegian phonograph and records. We had
enough provisions from Norwegian firms to last us through the
blockade. It would hardly do to have any Bismarck herring,
sauerkraut, and pretzels in sight if the British boarded us, would it?
The names of the tailors sewn inside my suits and my officers' suits
were replaced with labels from Norwegian tailors. On my
underclothing we embroidered the name of the captain of the
_Maleta_--Knudsen.
I had learned in Copenhagen that a donkey engine was being installed
on the _Maleta_. Very well, we got a donkey engine of the same make
from Copenhagen and installed it on our ship. The log book of the
_Maleta_ was solemnly put in place, and the first entry was made,
"To-day put in a new donkey engine."
We got up our cargo papers in regular form, signed and sealed by both
the Norwegian port authorities and British consul. We also had a
letter signed by His Majesty's consul at Copenhagen stating that the
_Maleta_ was carrying lumber for the use of the Government of the
Commonwealth of Australia. The letter requested all British ships to
help us if any emergency arose. To prove that this document was
genuine, it was even stamped with the British Imperial Seal (made in
Germany!).
I also had a letter which a British officer had supposedly written to
my shipowner and which my ship-owner had forwarded to me, warning us
against German search officers, but advising us to place our trust in
the British!
A sailor with the loneliness of the sea upon him nearly always takes
with him on his voyages photographs of his people. Now the crews on
British warships know sailor ways, so I inquired all about the
procedure from captains of neutral ships who had had their ships
searched. They told me that the British always inspected the
fo'c'sle to see that everything looked right there. I immediately
got together a lot of photographs to pass as those of Norwegian
sailors' parents, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts,
sweethearts, wives and mothers-in-law. What did it matter whether
the sweethearts were good-looking or not? Sailors' sweethearts are
not always prize beauties. We sent a man to Norway for the pictures
in order to have the names of Norwegian photographers stamped on them.
The British are smart people, by Joe, and they know how to search a
ship. They attach special importance to sailors' letters. The
sailor eagerly looks forward to the letter he will receive at the
next port. He never throws the letters away either, but always keeps
a stack of them in his sea chest. Sometimes you will see him reading
a letter that his mother sent him eight years before. So we had to
get up a whole set of letters for our "Norwegian" sailors, each set
totally different from the other.
Of course, the stolen log of the _Maleta_ gave us a lot of useful
information about her crew, and our fake letters were made to tally
with this information. Women in the Admiralty and Foreign offices
who knew Norwegian wrote them for us. We got old Norwegian stamps
and Norwegian postmarks and postmarks of various ports the letters
were supposed to have been sent to. Then we aged the letters in
chemicals, and tore and smudged some of them.
I picked as my officers men who like myself had spent long years
before the mast, who knew Norwegian, and were of the right spirit.
First Officer Kling had been a member of the Filchner Expedition, in
which he had distinguished himself. The officer whom I selected to
go aboard captured ships was a former comrade of mine, a fellow of
six feet four, whom I met by chance on a dock. In response to my
question whether he wanted to accompany me, he asked:
"Is it one of those trips that is likely to send you to heaven?"
"Yes."
"Then I'm with you. My name is Preiss, and you are after prizes. So
I'll bring you luck."
My artillery and navigation officer, Lieutenant Kircheiss, was a
wizard navigator. Engineer Krauss was our motor expert. The
boatswain, the carpenter, and the cook, the three mainstays of a
voyage in a sailing vessel, I picked with like care. Of the men who
were to go with me I only needed twenty-seven with a knowledge of
Norwegian. There were just twenty-seven aboard the real _Maleta_.
In selecting my men, I interviewed each candidate personally but gave
him no hint of why I wanted him. I tried to read these men's souls
in order to discover in them the qualities of courage and endurance
that would be needed.
Without giving them any clue concerning the adventure on which they
were soon to engage, I sent them home on furlough to prevent them
from meeting one another and talking over the questions I had put to
them. Not until the hour of departure did I send for them.
Now we needed a name for our raider. We needed one that she could
take for her official name as an auxiliary cruiser after running the
blockade. I wanted to call her the _Albatross_ out of gratitude to
the albatross that saved me from drowning when I was a lad. But I
discovered that there was already a vessel with that name, a
mine-layer. Then I wanted to call the ship the _Sea Devil_, the name
by which I personally was afterward to be called. My officers
favoured some name that would suggest the white wings of our
sailship. So we compromised on _Seeadler_, or Sea Eagle.
On a pitch-dark November night, the _Seeadler_, with a small
emergency crew, raises anchor and sails out of the mouth of the Weser
into the North Sea. There, some distance offshore, we drop anchor.
At a remote place along the docks at Wilhelmshaven, men appear one by
one. By the light of a dimly burning lantern I gather my crew. None
of them has any inkling of what is afoot. I hear them ask:
"Where are we off to? What is it?"
We piled them into a little steamer, and off. Soon they saw an
imposing ship riding through the night.
"Hello, what sort of craft is this, a sailship?"
Aboard everything is ready, and everything is Norwegian. Their bunks
are all prepared. Photographs are on the walls. Norwegian
landscapes, photographs of Norwegian girls, Norwegian flags hang
draped. A fully equipped Norwegian ship awaiting the arrival of its
crew.
"Do you speak Norwegian, Karl?"
"Yes. Do you?"
"Yes."
"Strange business this!"
Some of the men do not speak Norwegian. The ones that do, have their
bunks above deck. The ones that don't, have their bunks below.
Germany below decks. Norway above. Strange!
We were away from all communication with land now. There was no
longer need for secrecy.
"Boys, the British say not even a mouse can get through their
blockade. But we will show them, by Joe, and under full pressure of
sail. Then, once we reach the high seas, we will sink their ships,
by Joe. Can we do it?"
"Sure, Count, we can do it! By Joe, you bet we can do it!" Not a
man quailed, and I was happy to be in command of such a crew.
Next morning a scow of lumber lay alongside, and we stacked timber to
a height of six feet over all the deck, and fastened it down with
wire and chains.
Every man had his rôle. Every man must now prove his mettle as an
actor. Officers and sailors were given the names of officers and
sailors aboard the _Maleta_. They had to get used to their new
names. Fritz Meyer was now Ole Johnsen, Miller became Bjornsen, Hans
Lehman became Lars Carlsen, and they knew me only as Captain Knudsen.
We had long practice drills until the new names slid off our tongues
without getting stuck.
Each man also had to learn a lot about his native town that he never
knew before! I had already assembled as much information as I could
about the towns listed in the stolen log book, and the rest we
invented. Each man had to learn the names of the main streets of his
town, the principal hotels, taverns, and drug stores, as well as the
names of the mayor and other officials. Much of this sort of
material had already been woven into the letters we had prepared for
the sailors. Each man had to familiarize himself with the set of
photographs that had been allotted to him, and the names of them all,
the contents of his letters, and fix in his mind a whole new past
life, according to the life of the sailor of the real _Maleta_ whose
rôle he was to play.
One of the mechanics' helpers, Schmidt by name, I had taken for a
principal rôle in our strategy. He was slender, beardless, and of
delicate appearance, and could pass well enough in woman's clothes.
Norwegian skippers often take their wives with them on their voyages.
The captain's wife aboard the false _Maleta_ would seem natural and
tend to disarm suspicion, and, besides, British naval officers are
always courteous and considerate toward women. In the presence of
the captain's wife, a prize officer who might board us would be more
obliging toward us all. We had a blonde wig for Schmidt and an
outfit of women's clothes. We took great pains in schooling him to
play the part of the captain's wife correctly. One difficulty was
his big feet. Not even a Norwegian skipper's wife had such feet.
There was, unfortunately, no way to make them smaller, so we arranged
that the captain's wife should be slightly ill and remain seated
during any possible search and have a rug thrown over her feet to
keep them warm. The other difficulty was Schmidt's voice. It was
too deep, and he knew no Norwegian. Well, the captain's wife can't
talk because she has an awful toothache. A wad of cotton stuffed
into Schmidt's cheek, and there was the swelling. He did know enough
English to say "all right." We trained him to say a high-pitched "all
right" something like a woman with a toothache. Except for that
phrase, he was to keep his mouth shut. We had a large photograph
made of Schmidt in his costume, signed it "thy loving Josephine," and
hung it in my cabin. Now the Britishers could compare the photograph
of the captain's wife with the lady in person. So from now on poor
Schmidt's name was "Josefeena" as the Norwegians pronounce it.
We were ready to sail when, by Joe, what comes but a telegram from
the Kaiser's aide. I am to report immediately direct to His Majesty.
I guessed what was up. I had gone into the navy from the mercantile
marine instead of through the usual cadet route. I had been a common
ordinary sailor, and this had aroused a lot of antagonism in naval
circles. There had been jealousy about my getting an independent
command--highest of all naval honours. So attempts were being made
to have my assignment annulled.
And now they had gone to the Emperor! Maybe I would lose this fine
sailship of mine. Already it had given me a new lease on life, just
by getting back into the old life, the life that had been so
difficult to survive and so delightful to recall. Maybe I would have
to go back to the navy, to the modern war of hissing steel, and
deafening guns of superdreadnaughts. I had an affection for them
too, but it was the enthusiasm of the mind. Here on the sailship was
my heart. Well, I would fight them.
"Luckner," I thought, "you always have to fight, or you sink. That's
life."
The Emperor had been very kind to the man who had risen from a common
sailor to a naval officer. He had paid for my naval training out of
his own private purse, and had taken a personal interest in my
promotions. Many a time on board ship he had commanded me to tell
stories of my adventures. I could talk to him. I could talk to him
more boldly than other officers dared. I knew that he understood me.
Even to appear in the Imperial presence was a trying ordeal for most
officers. Many took refuge in rigid "attention." Well, I had never
quite got used to high class manners at sea, and the ramrod
"attention" left me more embarrassed than otherwise. Even in the
Emperor's presence, I kept the same free, brusque manner of an
old-time seaman that was natural to me.
The Kaiser spoke bluntly.
"Well, Luckner, at the Admiralty they now tell me it is madness to
attempt the blockade with a sailing ship. What do you think?"
"Well, Your Majesty, if our Admiralty says it's impossible and
ridiculous, then I'm sure it can be done," I replied. "For the
British Admiralty will think it impossible also. They won't be on
the lookout for anything so absurd as a raider disguised as a
harmless old sailing ship."
The Emperor looked at me with a frown, and then his face relaxed into
a smile.
"You are right, Luckner. Go ahead! And may the hand of the Almighty
be at your helm."
I knew now that there would be no more official interference. The
true _Maleta_ was now due to sail in a day, so we made ready to pull
up anchor. Then a wireless came from the Admiralty:
Wait till the _Deutschland_ makes port.
Our giant merchant submarine, the _Deutschland_, was on her way home
from her famous transatlantic cruise to America. In an attempt to
cut her off, the British had set a double watch. So the _Seeadler_
would have to slip past twice as many cruisers and destroyers as
otherwise. I still hoped that, if only detained a day or so, we
might yet be able to slip across the North Sea ahead of the _Maleta_.
But we lay there for three and a half weeks, and the sad news came
that the real _Maleta_ had sailed and passed through the blockade.
If we now attempted to use her name and a search party boarded us,
the jig would be up.
So we hurriedly examined Lloyd's Register in the hope of finding
another Norwegian ship that might correspond to us. We picked out
one called the _Carmoe_. We had no idea where she was, but hoped she
might be in some distant port unbeknown to the wary British. It was
a long chance, but we could think of nothing better. Now we had to
change our ship from the _Maleta_ to the Carmoe. Painting out one
name and substituting another was easy enough, but changing all our
ship's papers was far more difficult. But with much use of chemical
eraser we finally accomplished it, and we had papers that would pass
if the visibility was not too bright during the search. Then, when
we were all set again, we picked up a copy of a Norwegian commercial
paper and found that the real Carmoe had just been seized by the
British and taken to Kirkwall for examination.
"By Joe, and they said this _Pass of Balmaha_ was a lucky ship! We
must have a Jonah on board!"
Now, if you haven't any luck, you must go and get some! All you have
to do is know how to do that, and you will be a great success at sea,
or anywhere!
So away with Lloyd's Register! Let's take life's register and name
our sea eagle after the girl of my heart. Surely she will bring us
luck. So, out with the paint and on with another new name--the name
of my sweetheart, _Irma_.
In that name was concentrated most of the beauty that I had found in
life. It symbolized strange moments of beauty that had crossed my
path during the most trying days I had so far known. It seemed to be
a lovely silken thread that had run through the years since that
first voyage, when as a miserable cabin boy I sailed to Australia on
that Russian tramp.
Of course, there was no such name as _Irma_ listed with Lloyd's, and
all any British officer would have to do would be to consult his
Register and the jig would be up. But somehow I had a premonition
that the name _Irma_ would bring us through.
When we applied eraser and ink to our shipping papers and wrote in
the name of _Irma_--disaster. Two erasures were too much. The ink
blotted. If we should be stupid enough to take the British for
fools, then we ourselves would be the real fools. Where was our luck
now? Fate seemed to be against us, but I had no intention of giving
up. Calling the carpenter I said:
"Come on, Chips, I am going to make you admiral of the day. Get the
ax and smash all the bull's-eyes, windows, portholes, and everything."
Poor Chips! He thought I had gone off my head, but he obeyed. The
smashing began.
"Bo's'n," I called, "half a dozen men with buckets of sea water!
Throw it around, drench everything."
And now the water flew in the cabins, in the drawers of chests, in
the officers' bunks, all over my Norwegian library, water everywhere.
I took my shipping papers and put each page between sheets of wet
blotting paper so that not only the name of _Irma_ and the other
entries we had changed were blotted; but every line. I even soused
the log book in a bucket of water.
Then I called the carpenter again.
"Now repair everything you have smashed, Chips. Nail everything."
He hammered planks over the smashed portholes and bull's-eyes, and
put the smashed chairs together as well as he could.
Now, if the Britisher came aboard, he would say:
"By Joe, Captain, you must have had a hard blow to get knocked about
like this."
And I would growl, "Yes, by Joe, everything is drenched, even my
papers."
Two days later a southwest wind sprang up. The moment was at hand.
To go raiding in a sailing ship and that sailing ship with the name
of _Irma_ painted on her bows--ah, it seemed more like a dream than
like setting out on a real adventure. It seemed as though all the
events of my life had been designed to converge to this one glorious
point. Our one hundred-and-seventy-foot masts creaked. Our nine
thousand square feet of sail bellowed before the wind. We sailed
north under a full spread.
XIII
RUNNING THE BRITISH BLOCKADE IN A HURRICANE
Sails bellied and motor humming, we parted the waves and left a path
of foam in our wake. On deck we devoted all our spare time to more
dress rehearsals. My boys took a particular relish in putting me
through the "third degree," as you call it. One of them played the
part of a British search officer.
"Now, Captain, what is the name of your ship?" he bellowed.
"She is the _Irma_, and as good a full-rigged ship as ever crossed
the North Sea."
"Have you any brothers and sisters, Captain?"
"Oh, yes, a lot of them. There are Olga, Ingaborg, and Oscar who
live in Hatfjelddalen. Dagmar and Christian are seamen like myself.
Lars runs a salmon cannery in British Columbia, Gustaf and Tor are
lumbermen somewhere in America. And then we have another brother,
Eric, whom we've lost track of."
While trying to make the narrow channel of Norderaue we hit a sand
bank. The ship creaked and the masts trembled, but somehow we pushed
across--further proof that the Scots of Glasgow still know how to
turn out a sturdy clipper ship.
At ten o'clock we passed the Horns reef and continued along the
Danish coast. At eight bells we hoped to reach the Skagerrak, and
then turn her west to give the enemy the impression that we had come
from a Scandinavian port. Shortly before daybreak, the wind shifted
abruptly from southwest to due north. Against such a stiff breeze,
we could make little headway. On our right were the low rocky fjords
and reefs along the coast of Ringkjobing and Thisted. To the left
were British mine fields. We didn't dare run into a Danish harbour
for fear of being interned. So we must either turn back or take a
chance on slipping through the mine fields. It is always possible to
sail through a mine field--provided you sail under a lucky star with
a guardian angel at the helm.
"Hard aport! We'll risk it, boys." With a full spread of sail, we
turned straight west.
Now, a tacking ship heels over. The more sail you carry the more she
lays over, and the less water she draws. That was our chance. The
mines were nearly always planted several feet under water, just out
of sight. Perhaps we could slide right over them. Lifeboats were
lowered, and every man adjusted his lifebelt. Before the mast, the
sailors; aft, the captain. But we all kept to the foreship. We were
lower aft than fore, and if a mine went off it probably would be aft.
But our luck held and we got through in safety.
Our course lay around the northern end of Scotland, along the usual
shipping route from Norway to the Atlantic. To be sure, we could
have hugged the Norwegian coast, but the blockade was even tighter
there. That was the natural course for one of our raiding armoured
cruisers to take, so, if she were headed off by Beatty, she could
turn quickly into a neutral Norwegian port and accept internment
rather than capture. We didn't even keep to the middle of the North
Sea, but with the idea that our one path of safety lay right under
John Bull's nose, followed the coast of England and Scotland.
There were three lines of the blockade. The first lay across the
North Sea from the Scottish to the Danish coast. We must run this
one first.
The wind grew stronger. The barometer fell. Anyone on the North Sea
on the twenty-third of December, 1916, will remember the hurricane
that came. It was one of the worst storms of years. The wind was
cyclonic in force, and lashed the shallow North Sea into a cauldron.
Running before it we carried every foot of sail we dared, every
stitch except the royals and gallantsails and smaller staysails. We
could take chances. We had no shipowner to answer to. Every mile
through the storm now meant a mile through the blockade. The ship
lay over so far that all our leeboard was under water. Every plank
quivered from the strain on the rigging. The rigging sang like a
violin. Heavy waves swept over us. It looked at times as if Niagara
Falls were descending upon us. Two men were needed to hold the helm,
and had to be lashed there. Some of our stays broke and some of our
canvas ripped. But we made fifteen knots, and that hurricane was a
godsend to us, for we knew no British cruiser could search us or even
keep track of us in such a heavy gale.
We sped right through the first line of the blockade without sighting
a ship and as though the whole North Sea were ours. Instead of going
up, the barometer continued to fall. Louder roared the storm, and
more and more mountainous became the waves. We passed the second
line of the blockade. Still not a ship in sight.
"At twelve o'clock, boys, we will know whether we are going to get
through or not. At this speed, we will pass through the third and
most important line. Half the Grand Fleet is said to guard this
third stretch from the Shetlands to Bergen."
Midnight grew near, and still that wild heaven-sent hurricane kept
up. We ran before it like a frightened bird, fearing every minute
that our sails and masts would go overboard. We lay on the yards and
scanned the horizon with our glasses. Half-past eleven! We were in
the midst of the blockade line. Where were the cruisers and
destroyers? All we could hear was the whistling of the wind and the
rushing of the water beneath our bows. All we could see, the
blackness of the night. Twelve o'clock and still no sign of the
enemy. Even our binnacle and compass lights were out, for any ray of
light might betray us. By one o'clock we knew we had passed the last
line.
The British, warned by the falling barometer, had taken their guard
ships to shelter in the lee of the islands. There was nothing else
for them to do in such a storm. Even if they saw a ship, it would be
hopeless to try to board her. And if Beatty's fleet had kept to sea,
there would have been grave danger of their running one another down.
We couldn't help recalling the old saying that it is indeed an ill
wind that blows no one any good.
I thought now that, under cover of darkness and with the aid of the
storm, we might shorten our voyage to the Atlantic by cutting through
the channel between the Orkney Islands and the Shetlands. I was
about to order the helm changed, when the hurricane shifted abruptly
from southwest to southeast. The change came so suddenly that the
twisting winds nearly ripped our masts out by the roots. Somehow,
that seemed to be a warning to us, a warning not to go through that
channel.
A sailor believes in signs. And something told me to take a more
northerly course, nearer the Arctic Circle and the Faroes. Later, we
learned that the German submarine _Bremen_ had tried to pass through
that channel and was never seen again. The channel had recently been
mined. But for that sudden shift of the storm, we too would have
shared the fate of the _Bremen_. With sails still full spread, we
continued north, nearer and nearer the Polar zone. It grew bitterly
cold. The waves dashed over us, and the water froze where it fell.
Our timber cargo was so coated with ice that not a stick of lumber
could be seen. The deck was like a skating rink, and the ship's bow
one huge cake of ice. Everything froze, including the sails. The
ropes became coated and would no longer run through the blocks. We
tried to thaw them with oxygen flame, but they froze again the moment
the flame was removed. Unable to change the sails, we were helpless.
To turn on the motor would only make matters worse, because that
would carry us toward the Pole all the faster. We knew that unless
the Hand of God intervened within a few days we would be hopelessly
caught in the Polar pack and probably never heard of again. So long
as the wind blew from the south, we were sure to continue on north.
We were in the region of eternal night now, except for a few minutes
each day. The sun rose at eleven and set at half-past eleven. If we
continued this crazy, frozen voyage to the North Pole we would be
smashed in the ice, by Joe.
Christmas Eve came, and we prayed God to send us the one Christmas
present, the only one that could save us--a north wind to blow us
south. My men in the hold, my fighting crew, huddled together to
keep from freezing. They were prisoners, for the waves and spray had
swept over everything until our secret hatches were frozen as solid
as concrete. My false Norsemen on deck slid about on the icy planks,
and every man suffered from frostbite. No one tried to turn in to
sleep. The tension on our nerves was too great. Only one thing was
warm and steaming--the kettle of grog. You landsmen have no idea of
what grog means to a sailor under such conditions. No wonder seamen
call a glass of schnapps "an ice-breaker!"
At heart every sailor is a child, and he has a child's love of
Christmas. And how he enjoys a Christmas present! He turns it
around in his hands, and says:
"By Joe, it's good to have Christmas."
And surely the present that came to us was the finest that any sailor
ever had.
As suddenly as it had come, the south wind died down and a breeze
sprang up in the north. Our frozen ship creaked, laid over, and came
around with the new wind, and our hearts sang for joy. Each day we
seemed to thaw out a bit more. Soon we passed to the east of Iceland
and reëntered the Atlantic. Axes and picks were busy chipping away
the ice. It was hard work, but who cared now that we were getting
warm again? We were through the blockade and out of the Arctic--and
now to test the "Freedom of the Seas" and give the Allies a touch of
high life.
"By Joe," I said to my boys, "and they call it a blockade!"
You would have thought the fellow in the lookout was answering me.
"Steamer ahoy," he sang out.
What? A steamer in these parts?
I climbed aloft with my glasses. Sure enough, there was a British
armoured cruiser steaming toward us at full speed. She had the
signal flying:
"Stand by or we fire!"
Such bad luck after such good luck! This second Christmas present
was not so amusing. But now for our test.
"Hustle you non-Norwegian chaps. Get below deck! Throw water
everywhere to explain why our papers are blurred and wet. The storm
we just passed through will make it seem the more natural. Schmidt,
get into your finery. Remember, from now on you are the shy
'Josefeena' (Josephine), the Captain's wife. If they put a prize
crew aboard, we will capture the prize crew. If they suspect we are
an auxiliary cruiser, bombs fore, midship, and aft, and we blow up
the ship!"
Now for a big quid of tobacco in my mouth. I have never had the
habit of chewing tobacco, but a Norwegian skipper would not be true
to type without his quid. Besides, a chew of tobacco gives you time
to think. If somebody asks you an embarrassing question, you can
roll your quid around in your mouth, pucker up your lips slowly, and
spit deliberately and elegantly. I had practised rolling the quid
and spitting until I thought myself a past master at the art.
But that smell, by Joe! The unexpected always happens to mar the
best-laid plans--and help the worst. We had been running our motor
full open. Because of the cargo of wood that sealed the deck, there
had not been enough ventilation to get rid of the fumes. The
characteristic reek of crude oil burning in a Diesel engine seeped up
through the secret entrances placed in my cabin, and everything
smelled of it. What will the search officer think when he smells a
Diesel engine aboard a sailing ship? No use to burn punk or sprinkle
eau de cologne.
"Stuff a rug in the chimney of the kerosene stove," I yelled, "and
turn up the wicks of the oil lamps as high as you can."
Stench against stench, kerosene smoke against the fumes of the motor.
In five minutes my cabin smelled to high heaven of kerosene smoke.
The Britisher had hove to now, and we saw that she was the _Avenger_,
an armed merchant cruiser of some 15,000 tons.
"How's that?" I thought. "Why are the guns pointing? We are a
peaceable Norwegian sailing ship. Why the guns?"
She had her big guns trained on us, and her officers were on the
bridge looking us over with their glasses.
"Can we have been betrayed?" I asked myself. "Of what use is the
best mask, of what use are the best men, if a traitor has done his
dirty work?"
The thought of treachery always makes the fighting man tremble. I
went into my cabin, and like the drowning man who grasps at a straw,
I remembered how before leaving port a friend gave me a parcel,
saying:
"My boy, take this package with you. But never open it unless you
are in a tight fix. Then it may save you."
Well, we were in a tight fix all right, so I opened the package. I
took off one wrapper after another. Ah! It was a bottle of rare old
Napoleon brandy, almost priceless, made more than a hundred years ago.
"What was good for Napoleon ought to be good for me. He fought
against the British, too. Maybe this is just what we need."
I took sixteen or eighteen swallows, and with each gulp felt my cares
getting lighter and lighter. Never did I thank God so much that I am
not a teetotaller.
The cruiser had put out a small boat. Two officers and sixteen
sailors were rowing toward us. We must receive them cordially, I
thought. Going to the gramophone I put on, "It's a Long Way to
Tipperary." That will make the officers feel good. I also told the
cook to stand in the door of the galley with a bottle of whisky in
his hand. I know the British! I know what they like, and I guessed
that while the officer proceeded with his job, his jack-tars would go
poking about to see if they might find anything suspicious. I also
suspected that they would go to the galley and sing out:
"'I there, Cookie, got any grog?"
Always give a British sailor a drink, or a German sailor, or an
American sailor, or any kind of a sailor, for that matter.
The boat was alongside. I began to swear at my men. It was hard for
them to forget their naval habits, and, with an officer coming
aboard, they were standing as stiffly as if at attention.
"Take the line, by Joe. Give a hand, by Joe. Don't stand there like
wooden men, by Joe."
Then, too, it would sound natural to hear a Norwegian skipper
swearing at his men.
The search officer clambered aboard.
"Merry Christmas, Captain."
"Merry Christmas, Mister Officer," I replied, using the kind of
broken English I thought a Norwegian skipper would use. I talk
English with an accent, luckily about the same brand you would hear
in a Scandinavian port. "But," I continued, "if you want to see what
kind of Christmas we have had come along down to my cabin."
"A bit of a nasty blow this past week, eh, what!" agreed the officer,
"and from the look of your deck you've had more than your share of
it. We went in behind the islands and waited for her to blow over."
"Yes, luckily for us," I thought to myself.
"I must see your papers, Captain." He got right down to business.
Just then the gramophone struck up "Tipperary," and he began to
whistle the tune while his men made for the galley. I ushered the
two officers to the cabin. The one who stuck his head in first
retreated holding his nose.
"What a hell of a smell!"
"Excuse me, Mister Officer, but my stove is out of order. I could
not know you gentlemen were giving me a visit to-day."
"Oh, never mind, Captain, that's all right, that's all right."
I had purposely hung my underwear up to dry so it would be in their
way and so that, in stooping to get under it, they would see the name
"Knudsen" embroidered on it. As the chief search officer crossed the
cabin he suddenly saw my charming wife Josephine, with her blonde
wig, her swollen jaw, and the rug hiding her big feet.
"Oh, excuse me."
"That is my wife, Mister Officer. She has been having a bad go with
the toothache."
He was chivalrous, just as most Englishmen are. He might have been
talking to a court lady, instead of that rascal Schmidt.
"Sorry, madam, to intrude like this, but we must do our duty."
"All right!" said my lovely but somewhat distorted better half in a
high falsetto voice out of one corner of her mouth.
"By Joe, Captain, you haven't much cabin left, have you? You have
been through some rough weather!"
"I wouldn't mind the rest, Mister Officer, but look at my papers.
They are soaked, too."
"I can understand that, after the weather you've had."
"Yes, Mister Officer, it's all right for you to see them in this
condition, because you saw the storm yourself, but later, if I meet
some of your comrades who didn't hit the blow that we had, they may
not take my word for it. That's what's worrying me."
"Oh, don't worry, Captain, I'll give you a memorandum explaining the
condition of your papers. You are lucky to have saved your ship."
That memorandum was just what I wanted. There was no telling when we
might be searched again.
I had the papers scattered all over the cabin to dry, and each time I
handed one to him I spat a stream of tobacco juice on the cabin
floor. He examined the papers with a practised eye and made entries
in his notebook. Each page in his book was for a ship, and I could
see that thirty or forty pages had been used already. Yes, he was an
experienced officer.
When he came to the last document, the one signed with the false
signature of the British Consul at Copenhagen and sealed with a false
British Imperial seal, and read the formal statement that the
_Irma's_ cargo of lumber was destined for the use of the British
government in Australia, he turned to me suddenly.
"These papers are all right, Captain."
In the excitement of the moment I suddenly swallowed my chew of
tobacco. I was afraid this might give our whole sham away. So I
coughed and coughed as though with a bad cold, trying to cover up
what had happened. What would a British search officer think if a
Norwegian skipper got seasick? My mate Leudemann was standing next
to me holding the log book. I had told him to have it ready in case
the Britisher should want to examine it. Leudemann saw there was
something wrong with me, and was quick-witted enough to divert the
search officer's attention, by handing him the book.
"Oh, yes, the log," exclaimed the officer, and opened the wet pages.
The quid of tobacco seemed to be moving up and down my gullet. I
struggled with myself, and to show an outward calm I said to
Leudemann in Norwegian:
"I wish I'd had that officer's camel's hair cape and hood. It would
have been fine to keep a fellow warm while up there north of the
Circle."
"For rain and spray, too." The Englishman spoke up in Norwegian to
show that he knew the language.
You must admire how careful those English are. The officer examined
every page of the log.
"How is this, Captain?" he exclaimed. "You were laid up three weeks
and a half?"
There was a discrepancy in dates which represented our wait after the
Admiralty had ordered us not to sail because of the return of the
submarine, _Deutschland_, and the consequent increased vigilance of
the blockade. I had not thought of it. Here was the one detail that
we had neglected to provide for in our elaborately detailed
preparations. Even if I had been in the best of health, I should not
have known what to reply. With that tobacco quid running around
inside of my body I could only pray to God for help.
Again Leudemann saved the situation. He was a little fellow and
simple-hearted, but a great character. When bad times came,
Leudemann was at his best.
"We didn't lie there for pleasure," he said in his dry way as he
looked up at the big Englishman. "We had orders from our owner not
to sail until we got word."
"How so?"
"Haven't you been warned then about German cruisers?"
"What's that?"
"Haven't you heard about the _Moewe_ and the auxiliary cruiser,
_Seeadler_?"
The search officer turned to me.
"What about this that your mate is saying, Captain?"
My stomach felt much better, now that Leudemann had spoken. So I
thought I might as well give the Englishman a good dose.
"There were rumours at home in Norway that two cruisers and sixteen
German submarines had put out of port."
The search officer's comrade, who had been looking around the cabin,
came over to us when he heard all this.
"I think we had better be going," he spoke up suddenly.
"Yes," replied the other, and they went on deck.
They made no attempt at questioning the sailors or investigating the
sailors' belongings.
"Your papers are all right, Captain," said the search officer, "but
you will have to wait here for an hour until you get a signal to
proceed."
"All right, Mister Officer."
One of my boys, who was of a pessimistic turn of mind, heard this.
As he walked away from my cabin he said out loud to himself:
"Everything is lost."
Down below were the members of my other crew, waiting in the dark.
They were right beneath the floor of the deck, straining their ears
to catch any word that might give them an idea how things were going
on deck. They heard the exclamation, "Everything is lost," and took
it for the official word that we were discovered and for the command
to do what was to be done in that case. They lit the fuses of the
three bombs that were to blow up the ship, and waited for the hatches
to be opened to let them on deck to the boats. The fuses would burn
for fifteen minutes.
The British were in their boat now, trying to push off. But you
can't hold a sailing ship in one place like a steamer. She keeps
drifting. And the suction of the _Seeadler_ as she drifted held
their boat so it couldn't get away. What was still worse, it kept
slipping aft, and if it got under our stern, they would have been
sure to see our propeller. A sailship with a propeller? Yes,
sometimes, but we would have been done for, as there was nothing to
that effect in our papers. Seizing a rope, I tossed it overboard
toward them.
"Take the rope, Mister Officer, take the rope," I shouted as though
clumsily trying to help them.
That made them look up, so that the rope might not fall on their
heads. I heaved the rope just as they were sliding around our stern
and away. The officers thanked me, and one of them, angry with his
men for not being able to push the boat off, exclaimed:
"I have only fools on my boat."
"Yes, maybe you have," I thought, "and maybe you are the worst-fooled
one of all!"
My stomach was quite normal now. I was so happy that I even felt as
though I could digest that quid of tobacco. The men on deck felt
like cheering and singing, but they had orders to go on about their
jobs as though nothing unusual had been going on, until the cruiser
was far and away. They just grinned, but so broad were the grins
that I thought they would split their faces.
My first thought was to bring the happy news to the boys in the
darkness down below. I went to one of the secret hatches, which they
had fastened from within.
"Open," I shouted.
There were vague sounds below.
"Open up," I called again.
Then I heard a muffled voice say:
"Open the flood valves."
"What's that?" I yelled. "What's the matter? Open the hatch!"
The hatch opened. I saw troubled faces. I could hear water rushing
into the ship.
"By Joe," I shouted, "are you trying to sink my boat?"
I could hear men running below to all parts of the ship. I climbed
down roaring. One of the men spoke up.
"They are cutting the fuses and closing the flood valves."
"Fuses, flood valves, by Joe. How's that happen, by Joe?"
Then one of the men said: "But someone called down that all was lost!
Afterward you called 'open' and we thought you meant open the flood
valves."
The fuses had been burning for eight minutes out of their fifteen,
and hundreds of gallons of water were pouring into the ship.
By Joe, I looked for the fellow who said: "All is lost." He came
forward at once and confessed.
"I wasn't calling to the men below. I merely said it to myself."
"Why do you say 'all is lost,' by Joe, just when everything is fine?"
"Well, Captain, when the Englishman said that we would have to wait
for an hour, I thought to myself that the game was up. It means that
he is keeping us waiting while he sends a wireless to Copenhagen
asking about the _Irma_, when there is no _Irma_."
"By Joe," I said, "that's right."
In our excitement, neither I nor my officers had thought about the
wireless. It had not occurred to us to ask ourselves why we had been
ordered to stand by for a whole hour. We didn't even think of
Lloyd's Register. The search officer might have gone back to his
ship to look up the _Irma_ in the Register, where there was no _Irma_.
For days I had been on deck in the storm and in the ice regions. For
the past half hour I had gone through worse turmoil even than that.
And now, when everything seemed clear, the sky looked black again and
that quid of tobacco started getting in its dirty work. I went to
the rail and hung there on my elbows, staring through my binoculars
at the _Avenger_ and watching for the flag signal. My hand shook,
and instead of only one I could see three cruisers in my glass. I
handed it to Leudemann and while he took a look I leaned there with
the code book in my hand, ready to decode the signal when it came.
I don't know how long it was, fifteen minutes or an hour, but finally
three little flags went up the signal rope. Old imperturbable
Leudemann steadied his glass. At last he made out the signal:
"T-M-B."
I thumbed the book clumsily. It seemed as though I would never find
T-M-B. But there it was. It meant "Planet." Nonsense. Read the
signal again.
I was getting weaker and weaker, whether from the anxiety or from
that quid, I don't know. This time he read:
"T-X-B."
Pages, columns, and then the right place.... Continue voyage.
I felt as though my heart had two valves instead of one and was
pumping madly through both. I sat down and breathed heavily.
Instead of going about their ordinary tasks, my men wanted to yell
like Indians.
Hello, what's this? The _Avenger_, with her 15,000 tons driven by
100,000-horsepower engines, was racing straight at us. Huge streams
of smoke and great flames like torches poured out of her three
funnels as her safety valves blew out from the over-pressure of her
boilers. Just as she got on top of us she swerved off. At her stern
flew a signal. I did not need a code book. I knew that signal by
heart--Happy Voyage. We raised the signal--thanks--and dipped our
Norwegian flag three times.
The British had behaved like gentlemen toward us. I think the way
they pointed their guns at us when they came up to us was a bit of a
joke. The hour they made us wait was, I think, to enable them to
make wireless inquiries about the story we told of German cruisers
and submarines. The search officer did his work courteously and
well. No seaman should try to make another seaman ridiculous. We
were disguised so well that he could have suspected nothing. In his
place, I should have been fooled exactly as he was, and so would any
other officer.
"And now, boys, let's celebrate Christmas!"
We dumped our deck load of lumber into the sea, and cleared the deck
for a big time. I had a Christmas tree that I had brought from home.
We set it up. Before the _Seeadler_ left port, Fraulein Bertha Krupp
had sent us a huge box full of Christmas presents, something for
every man. We opened it and found clothing, cigars, pipes,
cigarettes, cigar holders, knives, liquor, soft drinks, and musical
instruments.
It was the merriest Christmas of our lives. Singing "Yo-ho" and
cheered up with many good bottles of rum, we headed south to play our
rôle as buccaneers.
XIV
WE CAPTURE THE _GLADYS ROYAL_ AND THE _LUNDY ISLAND_
"All hands on deck!"
Aloft my boys flew, into the rigging and up the ratlines like monkeys.
"Loose the fore-taups'l!" boomed up from the quarter deck.
"All gone, the fore-taups'l," they sang out. "Loose the ga'nts'ls
and stays'ls!"
The sails were sheeted home and were filling out. We didn't lose
much time in getting her away. Lying over on her beam ends and
running before the wind, we set our course for Madeira.
We knew that just off Gibraltar would be one of our best hunting
grounds, so we cleared away the remains of our Norwegian camouflage,
and after a few days we were as spick and clean and orderly as a
German auxiliary cruiser should be. We were the _Irma_ no longer,
but the _Seeadler_ now, although I felt a pang of regret at letting
go the name that had served us so well and brought us luck.
There was constant labour on the motor. The lubricating oil we had
was of poor quality. Oil, like many other things, had become scarce
in Germany. Our enterprise had the enthusiastic support of only a
few of the officials at the Admiralty. The others thought it
certainly foredoomed to failure, and did not want to risk too much on
it. Among these were the heads of the department that supplied us
with oil. A sailing vessel under the pressure of sail nearly always
lists to one side. The work of the motor was hampered by a leaning
position. We sailed most of the time throughout our cruise with the
motor dismantled and under repairs.
We had only two guns, and only one at a time could be brought into
action against an enemy. Our orders were to attack sailing ships
only. Windjammer against steamship was considered a ridiculous idea.
We would not need great broadsides of cannon in capturing sailing
vessels. We tried to make up for our lack of gun power by skill and
precision in handling the guns we had. Our gun crew worked
incessantly at drill and target practice, and schooled themselves to
such quickness and accuracy of fire that the power of our armament,
in effect, was doubled.
Our lookout posts were excellent. We had a crow's nest with a
comfortable seat high up on the mast. Only a man at ease watches
well. A second lookout was on the foremast, where a petty officer
was perched. I offered ten pounds sterling and a bottle of champagne
to whoever should report a ship first. A jealous rivalry grew up
between the lookouts. In each raged a tremendous thirst for that
bottle of champagne. All day long eager eyes swept the horizon.
On January 9th, off Gibraltar, the shout rang out:
"Ship ahoy."
On our larboard side was a large steamer heading toward us. Flying
our Norwegian colours, we turned to meet her. She flew no flag and
carried no name. The British were the only people who sent their
boats out without names. She looked of British build, too. Our
orders were not to tackle steamers. Well, you can promise a lot. We
raised the signal:
"Chronometer time, please."
A sailing ship long away from port rarely has the correct time. Our
request was reasonable enough. The steamer signalled that she
understood us, and came to the windward so that we could heave to. I
wore my great-coat to conceal my uniform. Those of the crew that had
rifles hid themselves behind the railings.
The steamer came near, ready to give the sleepy old Norwegian the
time.
"Shall we tackle him?" I asked one of my sailors who was crouched
next to me peering through a loophole.
"Sure, let's take him. He's an Englishman."
I shouted the command, and the drum beat "clear for action." A
section of the rail could be lowered and raised as a gun shield. It
dropped clattering and revealed the muzzle of the cannon. Up with
the German flag and fire, one across her bows.
It was the _Seeadler's_ first shot against the enemy.
What's that, by Joe? Nothing happened, no movement on deck, no
slowing down of the ship. Then a flag went up the mast, the British
flag. It was like the fantastic things that happen in a dream. I
thought I must be asleep. Another shot across her bows. She
suddenly changes her course. Hello, she wants to get away. A shot
over the stern, another over the smokestack, and now she hove to.
A boat was in the water rowing toward us. We all put on our best
manners, and I welcomed Captain Chewn aboard the _Seeadler_. What
did we want of him, he asked, so bewildered that he stuttered.
"Well, first a friendly chat," I replied. He was an old salt with a
scraggly gray beard. I liked him right off. His ship was the
_Gladys Royal_, bound from Cardiff with five thousand tons of coal
for Buenos Aires. I told him that, much as I disliked sending any
ship to the bottom of the sea, nevertheless, we must sink the _Gladys
Royal_.
"Oh, no," he argued, "we are bound for a neutral port and won't harm
anything. It will be bad for me to lose my ship, and I have a wife
and children at home."
"Do you believe, Captain Chewn, that, under the same circumstances, a
British naval officer would show any mercy to a German ship?"
He made no reply.
We now got an explanation of the queer behaviour of his ship that had
so puzzled us after our first shot. Captain Chewn, an old-timer at
sea, simply thought we were trying to compare time in the old
traditional way, by firing a blank mortar. He had raised his flag to
serve as the mortar shot on his side. He would afterward lower it to
give the exact moment. That is the way in vogue to-day. But when
our second shot was fired, the cook on the _Gladys Royal_ saw the
shell strike the water and thought we had sighted a submarine and
were firing at it. He gave the alarm, and the captain started to
zigzag. It was only after the third shot that they saw our cannon
pointed at them and the German battle flag at our masthead.
"By Joe," and the captain pounded the rail with open admiration, "you
fooled me bloody well. It was the damnedest trap I ever saw."
I sent a prize crew aboard the _Gladys Royal_ with orders to have her
follow the _Seeadler_. I wanted to wait and blow her up after
nightfall. Cruisers might be roaming somewhere in these parts, and
it would be unwise to run the risk of attracting their attention with
the sound of an explosion.
We photographed our capture carefully. At dusk we transferred the
steamer's twenty-six men, white and black, to our ship. The captain
brought his belongings aboard. I also sent Lieutenant Preiss to pack
up everything aboard the captured vessel that he thought we might
need and ferry it over. He displayed excellent judgment, too, and
turned up with a welcome store of excellent provisions. We sailors
could be content with a sailor's fare whenever need be, but we wanted
our guests to dine well at all times to help make up for the sorrow
of losing their ships.
Preiss and his men planted a bomb in her hold, lit the time fuse, and
took to the boats. Fifteen minutes passed. Then the _Gladys Royal_
trembled fore and aft.
She went down stern first, and in ten minutes her forward quarter
stuck straight out of the sea. Her bow remained above water for a
long time. A steamer hove into sight. She carried side lights, and
from that we judged her to be a neutral. Suddenly a second
explosion, from the accumulation of air pressure, burst the bow of
the _Gladys Royal_. With a final quiver, she took her last plunge
into the depths and slid out of sight, while we scurried away into
the night with all sails set.
We wanted nothing of neutral ships. We would not bother them even if
we thought their neutrality a pretense. If we stopped one and
searched her and found her really to be a neutral, we could only
release her, and she would spread the news about us. We had a trump
card in our hand--nobody imagined that an old sailing ship could be
out buccaneering in this age of fast battle cruisers. It was our
plan also to molest only those ships that we were fairly certain did
not carry wireless sets and therefore could not broadcast our attack
before we had boarded them.
Captain Chewn was agreeably surprised to find himself assigned to a
cozy cabin. His only complaint was that he had no one to enjoy it
with him. This sociable mariner liked company. So we promised to
supply him with companions as soon as possible.
Much as we wanted to please Captain Chewn and show him that we were
accommodating hosts, we allowed the next ship to sail by in peace.
She was a British passenger steamer bound through Gibraltar. We had
room enough for all her passengers, but we did not want to be
bothered with women and children. Having lived at sea among men
nearly all my life, I regarded all women as flowerlike creatures sent
to beautify and soften the harshness of this world. In my opinion,
women should see nothing of war. Their lovely eyes should only gaze
on the beautiful, the pleasant things of life. Women are too
graceful and delicate for the sights of war, with men shot down,
wounds and blood, and men dead and dying. I had resolved to carry
out my raiding cruise without any killing, if I could help it, but in
my nautical career I had found many a thing I couldn't help. Anyway,
to me women were synonymous with romance and love--not with war.
At noon, with a heavy sea running, we sighted a steamer cutting
diagonally across our course. No flag, no name. We signalled her
for information, but there was no response. Surely she must be an
Englishman with a hard-boiled efficient skipper. You know how a
British captain often is, with his nose right down on his job, with
no thought except his cargo and his lookout for submarines and
cruisers? Well, evidently this chap couldn't be bothered with a
funny old Norwegian windjammer. Sails set and motor running, we held
across his course and got in front of him. Now, at sea, a sailing
vessel always has the right of way over a steamship because the
latter can manœuvre more rapidly. But that meant nothing to this
steamship. She swerved not an inch, and seemed quite content to run
us down.
"This businesslike skipper must have an important cargo, since he
doesn't care a rap, by Joe, about ploughing into a clumsy old
Norwegian bumboat," said I to myself. And I could imagine how he was
swearing there on his bridge.
"Stupid blighter, by Joe," no doubt he was saying, "get out of my way
or I'll ram you!"
We had to jib and let him go in the wind, or there would have been a
collision. The Englishman passed us at three hundred yards.
The German flag was climbing swiftly to our masthead.
"Fire," I commanded, "let's see if that will make him change his
mind."
The gun boomed and a shell went screaming over the steamer.
"By Joe," I said, "he sticks to his opinions."
The steamer's stacks belched fresh clouds of smoke. Her course
changed not at all. Another shot, this one, by way of emphasis, just
over the smokestack. The steamer turned into the wind.
"A wise baby, that skipper," commented Leudemann sarcastically. "He
knows a windjammer can't sail against the wind."
We, of course, couldn't catch him in a chase, but our range was still
point-blank. A shot through the smokestack and a couple into the
hull. We could see the crew running around wildly. A siren was
screaming. A shell exploded on deck. The propeller stopped, and the
steamer slowed down and lay rolling in the trough of the sea.
"This new invention of war without killing, what do you think of it
now?" Leudemann looked up at me satirically. "I guess you'll find
there are a couple of casualties over there."
The Englishman must have known that he hadn't a ghost of a chance to
escape under fire at such close range. First of all, he had been
discourteous in ignoring our friendly signals. Then he had violated
the rules of ocean traffic in not giving our clipper the right of
way. And now in cold blood he had endangered the life of his crew.
According to the unwritten rules of etiquette among pirates and
raiders, it was up to us to put out a boat and board a prize. But
instead I signalled the steamer:
"Captain, come aboard!" Let him come over to us. If he's such a
tough guy, we'll show him who rules the waves in this part of the
Atlantic.
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[Illustration: A strange encounter. The old _Pinmore_, on which
"Phelax Leudige" had served, appears on the horizon.
The modern buccaneer sends his old ship to her last port.]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
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[Illustration: The latter day corsair in a poetic setting.]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
It was funny. Finally, I had to laugh. The ship was the _Lundy
Island_ bound for France with a cargo of Madagascar sugar. An
important cargo, sure enough. Sugar was scarce in all the countries
at war, and we Germans, whose supply of sugar consisted mostly of a
great longing for it, could sympathize with the captain's eagerness
to get his precious merchandise to port. When the first shot struck
the _Lundy Island_, the crew, black, brown, and yellow, fell into a
panic. With shells falling, running the ship or staying with it
meant nothing to them. The captain roared and stormed, but that was
all the good it did. So he seized the helm, himself. Just then a
shot hit the rudder chain, and when he turned the wheel nothing
happened. The crew started taking to the boats, and the tough old
salt was left alone on deck. Our signal for him to come on board
left him helpless. His boats were out there with the crew
floundering at the oars. The sea was pitching and rolling, and they
were so frightened they could hardly row. He paced the bridge with
his handbag in his hand, a solitary, woebegone figure. We finally
had to send a boat for him.
On our deck he got a stern, formal reception.
"Any casualties among your men, Captain?"
"No, worse luck. Not a man scratched, by Joe, and the blighters
scurried around like rabbits at a dog show. Look at them in the
boats out there. They haven't got here yet, the beggars. Let me at
that gun, by Joe, and I'll sink them."
It was hard not to sympathize with him, but still his conduct had
apparently been inexcusable.
"Why did you endanger your men's lives like that, Captain? It not
only was the height of folly, but it was inhuman!"
Just then our ship's surgeon, Dr. Pietsch, came along.
"Hello, Captain."
"Hello, Doctor."
They greeted each other like long-lost friends, save that there was a
shadow of uneasiness in the captain's fraternal demonstrations.
Dr. Pietsch had gone out with our armoured cruiser _Moewe_ on one of
her freebooting expeditions. Among the captured captains of that
cruise was our present guest, who, while aboard the _Moewe_, had
struck up a pleasant comradeship with the doctor. Now he, along with
the other captains, had been released on parole. They had signed
written promises that they would engage in no further war activity.
Believing he had broken his parole, he thought the Germans would hang
him from a yardarm if they ever caught him. When he saw we were an
auxiliary cruiser, he already felt a rope tightening around his neck.
That was why he had tried so desperately to get away.
We amused ourselves with a formal discussion, after which I addressed
our guest with suitable gravity.
"We are of the opinion, Captain, that your parole did not cover your
calling as a merchant captain. Only direct combatant service was
included under the heading of war activity. Therefore, we feel
ourselves under no unhappy necessity of hanging you."
Well, the smile on that hard, weather-beaten face was like a sunrise.
We now understood the all-too-human motives behind his actions, and
we respected his plucky attempt to get away in the face of
point-blank gunfire. Sailors ourselves, we could only salute this
skipper who, with a worthless, spineless crew, had to take the wheel
himself, and then only to find his rudder chain smashed.
"All right, Captain," I said, "it's the way things go at sea when
there's war on. God help us sailor chaps."
After he had roundly cursed his crew when finally they came aboard,
we took him below and introduced him to his new quarters with Captain
Chewn. The two skippers found themselves mutually agreeable and
became great old sidekicks. Some of the crew found old friends among
the sailors we had already captured, and none of them appeared
particularly grieved over the loss of their ship. We now had
fifty-odd guests, apparently representing half the races on earth.
The _Seeadler_ was becoming populous and quite convivial.
The sea was so rough now that we did not send a bombing party to
board the _Lundy Island_, but sank her by direct gunfire.
That night Leudemann and I sat over bottles of beer and talked about
our prospects.
"Well, old chap," said I, "everything has begun well. It's a fine
cruise. But when will they sink us?"
"Not, at any rate," he replied, "until our hotel is full."
You see our buccaneering raid was pretty certain to remain a secret
until the time came when lack of space would compel us to release our
prisoners and send them to port. Then the news of our freebooting
jaunt would be out, and cruisers would be hot after us in every part
of the world.
"And if we don't capture any more ships," I reflected, "we can go on
cruising indefinitely."
"Then let's catch some more quickly," laughed Leudemann. "It will be
great sport to play hide and seek with cruisers."
That mate of mine was always itching for trouble. But then that was
what we had all come through the blockade in hope of finding, so if
we wanted plenty of excitement, then the sooner we sent the crews of
eight or ten ships into some port the sooner would the alarm go
out--"German raider in the Atlantic!" Then, too, Lloyd's insurance
rates would start to soar when the news got out, and ships with
supplies that the Allies needed badly would be held in port. Also, a
number of cruisers would no doubt be detached from blockade patrol
duty across the North Sea. That was the interesting part of
it--those cruisers and how to elude them.
"Leudemann," I said, "the better the lookout, the more ships we will
catch. We already have a good lookout, but I've thought of a way to
have a better one. A hundred pair of eyes are better than two pair."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, from now on, I'm going to change that offer of ten pounds and
a bottle of champagne that we promised to the first of our two
lookouts to spy a ship. I'm going to open it to everyone on board!"
"To all of our crew?"
"Yes, to our crew, and to all of our prisoners, too! Ten pounds
sterling and a bottle of champagne! I'll bet that'll send everybody
into the rigging, including the captains."
"By Joe, you're right," said my mate, slapping his knee,
"particularly since they know that, as soon as we are full up with
prisoners, they will all be sent into some port."
"Exactly," I responded. "It won't be long before we have several
hundred aboard. That will make a fine flock of birds perched in the
rigging, forces of the Allies on the lookout for Allied ships to
sink!"
Leudemann and I roared with laughter the longer we thought of it. I
at once had notices posted up:
"Ten pounds and a bottle of champagne to the first man who sights a
ship. Offer open to all."
You should have seen the rigging crowded with crew and prisoners from
then on. Every man who had any kind of glass brought it out. There
were up-to-date binoculars, old-fashioned spyglasses, and cheap opera
glasses. Even those without any glasses took their places on the
yardarms, trusting to luck and the power of the naked eye. The two
captains, with the dignity and poise that became their exalted rank,
climbed aloft and sat next to each other on a yard, sweeping the
horizon with their excellent binoculars.
Never had a ship such a lookout. I often stood and watched the
curious flock perched in the rigging, all colours, sizes, and styles
of beauty. And, believe me, they were wonders at spotting ships.
Sometimes two or three would spot the same ship at the same moment.
Then there would be an argument, a riddle for Solomon himself to
answer. Once or twice the argument got so hot that I had to pay two
rewards for a ship, and then the champagne flowed freely. That
night, if the weather was balmy and a gentle breeze was blowing from
the Gulf Stream, the deck of the _Seeadler_ became a veritable beer
garden, and our guests frolicked like tourists on a Mediterranean
cruise.
XV
RAIDING ALONG THE EQUATOR, AND AN INTERRUPTED
HONEYMOON
There are some memories that are painful to recall. To this day I
can see the _Charles Gounod_ going down, her bowsprit plunging first
and her tall masts sinking slowly, first one spar disappearing and
then another. It fills me with sadness, for she had behaved like a
gallant craft, and she was a large barque with all the air of an
argosy, and as we bore toward her, she proudly saluted our Norwegian
flag by raising the tricolour of France.
"What news of the war?" she signalled.
We steered close to her, unmasked our gun, and raised the German
battle flag.
"Heave to," was our reply.
Incredulity, consternation! The officers and sailors on deck stood
paralyzed for a long moment. Then the barque hove to.
Our prize crew went aboard and commandeered a batch of fine red wine
from among the ship's provisions, and three fine fat hogs. The
Frenchmen packed their belongings, and came aboard the _Seeadler_.
They were a glum-looking, disgusted lot.
The French sailor bitterly hates to leave his ship. He is almost as
attached to it as the average Frenchman is attached to his native
land. No French sailor willingly serves on a foreign ship. The
crews of other nations are made up of men from every corner of the
world, from Chittagong and Malacca to Senegal and Jamaica, from Hull
to Helsingfors, but no foreigner is taken on a French ship. The
French sea laws are more severe than those of other nations.
Desertion from a French ship is a very serious offense, while on most
German ships it is punished by a mere fine of twenty marks.
The captain was painfully correct in his manner toward us. He was a
tall, impressive fellow with deep voice and black beard. A man of
fine education and studious mind, he was scrupulously polite, but
knew how to make the hostility he felt toward us clearly and rather
amusingly evident. He was our prisoner. Very well, he conceded
that. But we were the enemies of his country and the destroyers of
his ship. Therefore he preserved a demeanour appropriate to that
attitude of mind throughout his entire voyage with us. For our part,
we could not but admire him for his superb, unbending spirit.
His barque was loaded with a cargo of corn and bound for Bordeaux.
Now, I don't know much music, and I don't care for this modern jazz
school at all. Faust I enjoy. Give me the duet in the Garden scene,
and, since I am called the "Sea Devil," I don't mind admitting a
secret fondness for old Mephisto and his serenade beneath the window.
Now I had to sink my favourite composer. The thought of it made me
hum a phrase of Valentine's dying lament.
But the sinking of the _Charles Gounod_ meant much more than any such
superficial melancholy. One shouldn't ever have to sink a sailing
ship. They are the last survivors of the golden days at sea, crueler
days and finer days. Take any old salt who has sailed before the
mast, and ask him. The shipyards are not building many of them any
more, and the day of the schooner, the barque, the clipper, and the
barquentine is fast passing. Every one that goes down to Davy Jones
is a loss that will not be replaced. I have an old-time seaman's
love for sailships. A steamer? Train the guns and light the fuses.
I could sink a steamer and laugh as she takes her last dive. But I
never did get used to sinking sailing ships, although we had to send
many of them on their last voyage before our own final adventure in
the South Seas.
Our bombs exploded in the hold of the _Charles Gounod_. She lurched
like a living thing. Her tall masts trembled. The majestic ship
seemed to bow her head as she nosed down into the sea. The last we
saw of her was a glimpse of her tallest mast and waving from it the
tricolour of France. With her departure, I somehow thought I saw the
passing of the whole age of sailing ships.
Three days later, a tremendous commotion in the rigging. Six men
were reporting "Sail ho!"
"Hold there," I roared, "let's have done with the argument until
we've settled with the ship."
She was a fine three-masted schooner. We thought she might be an
American. The Americans favour that type of ship. And the United
States was not yet in the war. However, the Canadians also have a
weakness for the three-masted schooner. We raised our flag, hoping
to induce the skipper to raise his flag, which would be the polite
response for him to make. But her skipper didn't seem to be in any
mood for returning compliments that day. Perhaps he had had a bad
night and was saying to himself:
"What do I care for that old Norwegian tub?"
We backed our main-topsail and dipped our flag three times as a
salute, hoping that this exceptional courtesy would induce the
schooner to follow the amenities of the sea.
It happened now that our freebooting led us to intrude unwittingly
into the rose-covered field of romance, where our rough pirate's
boots were not adapted to walk among the delicate plants. However,
buccaneers that we were, we were not without a high regard for the
tender sentiment. Aboard the schooner, the captain had his newly
married bride. The voyage was their honeymoon. He saw no reason why
he should bother to raise his flag in response to ours. She,
however, inspired by the enchantment of a honeymoon voyage, was full
of romance and the spirit of the sea. She remonstrated with her
bridegroom for his impoliteness toward the Norwegian ship.
"Oh, to blazes with the ---- old Norwegian," grumbled the bridegroom,
and she thought him a very cruel and hard-bitten husband, and told
him so.
When we dipped our flag three times and he still proposed not to
answer the salutation, she felt it was an outrage. I don't know
whether she broke into tears, as brides always do in books, but, at
any rate, she talked a lot. He got angry, and they had a real
row--their first quarrel, we afterward learned.
Leudemann and I stood on the bridge.
"Better leave the lubber alone," I said.
Just then the ensign in the lookout on the mainmast sang out:
"That's no American. They're raising the British flag."
Sure enough, there were the British colours. Up went our battle
flag! Across her bows went a shot from our gun. But it required a
second shot before she hove to.
"Hey!" cried Leudemann, "there's a woman."
The captain's bride was running around the deck in a tailspin, as
aviators say. I don't know whether she was afraid of shot and shell
or the righteous ire of her husband. Maybe he was chasing her.
Prize Officer Preiss had an added dignity as he climbed into the boat
with his boarding crew. He was always a great hand at quieting
excited people--especially the ladies. With his six feet four, his
deep voice, and his imperturbable manner, he was the kind of man to
raise his hand and calm the tumult of the howling mob. He had a
certain streak of gallantry, too, which made him a second Siegfried
when it came to the task of quieting an excited young woman.
The schooner was the H.M.S. _Percy_ bound from Nova Scotia with a
cargo of gaberdine. The captain told me he saw our first shot splash
into the water in front of his ship, and thought it merely a whale
spouting. With our second shot he heard the report of the gun, and
saw that we were an auxiliary cruiser. The _Percy's_ cargo was so
light that we did not use bombs, but shot her full of holes.
We were worried about having fair company aboard. There might be
rough work that would not be good for the eyes of woman. And then a
woman needs attention. She must be treated with care and
consideration. Suppose this new and undesired captive should start
to complain. Women like to complain. Suppose she should grow angry
at being kept a prisoner. What could we do? You couldn't put her in
the brig.
"Well, Leudemann," said I, "the only thing we can do is to treat her
so well that she will be happy all the time."
"I treated a dame well once," growled Leudemann, "and then she ran
off with another man the first time I left her alone."
The skipper's bride turned out to be the best fellow you could want.
She had one of those sunny temperaments that simply spread mirth and
good cheer everywhere. She had a smile for everyone and in every
circumstance. She took her stay aboard the _Seeadler_ as an
unexpected, exciting, and appropriate phase of her honeymoon, and
resolved to get the greatest possible fun out of it. We all made
much of her, did everything to make her comfortable, gave her
presents, and got up amusements for her. Her husband was a little
annoyed with her at first for having caused the loss of his ship, but
he could not stay angry with her for long, and when he saw what a
reigning queen aboard she was, he became very proud of her--and
seldom left her side.
When she got back to Canada, she gave the newspapers long stories
about her stay on our terrible pirate raider, the _Seeadler_, and
told what a delightful time the freebooters had shown her. When I
returned to Germany after the war, I found an envelope full of
clippings from her awaiting me.
We lay in the waters off Africa five degrees above the equator and
thirty degrees west longitude. That region is right on the path of
all sailing ships that run before the southeast trade winds and head
north. The weather is seldom bad there, the air is clear, and from
our masthead we had a range of vision of thirty miles.
A Frenchman, no doubt of it. The ship was scrupulously clean, her
rigging trim and neat. Her hull was decorated artistically with
gunports, after the manner of an old-time war frigate. Only the
French keep their ships so thoroughly shined up, and there was one
firm of French shipping owners whose custom it was to decorate their
vessels man-o'-war fashion. She was the four-masted brig _Antonin_.
We came up behind her diagonally, and then after her. Our motor was
having one of its off days, but we did not care. What's the matter
with canvas? The _Seeadler_ was one of the fastest clippers ever
turned out by an American shipyard, and there was nothing I liked
better than a race under sail. We'd see if this Frenchman could
outsail us. Fine chance he had. But if he did not exactly outsail
us, he sailed with us. We could not gain on him. That bark was
fast, and so we went on, mile after mile, quite evenly.
A sudden wind squall arose. It blew like a fury. The captain of the
_Antonin_ was a sensible skipper. He immediately lowered sail, took
in his royals and upper gallant sails. That was where we had it on
him, for we had no miserly shipowner to be afraid of. Our masts
wouldn't break, anyway.
"Keep every stitch on, boys! After her, my hearties!"
Of course, we gained rapidly on her now.
The wind continued to howl. The gale raged, and the captain of the
_Antonin_ thought we were quite mad. Gallants and royals up during a
wind squall--he had never seen such a thing in all his days at sea.
The sight was so funny that he wanted a picture of it. We watched
him, standing in the stern of his ship and gazing down into the
finder of his camera.
"Leudemann," I said to my helmsman, "we must capture that snapshot
for our collection of photographs, if we have to take a trip to Davy
Jones doing it."
We were attempting to keep a thorough photographic record of our
cruise, for the Imperial archives, and a picture of the _Seeadler_
running with all sails set through a squall, particularly if that
picture were snapped all unwittingly by the captain of a prize, would
indeed be a gem for our collection.
We were close behind the _Antonin_ now. The captain's picture seemed
to have been satisfactorily snapped. A machine gun began to rattle.
We were often bored during those long days at sea. Anything for a
bit of amusement. It would be funny to watch that captain's face
when he heard the typewriter of Mars rattling in his ear and when he
saw us sending a stream of lead through his rigging. First he
started, and then he glared. What did these lunatics mean? This
kind of insanity was too much. His rigging might be injured, ropes
cut or spars smashed. He began to roar at us in the most profane
French. When a Frenchman swears, you can hear it far off. Then he
saw the German flag at our masthead. He staggered back with a
dramatic gesture that only a Frenchman can achieve.
We sank the _Antonin_ just as we sank the others, but first we seized
that kodak and roll of film, by Joe.
We added another Allied nation to our list of prizes when the _Buenos
Aires_ came bowling along. She was an Italian ship built in England,
a fine vessel but filthy dirty. Everything was untidy from stem to
stern. Her captain, a fat, unkempt man of about fifty-five with a
bristly moustache and a month's growth of scraggly stubble on his
face, came aboard the _Seeadler_ carrying an umbrella! Can you
imagine a skipper of a windjammer carrying an umbrella at sea? We
couldn't, and my men all burst out in rude guffaws. I suppose he had
it to protect himself during a hurricane, eh? I had once seen a
photograph of the Italian commander in chief, Count Cadorna, carrying
an umbrella. So we immediately dubbed our new skipper Cadorna. He
was a genial fellow, full of good nature and fun. You should have
seen his astonishment when he saw the fine quarters we provided for
our captive skippers. He never did quite get over it. Apparently,
he was better off as our prisoner than he had been before.
We sailed night and day. During the day we tacked south into the
steady trades, and during the night we ran with the northeast trade
winds. At nights, when we ordinarily could not see them (because in
wartime they all sailed without lights even in the Pacific), we went
in the same direction as the ships bound for America, so that none
passed us, and it was up to us to catch them. During the day, with
our zigzag tacking, we were pretty sure to come in sight of any
vessel sailing along that shipping lane in either direction.
* * *
One night, our lookout saw a tiny flash of light astern. A ship was
coming along behind us, and somebody on her had looked at his watch
with a pocket flash. We kept along on our way. No doubt in the
morning she would still be close to us. Dawn came, and there she
was, a magnificent French barque, the _La Rochefoucauld_. We
signalled her:
"Important news."
She hove to. The captain, who was on deck in his carpet slippers,
saw our gun but thought we were the mother supply for a squadron of
British submarines. Seeing that he was under some illusion, I
decided to have a little fun with him. I called our captured sailors
to deck in batches. First up came the Chinamen. They lined up along
the rail so that the Frenchman could get a good look at them. Then I
called the West Indian Negroes on deck. After them the white men.
Now Chinese, now black men, now Caucasians--the captain of the _La
Rochefoucauld_ thought he must be having a nightmare. And a most
disagreeable nightmare it was when he saw the German flag run swiftly
to the tip of our mainmast. You should have heard him swear.
He climbed on to the _Seeadler's_ deck a picture of wrath and
despair. He still had on his carpet slippers, and had brought
nothing with him. His name was Lecoq.
"Don't you want to send for your belongings, Captain Lecoq?" I asked.
"If I have to lose my ship, mon Dieu, I want to lose everything," he
replied.
"You don't want to take anything with you?"
"No, let everything go down with the ship."
I sent a couple of his sailors back aboard the _La Rochefoucauld_ to
pack his luggage and bring it aboard the _Seeadler_.
One of my sailors came to me, saying:
"They met a cruiser a couple of days ago."
My men had orders to circulate among captured sailors and talk with
them to see what they could pick up. This sailor had heard mention
of a cruiser in the talk of the French sailors.
That was funny. I had asked Captain Lecoq whether he had sighted any
ships within the past week, and he had replied no. In his log I had
found no mention of being searched by a cruiser. One of my officers
examined the log again and found that a page had been torn out. A
thorough questioning of the French sailors brought out the fact that
they had been thoroughly searched by a British cruiser. This warship
had taken her position three hundred miles south of us and was
cruising back and forth across the Pacific ship lane, examining every
vessel that passed. So you see, we, apparently, were picking them up
after she had O.K.'d them. Captain Lecoq had bidden his men to say
nothing about the cruiser. Apparently he hoped that we would wander
far enough south to run afoul of the Britisher and be captured.
I was momentarily displeased with him for his deception, but, after
all, he was a Frenchman, and we were the enemies of his country. His
action was a bit heroic, too. If we ran into the cruiser, we might
be sunk, and he would go down with us. I was destined to have
trouble later with this same irreconcilable Captain Lecoq.
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[Illustration: The stately _Cambronne_, commanded by an equally
stately skipper.
Captors and captives aboard the raider enjoying the plunder of
the champagne ship. Von Luckner second from the left.]
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[Illustration: The South Sea island home of the shipwrecked
buccaneers.]
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XVI
WINDJAMMER VS. STEAMER
Now the biggest ship we captured in the Atlantic was a 9,800-ton
British steamer loaded with champagne--the _Horngarth_. That was our
banner day.
She was well armed and had a wireless. She hove into sight one
morning, and we could see that she would make a tough customer for
our sailing ship to handle. But why not have a good look at her? We
set the signal:
"Chronometer time, please."
The way she paid no attention to the request said very clearly:
"Let that old windjammer go and buy a watch!"
But we had other devices. We had a smoke apparatus to send clouds
rolling out of the galley, and on the galley roof was a dish loaded
with a quantity of magnesium which when lighted produced a wicked red
flame. We set the smoke and fire going, and ran up distress signals.
The _Seeadler_ now was the most dramatic-looking ship afire you ever
saw. Thirty of my crew armed with rifles hid behind the rail, and
Schmidt quickly dressed up as the captain's wife, the beautiful but
simpering "Josefeena" of the big feet. We had another piece of
apparatus which we now used for the first time. It was a kind of
cannon made out of a section of smokestack. It was loaded with a
charge of powder, and you touched it off with a lighted cigarette.
It was quite harmless but made a terrifying noise. You would have
thought it a super-dreadnaught's full broadside. I picked three
sailors who had the most powerful voices aboard, gave them large
megaphones, and stationed them on the topmast yards of the mainmast
and mizzen.
If that steamer was short on courtesy, she was long on humanity. She
came rushing heroically to the aid of the old sailship that was
blazing so dramatically just astern. She had a powerful wireless
set, and as I stood on my bridge watching her as she steamed toward
us I could not take my eyes off the five-inch gun on her deck. What
was our little popgun beside that piece of ordnance? One shot would
blow us right out of the water.
The steamer had a big fat captain, who had his cap pulled down over
one eye. His voice, even when he whispered, was a deep bellow. You
should have heard it through the megaphone! The steamer drew near.
The fat captain raised his megaphone.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" His voice boomed across like
the rumble of our old cannon.
We cut off the smoke and flame. It looked as if we had fought our
fire successfully. Schmidt, the captain's beautiful wife, tripped
along the deck with coquettish movements of shoulders and hips. The
officers on the steamer's bridge eyed the fair vision and exchanged
smiles with that rogue of a Schmidt. Nor was the fat captain
insensible to feminine charms. He rolled his eyes and grinned with
the expression of a skipper who can easily "cut his officers out."
"Look at the wireless, Leudemann," I said, "and the five-inch gun."
"Knock the wireless over," he replied, "and let's have it out with
the five-inch gun."
"Clear the deck for action," I roared.
Instantly, the beautiful Schmidt threw off his silken dress, and in
the uniform of a German gob kicked his blonde wig around the deck.
The Britishers stared aghast. The German flag ran up, our riflemen
arose from behind the rail, ready to pick off anyone who tried to
handle the five-inch gun. Bang, crash, and our gun knocked over the
wireless shack. A tremendous detonation, and our false smokestack
cannon added its voice to the general effect.
The steamer's crew swarmed on deck and ran around like crazy animals.
The captain telephoned his order to start the engines. His engine
crew was on deck as panicky as the others. He ordered the boats
swung out. His men were already doing that as well as their fright
allowed.
"Clear the deck for action," he howled.
That only gave the crew a greater scare than ever.
I shouted to him:
"Lay to, or I will sink you."
I had to admire that captain. The fat fellow dominated the
frightened mob by sheer force of lung power. His voice seemed to
sweep the deck and master everything.
"Gun crew to their posts. By Joe, you scalawags. Gun crew to their
posts, I say, by Joe."
We stood watching. I didn't think he could do it, but the panic
stilled. The frightened men stood at a kind of attention. The gun
crew separated itself from the crowd. It looked as though there
would be a fight, his cannon against our rifles. Well, we could pick
them off, and that fat "soul of the situation" would be an excellent
mark to shoot at.
We had one more device left. I gave the signal. From the mastheads
boomed three voices through the megaphones in unison. The shout was
in English and seemed to dominate the ocean to the horizon.
"Torpedoes clear!"
On the deck of the steamer a crazy yell arose:
"No torpedoes, for God's sake, no torpedoes."
Handkerchiefs, napkins, towels, and anything white was waved. The
cook frantically waved his apron.
"Lay to," I shouted, "or we discharge our torpedoes."
There was no further sound. The fat captain was licked, licked by
the terror the torpedo inspired in everyone who sailed on ships. He
made no further protest. He could not have done anything with his
men now, but I don't think he liked torpedoes either. He sat down on
a deck chair, cursing and wiping the sweat off his face.
We still had to be careful. There were plenty of firearms aboard
that ship, rifles, grenades, and what not. I kept our riflemen at
the rail, ready to cover our boarding party and to shoot down anyone
who went near the five-inch gun. Still with the idea of keeping the
men on the steamer overawed, I sent my eight strongest men as the
boarding crew under the command of my giant prize officer. They had
been among the strongest men in Germany. One was the wrestling
champion of Saxony, another the wrestling champion of Westphalia.
One, a Bavarian who had been a sculptor's model. He had been in much
demand for posing because of his prodigious muscular development.
Any one of these fellows could bring up the 220-pound weight with one
hand. They went with bare arms and shoulders. They had long bamboo
poles with hooks at the end. They reached up with the poles, caught
the hooks over the edge of the deck of the captured ship, and climbed
up hand over hand. The men on deck looked down as they ascended.
"What fellows, by Joe. No, by Joe, we're not going to fight with
those fellows!"
Our prisoners came aboard. Among them were eight British marines who
had been assigned to the steamer as a gun crew. The fat captain
looked around our deck with a sort of belligerent curiosity. He
walked up to our smokestack gun, and you couldn't have told his face
from a beet.
"Captain, is that the thing that made that hell of a racket?"
"Yes."
"Where are your torpedoes?"
"Torpedoes? We have no torpedoes."
"No torpedoes? That was a fake, too?"
"Yes."
"By Joe, Captain, don't report that, by Joe."
I promised him I would not report it, and told him heartily that he
had behaved like a true British skipper, and no man could have done
better.
Aye, things have changed on the sea. When I went aboard that
steamer, I had to sit there and look around and think. She was a
freighter, and what were freighters like when I was in the fo'c'sle?
That wasn't so long ago, twenty-odd years, but ships and customs
change rapidly. I was in a magnificent saloon, with heavy carpets,
glittering candelabra, and big, luxurious club chairs. Paintings in
heavy frames hung on the wall. In one corner was a Steinway grand
piano and beside it a music rack. There were other musical
instruments, a melodeon, a violin, a guitar, a ukulele. Freighters
nowadays often have better officers' accommodations than passenger
ships. They have more space for them and their voyages are longer,
sometimes a year or more. The shipowners provide comforts and
luxuries to make the long periods at sea less burdensome. The
sailors, too, are put up in far better style than formerly. In my
time, even on the biggest freight steamers, the officers had simple
quarters and the seamen had little more comfort than they had on the
sailing ships. I remembered the various ships on which I had hauled
at ropes and swabbed the deck.
"By Joe," I thought, "if they had told you of anything like this, you
would have thought them ready for a lunatic asylum."
The hold of the steamer was no less interesting than the officers'
saloon. The cargo was valued at a million pounds sterling. It
included five hundred cases of rare cognac and twenty-three hundred
cases of champagne, Veuve Cliquot. That was something.
"Ho! boys," I called, "lend a hand. There's a bit of work here."
We took the musical instruments, the piano, violin, 'cello, melodeon,
and all. We had aboard the _Seeadler_ a pianist and a violinist,
both excellent musicians out of the German conservatories. We had no
room in our cabins to hang the paintings, so I gave them to our
captive captains to take with them when they left our ship. Some of
the expensive furniture fitted nicely in the _Seeadler's_ cabins. Of
the cognac and champagne we ferried aboard as much as we could stow
away. We opened the sea cocks of the steamer, and she settled down
peacefully beneath the waves.
XVII
THE LAST CRUISE OF THE POOR OLD _PINMORE_
One night, the breeze having become light, we proceeded under a cloud
of sail. It was a night such as you rarely find anywhere but in the
tropics. The four scintillating stars of the Southern Cross twinkled
merrily down upon us. Our sails were full, and the waves murmured
past our bow. The sky was a gorgeous spread of blinking stars, and
Old Man Moon was so bright that he seemed to be laughing and
chuckling. The buccaneer's deck was crowded. We sat around in
genial fraternity, officers, prisoners, and crew, each with a goblet
of champagne. Midship was the orchestra, violin, 'cello, melodeon,
and Steinway grand. Perhaps it was the spell of the tropic night,
but as I paced the quarter-deck it seemed to me that they played as
well as the musicians at the Stadt Opera in Berlin.
"Oh, lovely south wind, blow." The melody drifted along on the wind
of the Southern ocean.
How remote the war seemed then! The day was not far when we would be
shipwrecked, but to-night all thought of what might be our fate was
wafted away by the spell of the music, the champagne, and the poetry
of night beneath the tropic stars.
"What ho, a light!"
My night telescope at my eye, I saw a ship. On the horizon, brightly
outlined by the light of the moon, stood a stately three-master.
"Hard aport!" We were on the dark side of the horizon, and she could
not see us. After a bit of scrutiny as we approached her, we guessed
her to be an enemy ship.
Our flash signal flared out across the water. "Heave to--a German
cruiser." Unable to make us out, she little guessed that we were
nothing more than a sailing ship, from which she could easily escape
by slipping through the night. We were confident she would take us
for an armoured cruiser easily able to catch her and blow her out of
the sea with a broadside.
We waited at the rail to see what would happen. Presently, we heard
a splashing of oars. Out of the darkness came a hail, the jolliest
hail I have ever listened to. It was in nasal seaport French.
"What a relief! Instead of a Boche cruiser, I find you are an old
windjammer like ourselves. But why the joke? Your signal fooled us
completely. I suppose you want to tell us something about the war."
I did not wonder at his surmise. Ships long at sea, particularly
Allied ships, were always keen about news from the various battle
fronts, and it was common enough for vessels to stop and exchange
news.
"Come on aboard," I replied. "We have lots of news."
We were in our shirt sleeves, and looked like ordinary seamen. On
deck he said proudly:
"I am a Frenchman." As though we couldn't have guessed it.
"A Frenchman? Fine. How is France doing?"
"Ah! France, she is victorious, or will be very soon. _Ravi de vous
voir_."
He fairly bubbled over with delight when we offered him a bottle of
champagne. Being homeward bound, he was in a frolicsome mood. A
generous taste of the champagne, and he was ready to embrace us. He
thought our supposed joke, which certainly would have been somewhat
cruel, was the result of our being tipsy. He slapped me on the back,
as one cheery skipper to another.
"Captain, what a terrible fellow you are to have fooled me like that.
But now I feel as though a stone had dropped from my heart."
"Beware," I thought, "that your stone does not come back twice as
heavy."
He was such a cheery, convivial soul that I hated to break the bad
news to him. I left the progress of events to do that. He wanted to
have a look over our ship. So I ushered him aft to my cabin, and
threw open the door. He took a step forward and recoiled. On the
walls were pictures of the Kaiser, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and Von
Tirpitz, and a large German flag.
"_Des allemands!_" he groaned.
"Yes," I said, "we are Germans."
"Then we are lost, _per Dieu_!"
"Yes, _per Dieu_, you are lost."
He stood with his forehead in one hand. His despair was both tragic
and comic to behold. I tried as best I could to say a few words of
cheer.
"Well, Captain, you are not the only one to lose your ship during the
war. To-morrow I, too, may be sunk, or the next day."
He replied in the most doleful tone imaginable.
"It is not so much the loss of my ship. But it's that I feel I have
only myself to blame for it. In Valparaiso, where I lay in port with
my _Dupleix_, two of my fellow captains warned me not to start until
they had cabled our owners for final instructions and news about
U-boats and cruisers. Possibly our owners would instruct us to keep
off the usual course, they said. But the wind was fair, and I
thought it best to take advantage of it. So, without waiting for a
reply from our owners, I sailed from Valparaiso ahead of the other
two captains. And now, because I did not take their advice, I have
lost the _Dupleix_, my ship. _Mon Dieu_, what an ass I was! Now
they will report it to my owners, and I will never get a ship again."
"What were the names of your friends' ships?"
"The _Antonin_----"
"The _Antonin_ under Captain Lecoq?"
"Yes. And the _La Rochefoucauld_?"
"Orderly," I called in German, which the captain did not understand,
"bring up captains numbers five and nine."
While we waited, I invited my mournful guest to have some more
champagne, but he refused and continued holding his head and moaning.
A knock at the door.
"Come in."
And in walked the captains of the _Antonin_ and the _La
Rochefoucauld_. They had been on board ten and three days
respectively.
The captain of the _Dupleix_ gaped.
"_Eh, tout la France!_" he cried.
Full of ironical enthusiasm, he raised his glass of champagne and
saluted them. Then with joy that he made no effort to conceal, he
clasped the hands of the two captains whose advice he had scorned and
who had encountered the same fate as he. They returned his welcome
with a grim humour.
The presence of these three captains aboard the _Seeadler_
represented a loss of ten thousand tons of saltpetre destined for
French powder mills, and a saving of hundreds, perhaps thousands of
German lives.
* * *
One Sunday morning, we sighted a large British barque and started
after her. She thought we were playfully challenging her to a race,
and tried to run away. I don't know whether we could have caught her
in a straight sailing ship against sailing ship contest; at any rate,
our motor gave us the edge.
A strange feeling came over me as we gained on her and as her lines
became more distinct. It was a sense of sadness and of vague, dimly
dawning recollection. Had I seen that ship before? Was it
possible...
"Signal and ask her for her name," I called.
Our signal flag went aloft. The reply came back:
"_Pinmore_"
Ah, my old _Pinmore_, on which I had made the longest and most
harrowing voyage of my life. Memories swept over me of those endless
storms and of the disease on board, beri-beri, scurvy. My whole
being seemed to leap back to the days of my youth. Homesickness
seized me. I could not say a word to Leudemann, who stood beside me.
"No use, the ship must be sunk," a harsh inner voice told me.
It was hard for me to sink any sailing vessel, but doubly cruel to
have to sink my old ship. I felt as though she were a kind of
mother. No sailor with any kind of sailor's soul in him will raise a
hand against his own ship.
We took her as we had taken the others. When her crew came aboard, I
looked for familiar faces. There were none. The skipper, Captain
Mullen, came up to me with a humorous, seamanly air.
"Well, Captain, our hard luck is your good luck."
"Lucky?" I felt like saying. "Do you call this lucky?"
He was a typical old seaman, afraid neither of enemy in war nor
storms at sea. The seven seas had been his home. Like the sailing
ship, the old-time windjammer captain is vanishing. Captain Mullen
was indeed like the king of a vanishing race. He swaggered down
below, and saluted our other skippers with a jovial air. He soon
became the leading figure of the "Captains' Club."
When everyone had left the _Pinmore_, I had a boat take me over to
her. I clambered aboard and sent the boat and its crew back, telling
them I would give them a hail when I wanted them again.
"Why does the Count want to remain alone aboard her?" I heard one of
them say.
I went to the fo'c'sle. There was my bunk, the same old bunk where I
had slept night after night for months and had tumbled out countless
times at the command "all hands on deck" while those endless storms
bore down upon us. I paced the planks on deck where I had stood
watch so often. It seemed as though I had never seen that deck save
in a storm. Those gales had left so deep an imprint on my memory
that it gave me a sense of strangeness to see the sun shining on the
_Pinmore's_ planks and a slowly heaving sea around.
I remembered a cunning little cat I had once owned on board her. The
captain's wife wanted it. The steward got it for her. I told the
steward that if he did not bring it back to me I would go to the
captain. The steward laughed at me. I determined to complain to the
captain about the steward and his wife and demand my cat back. I
could see myself as I had wrathfully strode along the deck to the
cabin. The sight of the door made me stop. I mustered up my courage
and advanced again. I ventured just far enough to peep in at the
door, which was ajar. The skipper was sitting there reading a paper.
One glimpse of the master, and all of Phelax Luedige's bravery oozed
away. He turned and tiptoed away. I never did get my cat back, and
forever after held a grudge against the steward.
I could still feel the old enmity. If I could have found that
steward, I would have let him know how the end of a rope felt. I
went to the cabin and half opened the door. It was much as when I
had seen it last. The bright rainbow glow of the coloured skylight
gave me an old familiar feeling. Something restrained me from
entering. I did not dare go in then. I would not now.
At the stern I looked for my name which I had once carved on the
rail. I found it, half effaced by time and weather. I read it
slowly, spelling it out as a child spells its first lessons:
P-H-E-L-A-X L-U-E-D-I-G-E. I looked at the compass, beside which I
had watched for hours. The compass is a sacred place to a sailor.
"This ship," I thought, "carried me safely. The storms were wild all
the way from 'Frisco around the Horn to Liverpool. They wanted to
take us, every man aboard, but the good old _Pinmore_ fought against
wind and wave over leagues and leagues of dreary waste and brought us
safely to port. Yes, she was our mother, our kindly protecting
mother."
The deserted ship with an unguided helm rolled back and forth. The
rigging creaked and groaned. It seemed to be a voice, a voice that
hurt me. Every spar seemed to say:
"So here you are, Phelax, back again. Where have you been all these
years? Where is all the crew? What do you want here, alone? What
are you going to do with me?"
Little had I dreamed when I was a sailor on this fine barque that one
day I would walk her decks again, not as a seaman, but as the
commander of a raider.
Returning to the _Seeadler_, I shut myself up in my cabin. In the
distance I heard the roar of a bomb, and I knew that my old _Pinmore_
had started on her last cruise.
XVIII
THE LIFE OF A MODERN BUCCANEER
Ever taken a trip at sea where the company aboard was dull and dead,
the passengers uncongenial to one another, and everybody sitting
around day after day and bored to death? You have? Well, then, you
know what it's like, eh?
Give me a lively, companionable crowd of shipmates, and I don't care
how long or how stormy the cruise. On land, if you don't like the
company, you can seek better mates elsewhere. On shipboard, do your
darnedest and you can't get away from 'em. You have to take your
company just exactly as you find it. You are married to it. A
genial lot of shipmates and a long cruise, say from New York to
Melbourne, and what more can any man ask for at sea?
Although our old jolly-boat was a raiding auxiliary cruiser, she also
degenerated into a breed of passenger ship, too. Our passengers were
our prisoners. That made the situation somewhat unusual and added a
bit of spice. I've served as an officer aboard a dozen or more
liners, and have seen all kinds and strata of society aboard,
including dull, delightful, ill-natured, jovial--both the quick and
the dead. Yes, I have had some splendid passenger lists on voyages
where every hour was gay and bubbling with fun. But no group of
passengers on a liner ever enjoyed such happy comradeship as did we
aboard our buccaneering craft. The fact that we were captors and
captives only seemed to make it all the jollier. We took the
greatest pleasure in making the time agreeable for our prisoners,
with games, concerts, cards, and story-telling. We tried to feed
them well, and I think we did, which helps a lot, as you'll agree.
We didn't throw it at them either. In fact, we served special meals
for all the nations whose ships we captured. One day our own German
chef cooked, and that boy was _some_ cook, as you say. The next day
an English cookie, then the French chef, then the Italian to make us
some _polenta_. The English food was the worst. It usually is. On
the other hand, the Americans fed their sailors best of all. It's
long been a tradition on Yankee clippers. In the old days, the
American sailing ships were famous for frightful work and much
brutality, but the food was good. To-day the work is not bad and
there is no brutality, but the food is still good.
The prisoners seemed to appreciate our intentions thoroughly. They
wanted to do everything they could for us in return. Feelings of
patriotism should have made them hope for our early destruction. But
more elemental sentiments of gratitude and friendship obliterated the
more artificial passions of war hatred. I am sure that very few of
our passengers wished us any ill or gloated in the hope of our being
sunk by the cruisers of their nations. I think it really hurt many
of them to realize that the day probably would come when we would be
caught and go down under a rain of Allied shellfire. That
magnificent Frenchman, the captain of the _Charles Gounod_, kept
aloof from the general fraternizing, and scrupulously kept up his
manner of cold politeness and stately hostility toward us, but even
he thawed out a few degrees, although he tried hard to keep from
showing it.
There was only one of our prisoners who behaved himself in any way
that could be considered improper. That was Captain Lecoq of the _La
Rochefoucauld_, that same Captain Lecoq who had cherished hopes that
we would run afoul of the British cruiser. You see, the skippers
aboard were quite free to go where they liked on the ship, except
that I asked each one, as he came aboard, not to go into the fore
part of the ship, and I explained why.
"My magazines," I said, "are in the forward half of the boat. I do
not want you to know exactly where they are placed. After you are
released, you might reveal the secret. Then, one of these merry
days, if some cruiser takes a shot at me, and if the location of my
magazines is known, they'll aim right at that spot. A shell there
and up in the air we go. I must ask you to give me your word of
honour that you will not go into the foreship, else I will have to
keep you confined."
Each skipper gave me his word, including Lecoq.
Captain Lecoq broke his promise. He not only went secretly into the
foreship, but he made sketches of the layout there. Captain Mullen
of the _Pinmore_ saw the sketches, knocked Lecoq down, and reported
him to me. I berated Lecoq soundly.
"And as a result of your dishonourable action," I said, "when I
release my prisoners and send them off to some port, there will be
one Frenchman who will remain behind, and that Frenchman will be you.
You will continue your cruise with us. You know where my magazines
are, and I cannot trust any promise that you now give me."
He turned a bit green around the gills at that, but there was nothing
he could say in reply.
Our only woman aboard, the skipper's little bride, grew melancholy.
We did everything we could to make the time pleasant for her, but she
pined for the society of other women. It was rather a trial for her
to be so long the only woman among several hundred men.
"Count, I do so wish there were a woman aboard that I could talk to,"
she said to me a bit coaxingly one day. "Why don't you catch me one?"
I always like to oblige a lady, particularly one so charming and
agreeable as she, but catching another woman was a game of chance
with us. You don't often find fair company aboard freighters,
especially in tropical waters. However, I said:
"Madam, we will do our best."
At times I used to amuse myself by joining the crowd on the lookout
in the rigging. It was a misty day, and nobody had much of a chance
of seeing anything. Then it cleared a little in the west, and
Boarding Officer Preiss, who was beside me, thought he saw a ship. I
instructed the helmsman to steer in than direction, and after fifteen
minutes a large British barque appeared through the mist. As we drew
near her, I saw a white figure on the deck. Sure enough, a woman.
"Madam," I shouted, to the Canadian skipper's bride, "get ready to
welcome your companion. She'll be paying you a call in a few
minutes."
Everybody, prisoners and all, swarmed on deck to witness the
exceptional capture. The _Seeadler_ bore down on the unlucky barque.
The captain looked curiously at the crowded figures standing at our
rail, of every colour and race. They waved gaily. Our gramophone
blared out, "It's a Long Way to Tipperary."
"Hello," he shouted through his megaphone, "collecting volunteers?"
He thought we were picking up war volunteers from the Atlantic
islands.
"Volunteers?" I called in return. "Oh, yes."
Our prisoners laughed a bit.
"Any news of the war?" he asked.
Officers and sailors and the woman on his deck craned their necks for
a reply.
"Much news of the war," I responded. "I will signal it."
They stared, awaiting the signal.
"C-I-D," our signal flags went up; "heave to or I will fire."
I could see the captain rapidly thumbing the pages of his book. His
head jerked up suddenly. His binoculars focussed themselves on our
masthead where the German flag now waved. Our gun mask dropped, and
the cannon peered forth. By Joe, but it raised a commotion on the
deck. When she saw it, the woman darted into her cabin. The sailors
ran to the boats. Even the helmsman deserted the wheel. The captain
was the only one who kept his head. He seized the helm with a firm
hand, and the ship hove to.
Our guests were always interested in the prospect of having new
additions to their company. They had an ever-ready, cordial welcome
for fresh arrivals. This time, the coming of a second feminine
passenger made the occasion a gala one. Everybody put on his best
manners. The members of our "Captains' Club" marshalled their forces
on deck, ready to greet the officers and the lady from the captured
craft with suitable dignity and formality.
Our little woman put on her best clothes and asked me for a nosegay
from a supply of artificial flowers we had captured. The newly
arriving woman, who scarcely knew what to expect aboard our dreadful
pirate craft, was surprised when she was greeted not only by our
Captains' Club with all of its stately courtesies, but also by a
brightly smiling young woman who presented her with a bouquet of
flowers that made up in brightness of colour what it lacked in
sweetness of perfume, since they were imitation ones.
The two women immediately became the best of friends, and the
convivial spirit aboard made our happiness complete.
The captured barque, the _British Yeoman_, carried a rare store of
provisions, including some live pigs and chickens. She also had two
pets, a curious pair--a rabbit and a pigeon. We promptly adopted
them and called the pigeon "the dove of peace" in honour of the
spirit aboard our raiding ark. That rabbit and pigeon were
inseparable. If the rabbit strayed, the pigeon would coo and coo for
it to come back, and the rabbit would obediently respond.
Then we also had two dachshunds aboard, Piperle and Schnaeuzchen.
Piperle was a friendly little rascal and most intelligent. He seemed
to understand what our work was, and grew most enthusiastic. He went
out with the boarding parties, barked furiously if anything seemed to
go wrong, and wagged his tail with a tremendous enthusiasm when
things turned out all right. He seemed to take it as his especial
task to give a friendly welcome to prisoners brought aboard. He
would bark and leap upon them, as though saying:
"Hello, you'll have a good time here."
Schnaeuzchen was an ill-natured specimen of dachs bitch. She looked
on satirically at Piperle's demonstrations, and people had to make
many amicable overtures before she became friendly. She and Piperle
were of discordant temperaments. They got along together in a
resigned sort of way, with many a quarrel in dog language, something
like husband and wife. I think she nagged him a lot.
We gave the rabbit and pigeon quarters in Piperle's kennel, which
delighted the good-natured dog. He welcomed his guests with cordial
demonstrations. He licked the rabbit's fur continually, which at
first made the pigeon jealous. The bird sulked and made angry
sounds. The unfortunate rabbit seemed in a quandary, torn between
his liking for the new friend and the old. He must have been a
diplomat, though, for presently he found a way to reconcile the
pigeon to his fondness for Piperle, and the three became excellent
friends. When the three were asleep in the kennel, they made an
edifying picture of harmony, Piperle on his side, the rabbit huddled
against his belly, the pigeon perched on his side.
Schnaeuzchen, malign and crafty, watched this beautiful friendship
with a jaundiced eye. She was the villain of the piece. She often
made attempts to devour the rabbit or the pigeon or both, or at least
to take a bite out of them. She was quick and cunning with her
snapping jaws and sharp teeth. I spent a great deal of time trying
to convince her that she had better leave the three pals alone, and
Piperle had to be on the alert all the time to protect his two
friends. One night Schnaeuzchen, with bold and bloody resolve,
raided Piperle's kennel. I suppose she reasoned that she had better
end the obnoxious situation with one fell blow. She got in before
Piperle knew what had happened, and the rabbit barely escaped her
jaws. Piperle turned on her and chastised her properly. After that
she resigned herself to the inevitable. She kept the peace with the
other pets, and while she never became really friendly with them, the
pigeon and rabbit were at least safe.
Talking about animals brings to mind one remarkable piece of good
fortune that blessed our entire adventure. Before it was over, we
were destined to suffer pretty nearly all the hardships that the sea
can bestow upon the sailor--arctic ice and tropical sun, storm and
calm, frightful labour and deadening idleness, shipwreck, life as
castaways on a desert island, the terrors of weeks in an open boat,
hunger, thirst, and scurvy. But we never had any bedbugs. I had had
enough experience with those vermin in my early days before the mast.
I was determined to have none of them now. Bedbugs are a constant
pest aboard sailing ships, and doubtless some of the vessels we
captured had plenty of them. But aboard the _Seeadler_ we had a
magnificent fumigating plant, and every article that was brought
aboard was given a thorough treatment. That fumigator was one of our
most treasured possessions. Without it, we would surely have been in
a fix. We could not have put comfortably into a port and called for
the vermin exterminator, and if we had taken aboard any bedbug
guests, our long voyage would have given them plenty of time to
multiply and overrun our ark. We would have been eaten alive.
I remember a time during my jack-tar days when we had a magnificent
collection of bedbugs in the forecastle. A comrade and I went to the
captain, a mean old German skipper, and told him we were being eaten
alive and begged him to go to the slight expense of getting a vermin
exterminator.
"Bedbugs," he grunted, "_Gott im Himmel_, catch them."
We did catch them. We caught a match box full of them, and put them
in his bunk.
The next day the vermin exterminator came aboard.
XIX
HOW WE MADE OUR PRISONERS WALK THE PLANK
Our floating hotel was about full. If we wanted to take any more
guests aboard, we would have to get rid of our present company. The
old pirates would have had a plank-walking ceremony. That was a sure
way to prevent inconvenient information from getting around.
Undoubtedly, it would have enabled us to keep our existence still
secret. We were buccaneers in a sense, but not quite that bad. We
would have to take other measures. When our prisoners got to port
and our freebooting career became known, cruisers, of course, would
set out after us. They would make the narrow Atlantic much too hot
for us. We would have to seek other waters. The broad Pacific
remained. We did not want to hold our prisoners for the always rough
passage of Cape Horn, where, in addition, there were likely to be
cruisers on watch, keeping a guard for suspicious ships that might be
trying to take the shortest route from European waters to the
Pacific. We might be shelled and sunk, but it would have been
scarcely humane to take a chance of going down with all our prisoners
on board. So we arranged it in a way that would enable us to get a
good start on our trip around Cape Horn before the cruisers could get
word of us.
The French barque, the _Cambronne_, came along. You should have seen
her heave to and her yards come banging down when our German flag
went up and we signalled the inevitable: "Stop or I shall fire."
Her captain exhibited all of the usual Gallic despair at the prospect
of losing his ship. We looked the craft over. She was large and
roomy and had aboard a large stock of provisions.
"No," I said to her skipper, "we are not going to sink your ship.
She will go right on to port."
"Eh?" He was immensely surprised.
"She will take our prisoners."
"I will be delighted, monsieur, to have them as my guests."
"They won't be your guests, Captain. You will be the guest of the
new captain of the _Cambronne_."
"I will not command my ship?"
"Not at all. I have a Captains' Club aboard. You, as a prisoner,
are now a charter member. Your ship is my prize. I will select a
member of the Captains' Club as her skipper."
He was very angry. It hurt him nearly as much to be removed from the
command of his ship as to have her sunk.
It was a touchy matter to select a skipper from among a dozen
captains, each of whom was full of sensitive dignity and thought he
was the best navigator of the lot. The French captains thought a
Frenchman should be selected, since the most numerous nationality
among the prisoners was the French. The traditional principle of
seniority, however, pointed to the selection of the oldest skipper.
My belief in that principle was confirmed by the fact that the oldest
skipper was Captain Mullen of the _Pinmore_. He had shown himself to
be the finest of gentlemen, and then there was the memory of my old
ship, which I had been compelled to sink. I appointed Captain Mullen
master of the _Cambronne_. Since he was a Britisher, it was
reasonable that his ship should sail under British colours. That
necessitated the ceremony of hauling down the French flag and
hoisting the Union Jack. The French captains did not like it at all.
I was rather glad that it was not I who would command the
_Cambronne_. With all those captains aboard, especially the
disgruntled French captains, the skipper of the _Cambronne_ was
certain to have an uncomfortable time. One skipper always knows more
than any other skipper. Nor is any skipper ever reticent about the
mistakes of another. The skipper of the _Cambronne_ had better
navigate with a perfect correctness, or there would be plenty of talk
aboard.
We lopped off the _Cambronne's_ upper masts, so that she could set
only her lower sails. She could not make any speed now, and it would
take her from ten to fourteen days to get to Rio de Janeiro, which
was the nearest port. Then I exacted a pledge from Captain Mullen:
"Captain," said I, "we are releasing our prisoners, and they are
under your command. I understand perfectly well that when you get to
port our existence will be known. We will be a sailing ship in a
world of armoured cruisers. We will be chased like a wild deer. We
need a start. We have taken care that you do not get to port too
soon. One thing remains, though. You may meet a ship within a week
or within a day--it may be a steamer with a wireless plant. I ask
for your word that you will not communicate with any ship until you
reach port. We have, I hope, treated our prisoners fairly, and I ask
this of you in return. I must have your solemn word on it."
"Count," he replied, "I give you my word that the _Cambronne_ will
not communicate with any ship until she is in port at Rio."
We shook hands on it, and my mind was at rest. It was no risk to
take the word of the _Pinmore's_ old skipper.
He played his part nobly. He passed several steamers on his way to
Rio, but steered clear of them. One comical thing happened. A big
steamer came toward the _Cambronne_ one morning, and then her captain
noticed the crowd of prisoners on the ship's deck. He was a cautious
soul. It looked suspicious. The steamer turned and fled at full
speed.
There remained the case of Captain Lecoq of the _La Rochefoucauld_,
who had broken his word to me and whom I had promised not to release
with the other prisoners. He tried to dissuade me. He was aghast at
the thought of being kept aboard the _Seeadler_ throughout her long
cruise, the end of which no one could foretell. He vowed by all the
saints that he would keep the position of the ship's magazines locked
sternly within his bosom. I would not listen to him. I told him
that the others would go but he would remain. I intended to hold him
until we had caught and released our next batch of prisoners. He
enlisted the other captains to intercede in his behalf. They came
and asked me to relent.
"Gentlemen," I replied, "I have just now rested the safety of my ship
on Captain Mullen's word. You are all ship masters. You know a
captain's duty to the vessel he commands. Very well, I know that
Captain Mullen's word is good. I have taken the others of you at
your word, and you have not failed me. But Captain Lecoq broke his
word. Can I trust him not to break it again?"
They argued so hard for their unfortunate fellow skipper that I
finally gave in. After all, even if he did break his word again and
tell of the position of my magazines, it did not necessarily mean
disaster. I made him sign a promise and made the other captains sign
as witnesses to his promise. Then I gave orders that he should go
with the rest.
We paid our prisoners off, just as if they had been working for us.
Each received wages for the time he had spent aboard, and each was
paid the wage he ordinarily received from his shipowner. By Joe,
that made them happy. We had a final banquet. The sailors feasted
in their quarters. I entertained the officers and ladies in my
cabin. Toasts of champagne were drunk, and at the end there were
cordial handshakes. We transferred the crowd to the _Cambronne_ in
boatloads, and each boat, as it pushed off, gave three cheers for the
_Seeadler_.
Evening was coming on. The _Seeadler_ lay watching while the
_Cambronne_ raised sail. Now the stately barque was sliding through
the water. Hands waved and farewells were shouted. The two ships
saluted each other. With her snow-white canvas bellied out by the
brisk wind, the _Cambronne_ sailed toward the horizon. Aboard the
buccaneer, we watched till the last tip of her mast disappeared below
the skyline.
We had been away from port for eight weeks and had sunk eleven
vessels, representing a total of more than forty thousand tons of
Allied shipping. The Atlantic had given us its share. Now to the
Pacific. And God save us from the cruisers.
XX
THE BATTLE OF THE FALKLAND ISLANDS
Through an oily sea we sailed south and west toward the Falkland
Islands. Many a time had I passed this way in the old days when
bound for Cape Horn. These islands of the South Atlantic have long
been the base for whaling schooners. But to every German the
Falklands will be forever memorable as the scene of a one-sided naval
engagement in which one of our best beloved admirals was overwhelmed
by a British fleet.
Had you seen our deck as we sailed south during these days, you might
have wondered what we were about. Along with other plunder, we had
looted captured ships of several great sheets of iron. We had ripped
them from iron walls and roofs of forecastles and stowed them on our
deck. Now the mechanics of the _Seeadler's_ motor crew got busy with
acetylene torches, and from those sheets of metal they welded a great
iron cross, ten feet high.
We drew near a spot on that lonely ocean just a bit to the east of
the Falkland Islands. My navigation officer and I figured out the
point carefully on our chart, and when our instruments told us we
were there, I called all hands on deck. Somewhere far below on the
floor of the ocean were the bodies of hundreds of our comrades and
the battered hulks of a once proud German fleet. It was in these
very waters that our gallant Pacific Squadron under Count von Spee
sank in three thousand fathoms. For here it was that our light
cruisers, the _Scharnhorst_, _Gneisenau_, _Nuremburg_, and _Leipsic_,
with odds against them, fought it out with a more powerful British
squadron.
With flag at half mast, we stood at solemn attention. The sky was
gray and melancholy. The sea rolled with a gentle swell. In our
mind's eye we could picture that disastrous day when, outranged by
the guns of the great British warships, our cruisers, two large and
three small, had fought a losing and hopeless fight. One, a scout
cruiser, escaped. The others went down. Pounded from the distance,
they trembled under the blows of the shells that rained down upon
them. Exploding projectiles raked the decks and pierced the hulls of
the ill-fated vessels. As if in a last struggle, trying to keep
afloat for one more shot at the enemy, they staggered, lurched, and
then, one after the other, plunged into the depths, entering port on
their final voyage far below on the ocean floor, eighteen thousand
feet beneath the surface. Every man aboard three of the ships was
lost. A high sea happened to be running at the time, so the victors
had little chance to rescue the men from the doomed ships. Two
hundred and fifty members of the crew of the _Gneisenau_ were picked
up and got to the Falklands alive.
As if in a dream, I thought of the last time I saw my friend Count
von Spee. It was in the days before the world went mad. The Navy
Yard at Kiel was in gala mood. Every warship in the harbour had sent
three hundred men. They stood at rigid attention while Von Spee and
his staff strode by. Then he addressed them.
"By order of the Emperor, I am to take command of our cruisers in
Chinese waters. My officers and men sail with me to-morrow."
The sailors all give three cheers. They think the Admiral and his
men are merely going for a pleasant vacation to the Orient. It is in
1913. No war is in sight. Yet a darker note intrudes: Even then
military and naval men were unable to escape the thought of war:
"We are leaving home and country for two years. We who part from you
to-morrow will do our duty, knowing that every man at home will do
his. If war should come, we will be across the world and you will be
here. We will be too far away to lend a hand to you, and there is
little that you will be able to do for us.
"Ours is a young navy, but we have had a great teacher. When England
built her mighty fleet, she taught us how to build ours. The English
have great naval traditions, and both their fleet and traditions have
been our model. If war should come before we meet again, we along
the far-off China coast may be but a few ships against many enemies,
but from you of the High Sea Fleet we expect great deeds."
We of the German Navy knew and constantly gave expression to the
thought that Britain was our guide on the sea. Her great seafaring
tradition was our conscious and admitted pattern. We German naval
men liked the English and were in sympathy with them. Our navies
were alike in spirit. The French Navy was somewhat different. Its
morale was perhaps not so good. French naval officers all come up
from the ranks. The British and German come from cadet schools and
are recruited mostly from the first families. That is best. It
provides a finer corps of officers. I, myself, came up from the
forecastle, but I believe that, unless you have officers and men from
different worlds, your men will have little respect for their
commanders. It must either be that, or your officers must inspire
respect with their fists as in the old sailing-ship days. The French
Navy no longer has a rich tradition. It is true that the French had
far greater sea fighters than we in past centuries, and they had
their fine old naval traditions. But during the Revolution the old
Royal Navy of France was swept away and remained abolished for twenty
years. At the end of that time, a new navy was formed, but by then
the fine old French traditions seem to have been forgotten and new
traditions had to be formed. We Germans, with a new fleet, took over
the old, solid tradition of the British and made it our own. We did
everything we could to implant it in our men, and make it a real,
living thing ingrained in our people. Our sea leaders understood the
importance of a tradition. That was why we were determined to keep a
fleet after the war. When our great ships went down at Scapa Flow,
our Socialists favoured the total abandonment of the naval arm, but
fortunately enough of our people came out of their post-war trance
long enough to prevent such a fatal error. Perhaps it might be only
a few small ships that we could retain, but it would serve to keep
traditions alive until we could again build up a fleet as great or
even greater than the one we lost.
Von Spee was a sailor's admiral. He was a seaman by temperament,
open, honest, and jovial, uncomfortable on land and only himself when
on the bridge of his flagship. Too many of our professional fighting
men, I regret to say, were more ornamental than useful. They were
good at wearing gold lace and that is about all. But not Von Spee.
He was at his best on a quarter-deck in a storm. I still can see him
pacing back and forth, with his bushy brows and piercing blue eyes.
The day after he said _auf wiedersehen_ to us at Kiel, he and his
officers and men left by transport for the Orient, there to relieve
the officers and men aboard the cruisers of our small Pacific
Squadron at Tsing Tao. What was to have been their two-year term
overseas began as commonplace, quiet routine. It ended under the
salvos of British guns off the Falkland Islands.
Von Spee's plan, when the war caught him 15,000 miles from German
waters, was to harass the Allies in the Pacific and then try to slip
back through the North Sea to Kiel. Lady Luck smiled on him for a
little while and then deserted him. After crossing the Pacific, he
caught Craddock, the British admiral, off the coast of Chile. Von
Spee's star was in its ascendancy at this time and Craddock's on the
wane. A German secret agent in Chile flashed a wireless to Von Spee
giving him the information that Craddock was waiting for the arrival
of the big but old battleship _Canopus_ that was rounding the Horn.
Without the _Canopus_, Craddock's forces were weaker than Von Spee's,
and Von Spee instantly dashed to the attack so as to engage Craddock
before the _Canopus_ came up. Craddock and his men met their fate
like true British sailors. Outgunned, the British cruisers continued
to fire until they sank. Only one, a small boat, got away. But
their conqueror's days were numbered.
Von Spee now began his long race toward Kiel. Only two routes were
possible, one by Cape Horn and the other by the Cape of Good Hope.
Of course, he knew the British would be laying for him at both
places. He knew also that they would be after him with swifter and
more powerful ships than his own. His one chance was to beat them to
Cape Horn, lose himself in the broad Atlantic, make a run for it, and
probably fight his way through the blockade.
By now he was short of both munitions and coal. A wireless from
Germany brought the good news that a supply ship had slipped through
the blockade and was now on its way out to meet him. What a
tremendous voyage he might now have made! What a hair-raising dash
at the Allied blockade line he might have made! But he never got the
chance.
As he rounded the Horn, Dame Fortune tempted him, and he made what
proved to be a fatal error. He stopped a British collier and took
all her coal. This delayed him for three days. Meanwhile, a fleet
of Britain's mightiest battle cruisers had arrived at the Falklands.
He still might have run by them unnoticed had he not determined to
shell and destroy the wireless station on the Falklands. Thus he
stumbled into that nest of battle cruisers. He tried to run, but
they caught and sank him. That day the British had their sea giants,
the _Indefatigable_, the _Invincible_, the _Indomitable_, and along
with them a number of other battle cruisers, that later were to fight
gallantly at Jutland, and then find their way to rest on the floor of
the North Sea.
Only one of Von Spee's ships, the light but fleet cruiser _Dresden_,
showed her heels to the British leviathans and slipped back around
Cape Horn, But the Fates were merely playing with the poor _Dresden_,
and a few days later she was sunk by the more powerful British
cruiser _Kent_ off San Juan Fernandez, Robinson Crusoe's island, in
the Pacific. She was lying in neutral waters and should have been
sheltered by the laws of war. Her captain signalled to the commander
of the _Kent_:
"We are in Chilean territory."
"My orders are to sink you on sight," replied the _Kent_, "and no
matter where you are."
The captain of the _Dresden_ blew up his ship, and with his officers
and crew swam ashore. The island was not quite so deserted after
this shipwreck as it was in Robinson Crusoe's day!
That in brief was the story of the plucky Von Spee and his gallant
men. Hence this dreary waste of waters off the Falklands was sacred
to us. We hove to, and from my quarter-deck I presided over a brief
memorial service above the watery graves of our comrades and their
ships. First I told my boys the story of my friend Count von Spee
and his men, and every one of us knew that we, too, might soon be on
our way to join them. But with the difference that we might not even
have a chance to fight it out.
On German ships, the captain is also the chaplain. Every Sunday
aboard the _Seeadler_ we had our hour of prayer and song. When we
had "guests" aboard from enemy ships, we invited them to join with us
in the worship of the Great Ruler of the Waves. Our service followed
the ritual of no particular creed. It was as simple as we simple
seamen could make it. The table which bore the ship's Bible was
draped not only with our German flag but also with the flags of all
the Allied nations whose ships we had captured and under whose
colours our prisoners had sailed. I wanted to make our prisoners
feel that the service was as much theirs as it was ours, and that we
did not feel ourselves any more a chosen people before the Altar of
God than any other people.
My life has not been altogether a pious one. On the contrary, it had
been decidedly blasphemous. My character was then, and still is, far
from saintly. However, I may not have been wholly unfit for the
office of ship's chaplain. I am religious at heart, easily swayed by
sentimental appeal. Had I not been a member of the Salvation Army in
Australia? Those testimonial meetings in Fremantle were still vivid
memories to me. So I was not exactly a greenhorn at conducting a
prayer meeting.
Before concluding our little memorial service, I addressed our
comrades three thousand fathoms below us. No mounds were raised over
their graves, no green grass or kindly flowers had been placed to
cheer them on their journey to the land from which no traveller has
yet returned. Only the waves of the sea. I spoke to them as though
my voice could somehow find its way to their resting place among the
mountain ranges at the bottom of the South Atlantic:
"Glorious fallen comrades, we bring you a message from home. Your
comrades have kept their promise to your commander. On sea and on
land they are fighting for the Fatherland. We of the _Seeadler_
salute you and solemnly swear that we, too, will endeavour to live
and die as gloriously as you. We, too, are hunted on the sea, even
as you were. So perhaps it will not be long ere we join you down
there in Davy Jones's Locker. If we do, our one hope is that we will
be able to fight our last fight as gallantly as did you."
I then led the sailors in a prayer that we repeated aloud, and while
the chorused invocation travelled southward on the winds that blew
toward the Antarctic, four men came forward bearing the great iron
cross.
"A decoration for the graves of heroes!"
At this signal from me the massive emblem slid into the water with
scarcely a splash and flashed swiftly down, down, three thousand
fathoms, to carry our message to Admiral Count von Spee and his men.
XXI
RACING THE ENEMY AROUND CAPE HORN
"Ahoy, shipmate," I said to Leudemann, "you are the fellow who likes
yacht racing. By Joe, it's to be a race now--a race to see who gets
to Cape Horn first."
We knew that, as soon as our former prisoners made port, the news of
our presence in the South Atlantic would be flashed abroad. Then the
British would send their cruisers on the double-quick down the coast
of South America to keep us from doubling the Cape. To be sure, we
had taken care to give ourselves a mighty good start. But in a race
of windjammer against swift cruisers, what is a start of a thousand
miles or so? With decent weather, we had hopes of making it. So far
we had had fair winds and had made good time. But the most difficult
stretch of sea in all the world now lay before us. The storms for
which the Horn is famous often delay sailing ships for weeks.
"And then," responded Leudemann, "even if we do get to the Cape
before any cruisers that may be sent down from the North, they may
have a cruiser or two nosing around at the Pacific end of the
Straits. Unless we round the Horn before those chaps reach Rio, the
jig may be up."
Just south of the Falklands, we caught a wireless from a British
cruiser, a warning message to Allied merchantmen.
Steer clear of Fernando Noronha. German cruiser _Moewe_ reported
there.
"_Moewe_" means "sea gull" in German. "Hail to you, far-distant Sea
Gull, may you fare as well on your warlike flight as we hope to fare
in our Sea Eagle!"
A feeling of homesickness for the old _Moewe_ came over me, as it
does over any sailor at the mention of a ship on which he has sailed.
My service aboard the _Moewe_ had been neither long nor eventful, but
already she had made for herself a heroic reputation. I have always
regretted that I was not with her on her raids. She made several,
slipping out through the blockade, sinking quantities of Allied
shipping, and stealing back into German waters.
She was built just before the war, and originally designed to carry
the exotic banana from Southwest Africa and "German East" to Hamburg.
Plans had just been made to flood Germany with them. Her sister ship
in the banana trade was the _Wolf_, and she, too, became a famous
raider.
All manner of ingenious devices were invented in fitting out the
_Moewe_ for her career as a raider. She was altered so that she
could disguise herself and change disguises while steaming at full
speed just like a quick-change actor. One day she would be a three
or two funnelled steamer, the next she would look like a slow tramp
with one funnel. The line of her deck could be changed in a few
minutes also. She also had fake superstructures that could be raised
or lowered at will. She could even be made longer or shorter in a
few moments by means of a fake section that slipped out from her
stern. One day she would be a tramp, the next, with fake
bulls'-eyes, a liner. These startling metamorphoses were a great
success and enabled her to dodge many an Allied cruiser.
Of course, the British soon got on to the _Moewe's_ quick-change
habits, and were not to be fooled by them. On one of her adventures,
the _Moewe_ was trapped off the eastern coast of South America. The
British cruisers _Glasgow_ and _Amethyst_ were warned by wireless
that the _Moewe_ was steering south from Fernando Noronha to take
coal. So they rushed out from Rio de Janeiro to trap her.
Presently, the _Glasgow_ spotted the _Moewe_ on the horizon. The
German ship had on one of her innumerable disguises, and the captain
of the _Glasgow_ could not recognize her. He was wary, however, and
on to the _Moewe's_ tricks, so he wirelessed her to stand by to be
searched. The _Moewe_ turned and ran south. The _Glasgow_ could
make twenty-five knots and easily outrace her. The _Moewe_ was well
armed with guns and torpedoes and would fight, but she would be no
match for an armoured ship. The men aboard the _Moewe_ seemed as
good as at the bottom of the sea. The _Glasgow_ knew that the
fleeing ship must be the long-sought-for raider, and prepared to sink
her.
The two ships steamed with straining boilers, and the Glasgow was
fast creeping up on the _Moewe_. When almost within range, the
hunted raider ran into one of those sudden rain squalls that sweep
over the ocean. Like the Biblical cloud, it hid her from the
pursuing cruiser. Of course, the _Glasgow_ followed her into the
squall. But as the _Moewe_ ran through the swirling storm, she
passed another steamer, this one steaming north. The cruiser saw
emerging from the squall this new ship. She had three masts. The
_Moewe_ had had but two. The captain of the _Glasgow_ thought only
of the _Moewe's_ ability to disguise herself. He presumed that the
_Moewe_ had taken advantage of the squall to run up a third mast and
then double back on her trail in the hope that the Englishman would
not recognize her and that she might pass safely and even have an
opportunity to torpedo the Glasgow. The cruiser instantly opened
fire, and blew the poor, inoffensive cargo steamer out of the water.
It was only when they examined the wreckage that they discovered that
they had made a mistake and sunk a British freighter! Meanwhile, the
_Moewe_ had escaped once more.
Nor was that the only ship the British sank by mistake. They shelled
two harmless sailing vessels to pieces, mistaking them for our
_Seeadler_. It all came about because of one of those familiar war
rumours, a rumour to the effect that we were already somewhere off
the Australian coast. An Australian cruiser encountered a
Scandinavian three-master, and they seemed to think she was behaving
queerly. Word had been passed around that the _Seeadler_ carried
torpedoes. So the cruiser thought she had better not run any chance
of being blown up. She opened fire at long range. Only ten men
aboard the Scandinavian ship were saved. Later on, the armoured
cruiser _Kent_[1] sank another sailing vessel under similar
circumstances in the Pacific.
[1] See Note B, Appendix.
Sailors since Magellan, by Joe, have talked about the storms around
Cape Horn. Sea stories usually have something about the tough times
rounding the Cape. I had seen those storms myself when I had sailed
in the forecastle, and as a naval officer I had many a time told
tales to my brother officers of gales and tempests I had witnessed in
an old windjammer rounding Horn. But our trip this voyage was to be
the most unusual of all. If the storms held us back, the cruisers
would be almost certain to catch us. We had sailed south in fine
time, and if we made a quick passage round that boisterous tip of
South America, we might slip into the wide Pacific and continue our
raids.
Well, we ran into the dirtiest weather off the Horn, gales and
hurricanes. Why, there were days when even with our motor running we
could make no headway at all. It took us three weeks to beat our way
through the gales and around the point. By that time, the cruisers
lay there in wait for us, not just one or two, but a whole half dozen
of them.
Ordinarily, a sailing ship tries to hug Cape Horn as closely as it
can, keeping quite near land. If you veer too far to the south, you
run into icebergs. Navigating among icebergs with the wind whistling
through your rigging is enough to give any skipper the chills. So
the storms had held us up, and now our best chance probably would be
to steer as wide a course to the south as possible, whether safe or
not. The mountains of ice were there, and a hurricane was blowing.
But we considered the ice the lesser of two evils. The British watch
to the far south was bound to be less vigilant than up nearer the
Cape. We must try to sail around them. So, ho for the Antarctic!
On our way through the blockade, we had steered into the Arctic. Now
here we were heading into the Antarctic.
To make it pleasant, by Joe, the weather, which had been quite decent
to us on the way south, changed in order to give us a regular Cape
Horn welcome. It turned into a veritable hurricane. Nevertheless,
we were determined to carry as much sail as possible. Risky, but we
had to take chances in the hope of getting through. As the tempest
increased, not even the _Seeadler_ dared carry more than a rag or two
of lower sail. With this we tried to hold our way. Through the mist
we saw a great wall. It came moving toward us. A vast wall of
white, an iceberg. The wind was driving this white spectre through
the water, and we had to veer off in order to avoid collision.
To the north were the cruisers, and here, but a few hundred yards
away, an equally relentless enemy bearing down upon us, as though
determined to turn us into the arms of our pursuers. A shout to the
helmsman. Determined as we were to go no farther north, we knew we
could do no more than hug the Antarctic ice field.
The mountain of ice nearest us seemed coming closer and closer--nine
times as much ice below the water as above. As every schoolboy
knows, if a berg looms up two hundred feet above the waves, its base
extends eighteen hundred feet below the surface! How far its sharp
hard edges and spurs may extend on either side you never can tell
unless one of them rips open your hull. The best way to avoid
running into a spur is to turn and run the other way. An iceberg
carries neither lights, lighthouses, buoys, nor sirens. She is a
cold, calculating, merciless Circe, and the wise mariner gives her a
wide berth. Some of us thought the berg was six thousand feet long
while others thought it much more than that. We were so near it that
we could hear the clattering and squawking of the thousands of sea
gulls that swarmed around the ice mountain. In the wild, heaving
sea, the berg rolled like some mammoth ship. There were cracking
sounds as the heaving ice strained and split. Once, under the stress
of the movement, one whole vast corner broke off with a tremendous
rending and tearing. The block, as big as a skyscraper, crashed into
the sea, and before it could start off on a cruise of its own the
waves dashed it into the berg with a noise like thunder, and this
continued time and again as the parent berg drove its husky offspring
before it.
Suddenly, there came an even more ominous scraping sound. The
_Seeadler_ quivered, and our blood fairly froze. We had grazed a
submerged snout of ice. In such a sea, there would have been no
chance to launch lifeboats. Although we had not staved in our hull,
nevertheless, the ship had sprung a leak. No matter who was captain.
Everybody to the pumps. I took my place with the sailors in the
hold, and we all fought to keep the water in check. The brush with
the ice was a warning. We veered a bit more to the north, and with
pumps working madly, passed the berg. The wind wrenched us, the
waves struck us hard, but we kept on, beating our way to the Pacific
and pumping.
"Cruiser ahoy!"
I saw through the storm a 23,000-ton auxiliary cruiser. I believe it
was the _Otranto_, a converted passenger liner, fast and well armed,
capable of blowing us out of the water before our little gun could
throw a shell halfway to her.
"Hard aport," I shouted.
The ship shook as the helm was forced over, and the wind nearly
turned us bottom side up. Storm or no storm, we were all dead men if
that cruiser ever caught us.
"Set all sails."
We must risk it and run with all our canvas before the hurricane, and
perhaps, somehow, we knew not how, in the shelter of the storm, we
might be lucky enough to evade the cruiser.
Only men who have been to sea in windjammers can imagine what it is
to set sail in a hurricane. The canvas whipped as though a devil had
taken hold of it. The masts bent under the force of the wind as it
blasted against the sails. The ship and its rigging creaked and
groaned as though crying out against the sudden strain.
"The cruiser is coming," Leudemann shouted in my ear. "She is making
straight for us."
"More sail on, by Joe," I sang out to the men aloft.
Never mind the hurricane. To the south we go. We'll bury ourselves
in the Antarctic ice before we let them catch us, if the wind doesn't
snap off our masts.
So, with the combined force of the gale and our 1,000-horsepower
motor, we scudded southward. Suddenly, a flooding rain broke over
us, a providential squall if there ever was one. It was like a gift
of heaven. It blotted us out from the cruiser, just like the squall
that rescued the raider _Moewe_.
"It is the hand of God," I shouted. "Our hour hasn't struck yet."
Under cover of the squall, we got away from there as fast as we could
go, and after a few hours we felt certain we had given our pursuer
the slip. In reality, we had not been pursued at all. The cruiser
hadn't even seen us, and our lookout had been sharper than hers. We
learned this from later reports. The ironical thing now would have
been for us to have impaled the _Seeadler_ on an iceberg in that mad
sprint southward. But luck was with us again. The storm blew itself
out.
Still, we were not out of the danger zone. Days went by before we
were safely out of that boisterous region and spreading our wings on
the broad expanse of the Pacific. Cruisers were still watching for
us, and we had to keep a constant lookout. Our problem now was how
to put them off the scent.
The _Seeadler_ carried twenty lifeboats and a corresponding equipment
of life preservers. These were much more than enough for our crew.
We had taken ten of them off captured ships to accommodate our
prisoners in case of necessity. Now we threw all these extra
lifeboats overboard, taking care that on each boat and each life
preserver was painted _Seeadler_. Our hope was that some of them
would be picked up, and that the report would then be sent out that
we had gone down off the Horn. That was exactly what happened. Two
days later we picked up a wireless. It carried the news that a
coastguard cutter had found one of our little boats. Later, two more
were picked up. Then three. All along the coast of South America we
were now given up for lost. The cruisers abandoned the chase and
steamed north.
This left the way clear for us, and now we sailed out to continue our
adventure on the greatest of all the seven seas.
Fourteen days after rounding the Horn, we picked an interesting and
rather puzzling wireless out of the air:
_Seeadler_ gone down with flags flying. Commander and part of crew
taken prisoners and on their way to Montevideo.
"What's that?" I thought. "By Joe, Johnny Bull is telling a whopper."
Now, when old John Bull tells a fib, you can bet, by Joe, that he has
good reason for it. We tried to figure it out, and came to the
conclusion that it had something to do with the scare we had created.
The news that our prisoners had given out at Rio had sent Lloyd's
rates skyward and caused many ships to lie in harbour until the
danger from the German raider had blown over. The British, in order
to bring Lloyd's rates down and to liberate all the shipping that had
been tied up, took pains to spread a highly coloured report of our
disaster dressed up with suitable imaginative trimmings to make it
more convincing.
"Well, Johnny Bull," I thought, "we'll fix you."
Our wireless operator, a very capable fellow, worked out a scheme
with me. "Sparks" sent out the following message purporting to come
from a British ship:
SOS--SOS--German sub....
He cut the message short, as if interrupted, to make it seem as if at
that moment the ship had been torpedoed.
After a suitable interval he sent out another call, this one merely
reporting German submarines off the coast of Chile.
Did Lloyd's rates go up again? And did those ships that were getting
ready to put to sea put back to their berths? Well, you can bet your
boots they did. And we sent out other submarine warnings every so
often just to keep our little joke alive.
These were all small injuries, but we had been sent out to harass the
enemy, and this was one way of doing it. What more could you expect
of a lone windjammer? And then, it's these injuries all added
together that more often than not win the day. It was good sport for
us, anyhow.
XXII
RAIDING THE PACIFIC
The wireless continued to be interesting. We picked up many messages
from the cruiser _Kent_,[1] which was right in our waters; in fact,
much too close for comfort. Our course was northward, with the
Chilean coast and the Andes almost in sight. We steered almost to
the Galapagos Islands, and at Robinson Crusoe's island, San Juan
Fernandez, we trimmed our sails and turned our bow west. We sailed
for weeks on the broad expanse of the Pacific without sighting a
ship. Except for the occasional crackle of the wireless, we were
alone in the world.
[1] See Note C, Appendix.
Our wireless antennæ kept us in touch with the latest phase of the
international situation. Nor was it particularly pleasant on those
long idle days at sea to sit and meditate on the fact that the United
States was going into the war against us. We sailors knew better
than some of our people at home the tremendous power of the great
republic of the West. There were closeted statesmen and generals who
might talk as they pleased about the American lack of military
preparedness and the impossibility of American troops being mustered
and sufficiently trained in time to be of any service in the critical
hour of the war. We sailors had travelled. Many of us had been in
the United States and had served on American ships. All fine
technical points aside, we had had opportunity to sense the might of
the North American giant with its numerous and virile population and
its incalculable wealth. With such strength behind it, even an
awkward, poorly aimed thrust was enough to push almost anyone over.
We caught one radio dispatch that caused us to sit and gaze
hopelessly into the sky. It told of the famous Zimmermann note.
What madness had dictated that extraordinary state paper, which
proposed to Mexico that she join Germany in the war and receive in
return a slice of American territory including Texas? I had served
as a soldier in the Mexican Army, and knew something of its probable
prowess in a war. A few American regiments on the Rio Grande could
hold back the Mexican Army as easily as I can hold a child. And did
our statesmen think the Mexicans were such fools? The folly was one
that could only enrage the people of the United States and make the
Mexicans laugh. We of the German fighting forces could only curse
the luck that had given our country such diplomacy. All it succeeded
in negotiating was new enemies and fewer friends.
The American declaration of war came as a blow expected, but hard
nevertheless. Some of the more pessimistic of us could spell the
doom of Germany in it. It altered the position of our buccaneering
expedition somewhat, too. It reduced the number of neutral ports
into which we might sail. It also increased the number of cruisers
we had to look out for. However, neutral ports did not enter into
our calculations much. All ports really were hostile, anyhow.
Neutrals would limit us to a short, inhospitable stay, the wireless
stations near by would broadcast our presence, and the cruisers would
come flocking. The American naval ships didn't mean much either.
They would doubtless be kept, nearly all of them, to guard the
Atlantic shipping lanes for the passage of American troop transports
and leave what patrol of the Pacific was necessary to the British and
Japanese. The principal change of circumstance for us was that now
we could take American prizes.
We steered across the Pacific past the Marquesas, far to the south of
Hawaii. We made the waters near Christmas Island our cruising
ground. There, near the equator, the eastbound and westbound routes
for sailing ships crossed. We sailed backward and for ward, crossing
the equator two and three times each day.
We captured three American ships in these waters, the _A. B.
Johnson_, the _R. C. Slade_, and the _Manila_. Our prisoners
numbered forty-five men, one woman, and a pet opossum. The captains
were not half so astonished and bewildered as the former captains
when we unmasked ourselves as a buccaneer. They knew that the
sailing ship raider was abroad. So we were deprived of some of our
former amusement of astounding and befuddling officers and crews by
suddenly hoisting the German flag, unmasking our cannon, firing a
machine gun into their rigging, and similar pleasantries. Everything
went off according to routine.
On one occasion we ran into a most intricate complication. We had
expected the complications of war and piratical strategy. That was
part of the game. But at the time to which I refer we were faced
with a new and tender complication, a romantic complication.
"He's got his wife along," Boarding Officer Preiss informed me.
He referred to an officer of one of the ships. Indeed, we had
noticed a woman aboard the captured ship.
The officer in question presently introduced me to his helpmate, and
a knockout she was, pretty, petite, and--well, just a bit roguish.
"By Joe," I thought, "the sailors of these days are marvellous
fellows. Where do they get these swell-looking wives? When I was in
the forecastle, it was different."
In those days, an officer's wife was something to run away from,
usually fat, usually savage, and always sloppily dressed. I thought
of all the windjammer captains under whom I had sailed, and I
couldn't think of one who had a wife that looked like a chorus girl.
Well, times do change! There was the captain we had captured in the
Atlantic who had such a pleasant little bride, and now here was this
officer and his sprightly beauty.
I guess I can also add myself to the list. Here I am, skipper of a
peaceful windjammer now, taking my three-master the _Vaterland_
around the world, and I have my wife along. I have already described
Irma, the fairy princess of my green island in the Canaries. Yes,
sailors' wives have improved in looks these days.
Aboard the _Seeadler_ we greeted the pretty little lady with great
cordiality. Our former fair company had been so pleasant that we
anticipated another similar brightening of the dull monotony aboard.
The monotony was indeed broken somewhat! But in a decidedly
different way than we had expected. The officer had not been long
aboard before he took me aside and made an awkward and somewhat
embarrassed confession. He had been thinking things over.
"Count," he said, "in your reports you may say something about my
having my wife along."
"Yes," I replied.
"Well, by Joe," he continued, "I wish you wouldn't say anything about
it. Don't say anything about my having a wife along. My real wife
might find it out, and then there would be hell to pay."
"Oho," I exclaimed, "so that's the way the wind blows, eh?"
"I said she was my wife," he continued lamely, "because I thought it
might help to save her from your sailors. But I don't want my wife
to find it out."
"All right, sir," I said, "I won't report it, and I won't let my
officers or crew know anything about it. That will be best. Treat
the girl as your wife. I will keep my mouth shut, and you keep your
mouth shut."
It was a difficult point of morals aboard ship. If the sailors found
out that the girl was not the officer's wife, but only a kind of
stowaway, they would lose all respect for her, and there was no
telling what they might try to do. Sailors are not angels, but
usually, in fact, a lot of rogues, but they are highly respectable.
They have a very fine code of honour, and a woman who is off the line
is simply off the line to them. Certainly, I did not want them to
know that the officer's wife was not the officer's wife.
One of my prisoners turned out to be an acquaintance of the officer
of the ... I told him that the officer of the ... had his wife along,
and introduced him to the girl. He laughed so hard he nearly fell
over. He wanted to tell the joke all around. It was awkward for a
moment, but I got the two men aside and talked earnestly to them.
"We must be gentlemen in this matter," I said. "She is a girl. We
are men. We must protect her. The sailors must not know about it.
You must both give me your word of honour that you will keep mum and
tell nobody."
They both promised.
Everything went all right until this other prisoner took a shine to
the girl, too. It was funny business. She kind of liked him. I
kept an eye on the whole affair and saw what was happening. Here was
more worry and trouble. I took the two men aside and said to them:
"I don't care what arrangements you two fellows make with your fair
playmate, but it has got to be kept quiet. The sailors must think
that she is the wife of the officer of the ... and that ... is only a
friend."
They made some kind of change, I believe. I never could figure just
how it was. I never was much good at mathematics or at figuring out
anything, for that matter. At any rate, they kept it quiet. The
other prisoner was married, too, and he didn't want anything of the
complicated romance to get around either.
I had come to expect my prisoners to be good company. Our former
Captains' Club had been one of the most delightful social
organizations ever formed. These two sentimental swains, however,
were not much good for comradeship. It was difficult to get together
with them for a pleasant chat or game of cards. They were always
thinking about the girl, and, although they were acquaintances in
captivity, their feelings toward each other had become slightly
strained. There is something about the air down there in the South
Seas, I guess.
One of the captains made up for the companionship that had been
lacking. He was a fine fellow. He was jovial and intelligent, and a
thorough seaman if there ever was one. We became fast friends and
had many a long and sympathetic talk about the war.
Weeks passed, and we did not see another ship. The idle days became
very boresome. It was broiling hot, and we had little exercise. Our
water turned stale, and we had no fresh provisions. Our prisoners
did not find their stay with us so pleasant now, but we could not
find a vessel on which to ship them. One decided that he could not
stand it any longer, He wanted to put his feet on land at any price.
He came to me with a strange idea. Would I not land him on a desert
island and leave him there a castaway? Anything was better than
shipboard. But the principal part of his plan was more subtle. He
would be reckoned dead at home, and his people would collect his
insurance money. Perhaps I would be so kind as to make it seem
certain that he was lost. Yes, no? On the island he could live as a
Robinson Crusoe, a kind of existence which he fancied would be quite
agreeable. Unfortunately for him, I felt obliged to decline. I was
not interested in swindling insurance companies.
XXIII
SHIPWRECKED IN SOUTHERN SEAS
We amused ourselves by playing with the sharks. The landlubber can
scarcely imagine the hatred the sailor feels for those bloodthirsty
monsters. We had a particular grievance against them. A swim now
and then would have provided us with needed baths and would have been
a pleasant and vigorous diversion from the endless monotony of cabin
and deck, our wooden prison. Many a time I looked down into the
cool, refreshing element, and a shark would idle beneath my gaze, as
though waiting for me there. The sailors passed the time by angling
for the voracious monsters. They would catch a couple, tie their
tails together and throw them back into the water. The sharks,
unable to agree on the direction of their mutual movement, would have
a great tug of war. The sailors thought the plight of their loathed
enemies quite comical.
Or they would take a large shark, tie an empty and watertight barrel
to his tail, and heave him over. The fish would dart downward, but
the barrel would stay relentless at the surface. Now would ensue a
desperate struggle which we could follow by watching the gyrations of
the barrel. The sharks displayed an excellent eye for chunks of
bacon with hand grenades in them. When the bomb went off in the
creature's stomach, pieces of shark would go flying in all directions.
We had been in the Pacific for five months now, and had sailed 35,000
miles. With our stale water and the lack of fresh food, scurvy was
breaking out among our men, and then beri-beri, which "turns the
blood to water." Limbs and joints were swelling. We imperatively
needed fresh water and food and a rest on shore. But where could we
go? All the islands of the Pacific were in the hands of the French,
British, and Japanese. We certainly felt it keenly, now that the
whole world was against us. There was no inhabited place that would
welcome us. It made us feel very lonely.
"Well," I said to my boys, "we will pick out some nice deserted
island where there will be no hand raised against us and no wireless
to call the cruisers, and we will get water and some kind of
vegetables and maybe shoot some game and have a fine shore leave.
Then, after we have rested up, what ho, boys, and away for more
adventure."
Buccaneering in the Pacific, with only three ships sunk in five
months, seemed much too unprofitable. I planned that, after a brief
sojourn on some peaceful South Sea Isle, we would sail for the
Antipodes. Then we would destroy the English whaling station and oil
tanks at South Georgia, sink a few ships, capture one on which to
ship our prisoners, and, if we got away safely, continue our cruise
in the prosperous waters of the Atlantic.
Our first plan was to sail direct to one of the larger Cook Islands.
But we gave that up for fear of finding a wireless station there that
might give us away. We did not want to move east of our present
longitude, for that would have taken us against the trade wind and
compelled us to use our motor. It was necessary to save the engine
as much as possible and not have it wear out on us. We hoped we
would need it for further captures and escapes. Mopelia, one of the
Society Islands (some geographies include it in the Scilly Isles),
seemed about right for our purpose. It was a French possession, and,
so far as we knew, uninhabited. It was one of those isles of the
South Seas so fantastically beautiful and so awkward for the sailor
to approach. Only seldom does he find one with a decent anchorage,
and nowhere in the world are the winds and currents more treacherous.
On the morning of July 29th, we sighted Mopelia, and steered toward
it. Words fail me when I try to describe its beauties. From the
blue ocean rises a mass of green palms. The sunlight glows in the
green. It somehow even seems to turn the sunlight green. Against
the dark blue of the sea and the light blue of the sky, the sunlight
seems to be drawing the green island out of the water, and the soft
south wind carries the scent of flowers far out to sea. It is the
greeting of the island, and we inhale it deeply.
Here was a typical coral atoll--the kind you dream about. A circular
reef studded with waving palms and within the reef a lovely, placid
lagoon. The coral shore was snow white, and, with the sun's rays
reflecting from it, it looked like a sparkling jewel set in an
alabaster ring, like emeralds set in ivory. There were coral
terraces below the water. The shallower ones were white or pale
green, and as you peered deeper into the water you saw every
conceivable tint of green and blue, sea green, emerald green, blue
green, azure blue, sapphire blue, navy blue, violet.
As we sailed nearer and nearer that alluring coral shore, we saw
flowers among the palms, flowers of all colours, and immense numbers
of orchids. The hues of the flowers were reflected in the water over
the white coral that deepened and turned green. Within the circular
reef the lagoon seemed fully as deep as the sea outside, only at
perfect peace and smooth like a mirror. It would have made a perfect
anchorage for us, save that it had one entrance so narrow that only a
small boat could pass through it.
A strong current ran through the opening. We cast our anchor on the
coral and tethered our ship to it with a long cable. The pull of the
current kept her far enough offshore. I was afraid, for a while,
that a shift of the wind might blow her on the reef, but we saw,
after a while, that she had dragged anchor. If the current were
strong enough for that, why surely it would be strong enough to keep
her from blowing ashore. Leaving several men aboard as a watch, we
went on land for a glorious shore leave, sailors, officers,
prisoners, and all.
What would we find? We wanted water and fresh food. When we got
inside of the lagoon, we found to our astonishment that it was a
breeding place for turtles. There were hundreds of them in the water
and on the shore, huge fellows weighing two or three hundred pounds.
The water was full of beautiful fish. I recognized the moray, a fish
like the eel, which is a great delicacy and will provide you with a
substantial meal, too. It weighs from fifteen to twenty pounds.
They say the Romans used to feed their slaves to this fish. There
were big lobsters without claws that promised to be the best of food.
The atoll was alive with birds, hundreds of thousands of them, with
nests and eggs everywhere. They were so tame that one of my boys
whom I sent to collect enough eggs for an omelette returned, saying:
"I didn't get an egg. The birds were so tame and trusting that I
hadn't the heart to disturb them and take their eggs."
Nor was the island without human inhabitants. We found three
Kanakas, Polynesians who had been left there by a French firm to
catch turtles. They were greatly frightened when they found that we
were Germans. The French had told them frightful tales about the
_Boches_. We, however, quickly made friends with them. They were
much relieved when they found that we did not intend to injure them,
and when we made amicable overtures, they were only too glad to
respond.
First, my boys ran hither and thither to satisfy their curiosity
about this strange island. Then they quickly settled down to useful
occupations. Some set about catching fish and lobsters. Others
gathered birds' eggs. A few brought armfuls of cocoanuts. Three
boys turned a big turtle on its back and pulled it along with a rope.
There were wild pigs on the island. We shot a couple. Soon the boat
put out to the ship loaded deeply with a huge collection of epicurean
delicacies. That night the mess was fit for the table of a royal
palace--turtle soup with turtle eggs, broiled lobster, omelettes of
gull's eggs, roast pork, and, for dessert, fresh cocoanut.
For days we lived a delightful poetic life, dining in a way that
millionaires could not afford. We smoked quantities of fish and pork
and stowed it away. We found fresh water on the island and refilled
our tanks. Our traces of scurvy and beri-beri disappeared, and we
were rapidly getting ready to continue our cruise and work of havoc
in Australian waters.
On the second of August, we made ready to leave the ship for another
day ashore. At nine-thirty I noticed a strange bulge on the eastern
rim of the sea. I called my officers' attention to it. At first we
thought it a mirage. But it kept growing larger. It came toward us.
Then we recognized it--a tidal wave such as is caused by submarine
earthquake and volcanic disturbances. The danger was only too clear.
We lay between the island and the wave.
"Cut the anchor cable. Clear the motor. All hands on deck."
We dared not raise sail, for then the wind would drive us on the
reef. So our only hope of getting clear of the island was our motor.
The huge swell of the tidal wave was rushing toward us with breakneck
speed.
The motor didn't stir. The mechanics were working frantically. They
pumped compressed air into the engine. We waited in vain for the
sound of the ignition. Now, right at the critical moment, our motor
had failed us, just as it had so often failed us before. By this
time, the tidal wave was only a few hundred yards away. We were
lost. To our frightened eyes it looked like a whole mountain range
of water. It must have been thirty or forty feet high. It came
rushing with a roar that drowned out our voices.
A gigantic, violent hand seemed to grasp the ship. The wave swung
her on high and threw her forward. It flung us crashing on the coral
reef. Our masts and rigging went over, broken like matchsticks. The
shattering impact of the ship smashed the coral, and pieces flew in
all directions like shrapnel from an exploding shell. The swirling
water seized great pieces of coral and whipped them around, beating
them against the ship. The _Seeadler_ had heeled over until her deck
was almost perpendicular. The water swept over the deck, and the
swirling eddies bombarded us with chunks of coral. I clung to an
iron post near the lower rail. The rail saved me from the tons of
shattered coral that were hurled up by the blow of the falling ship.
In a moment, the wave had ebbed away, leaving us high and dry. It
had passed over the circling reef and the lagoon, though not over the
main part of the island. And on its way it had swept hundreds of
thousands of birds' nests into the lagoon.
I arose, scarcely knowing whether I was alive or dead, and stood
alone with one foot on my slanting deck and the other on the rail.
For a moment, I thought I was the only one saved.
"Boys, where are you?" I shouted weakly.
"Here," came the reply, "still standing like an oak."
My men and the prisoners had taken refuge in the bow, and had been
sheltered by the rail, as I had been. Not a one was injured. For
that at least we could be thankful. For that and not much else. The
_Seeadler_ was a total wreck. The jagged coral was rammed deep into
our hull.
We stand like an oak! I adopted the reply of my sailors as our motto
henceforth. We were castaways on this coral atoll in one of the
loneliest and least-visited reaches of the South Pacific. Everything
lost, but "we stand like an oak."
XXIV
CASTAWAYS ON A CORAL ATOLL
The last German colony! We founded it on this beautiful, isolated
coral atoll in the middle of the Pacific. The Imperial German flag
of war flew from the top of the tallest palm. I was the viceroy, by
chance and not by desire, of course, and my sailors and our prisoners
were my subjects. The only visiting nationals from elsewhere were
the three Kanakas, the turtle catchers. "The White King of the
Society Isle of Mopelia," my mate facetiously called me. One of the
Yankee captains put it differently. He called me "the Sea Devil King
of the South Seas." And he caustically described our lovely isle as
"a poisoned paradise." Everybody was good-humoured, despite our hard
luck.
But our little South Sea colony passed its first nights uneasily.
For sleeping places, we slung hammocks between the palms. At
intervals, a cocoanut would fall from a height of fifty or sixty feet
and go whizzing close by a man's head. While our fellow countrymen
back in the cities along the Rhine were complaining about the night
raids of the French and British bombing squadrons, we had our bombing
problem also. It didn't make much difference whether you were bumped
off with a falling cocoanut or a falling bomb. The result was all
the same. After one whizzed by your ear, you would very likely go
down to the open beach to quiet your nerves. Then if you tried to
sleep there, the land crabs would soon convince you that the beach
was no place for a weary war veteran either. Patrols of fighting
marine crabs would raid that beach every night. After being chased
out by the crabs, you would go back to your hammock and lie awake
wondering when the next aërial cocoanut bombardment would commence.
So life during those first days on our tropic isle was not all
skittles and beer or orchids and cocoanut milk. You can bet we
worked hard getting up huts! Luckily, there were no casualties from
either crabs or cocoanuts. We cleared a large space for our village,
and built huts out of timbers, sailcloth, and palm leaves. The first
one up was a queer-looking thing, but our architecture improved with
practice. Our prisoners, who were all Americans, helped us a great
deal. They understood the art of pitching tents. They built a
special town for themselves, and gave the streets such names as
Broadway, State Street, Pennsylvania Avenue, and the Bowery. In time
we contrived to arrange quite decent dwelling places. We had plenty
of furnishings. From the wrecked _Seeadler_, which remained perched
forlornly on the coral reef, we took everything we could carry. We
even built a chapel, took the Bible from the _Seeadler_, and from
parts of the wreck we built a fine altar and crucifix. Of course, we
also installed our wireless set ashore in order to keep in touch with
passing ships and events happening out on this side of the world.
Nor did we neglect to take ashore a heavy arsenal of arms and
ammunition, including rifles, Luger pistols, hand grenades, and
dynamite. In short, we had a perfect little town with everything
except a calaboose. Some of our men who had romantic tendencies
constructed "country homes" for themselves a few hundred yards away
in the jungle. Then we named the place Seeadlerburg, Sea Eagle Town.
There were gull's eggs everywhere along the shore, but the birds were
brooding now, and most of the eggs we collected had half-formed
little gulls in them. We got around this by clearing a large section
of beach and throwing the old eggs into the lagoon. Then the gulls
flocked back and laid more eggs, and thus a supply of fresh eggs was
assured.
Our American prisoners were nearly all cheery fellows. Some of them
fitted in with the new life better than my men. They seemed to know
all about the art of fishing, and taught us Germans things we had
never dreamed of. They were accustomed to what in the States, along
the Gulf of Mexico, is called spearing eels. They fastened iron
barbs to shafts of wood and with these speared big fish in the coral
lagoon. They also showed us a clever way of catching fish on a grand
scale. They took some forty men and boys and, just as high tide was
turning, formed in a line about fifty yards offshore. Then the line
came splashing in, driving the fish before it toward shore, just as
the natives round up tigers for a rajah in India. Many of the fish
floundered into shallow water, and a few minutes later were left
stranded by the receding tide. You see, the water, as it backed
offshore, left large pools on top of the irregular coral reef, and
there the fish were trapped. Sometimes we caught five or six hundred
pounds a day, and it was exciting sport.
One night, while we were sitting around our fire, we heard a
scratching sound. It seemed to come from everywhere. We looked and
found a lot of crabs with big claws. They were hermit crabs. We
caught several and put them in boiling water to cook. Meanwhile, the
crab invasion continued, and more from behind kept pushing the rest
forward. We tried the ones we had cooked, and they were delicious.
They were as good as the best lobster.
"By Joe," I said, "boys, let's get busy."
We spread out a large sail and filled it up with crabs, like a sack.
We must have had several thousand of them. For days we lived on
them, until most of us couldn't look a crab in the face. We had 'em
boiled, broiled, and in soup. Then that invasion of these hermits
passed as mysteriously as it had come, and we never saw them again.
But the turtles were always with us. We caught a number of them and
kept them in a coral basin at one end of the lagoon.
The wild pigs on the island provided us with more fun and more food.
They fed on cocoanuts, which is the best kind of fodder to make good
pork. These animals were said to be the descendants of swine brought
to the South Seas by early explorers long ago. They are found on
many islands, and New Zealand is a regular paradise for them and for
the hunter who likes to chase wild pigs. After generations of living
on cocoanuts, they had changed a lot and had developed a special kind
of tusk and jaw.
There were snipe on our island, too, and we hunted them with great
success, thereby varying our sea food and pork diet. Using cocoanut
shells for fuel, we smoked what flesh and fish we could.
By way of vegetables, we had cocoanuts, and bread made of cocoanut
flour, which the Kanakas taught us to prepare, and hearts of palms.
This latter is one of the rarest of delicacies, and outside the
tropics only multimillionaires can afford it. The price, when you
get palm hearts in Europe, is higher than that of Russian caviar.
For the most part, it is reserved for castaway sailors and buccaneers
like ourselves. It is the core taken from the very tip of the
cocoanut palm, right where the new leaves form. For each heart,
weighing about ten pounds, a noble palm has to be sacrificed. The
taste is between that of hazel nuts and asparagus, only finer and
sweeter than either.
But I must tell you more about that invasion of hermit crabs. It
caused the first and only fatality in the course of all our
adventures. My dog Schnaeuzchen had all of the prying, curious
nature of the dachshund. The island, with its teeming life, was an
endless source of wonder to her. She investigated everything,
forever had her nose sniffing somewhere or other. The swarming
hermit crabs, which covered the ground almost like a carpet, sent her
into a perfect spasm of astonishment. She jumped and barked and
yelped. She cocked one eye and studied the strange creatures, and
quite obviously did not like their looks. They crawled on all sides
of her, and she was filled with bewilderment and fright. She was
furious with them, but kept nimbly out of their way. Finally,
however, the pugnacity of her dachs nature got the better of her, and
she felt she must attack something. A particularly large and
villainous-looking crab excited her ire. She leaped upon it to
devour it. The crab raised its great, ferocious claws to strike at
her. Schnaeuzchen gave a strange yelp of fright, and rolled over in
a spasm. She kicked convulsively for a few moments, and then was
still--dead. Poor little Schnaeuzchen! The exotic life of the South
Seas had been too much for her. She was only two years old, and on
the island she had for the first time found an opportunity to give
vent to her passion for hunting. We gave her a fine grave, and
planted a cocoa palm on it. Her comrade, Piperle, looked around
disconsolately for her and was sad for a long time.
Piperle had an adventure with the birds. He undertook one day to
invade one of the densely populated rookeries. Somehow or other, he
contrived to antagonize the birds. I suppose he tried to raid a
nest. The angry gulls swarmed above him. One seized one ear.
Another seized the other. Several struck at his eyes. One hung on
to his tail. Piperle howled and struggled. It was at this point
that one of our men saw him execute an intelligent bit of strategy.
There was a clump of underbrush near by. He struggled toward it,
taking the birds with him. He dragged himself into the brush and
thereby shook off the birds. He returned to camp a sadly mishandled
dog, and never went near any of the rookeries again. From then on he
confined his courage and daring to chasing the wild pigs at night,
which he did with a prodigious barking and yelping. The pet opossum
that our prisoners had carefully rescued from the wreck picked up an
excellent living on the island, and came into the messroom every
night, asking for water.
If our new home teemed with useful, edible creatures, it was not
lacking in pestilential forms of life, either, these both of native
origin and imported from ships. A thousand kinds of insects were
everywhere. If you awakened thirsty at night and reached for your
glass of water, you were likely to find that it contained more
cockroaches than water. You had to reconcile yourself to getting up
in the morning and finding your toothbrush alive with ants. The ants
were particularly pervasive. We could only guard against them by
putting the legs of tables, chairs, and other articles of furniture
in cups of water. We slept at night to the ceaseless shuffle of
rats, huge insolent fellows, running about on the tops of our tents.
Piperle waged war against them, but the odds were too great. It
would have taken a whole regiment of terriers to end that plague.
Flashing birds of paradise flew from palm to palm. Gorgeous humming
birds with green and yellow breasts darted among the branches. With
every flower there seemed to be a great butterfly. The whole island
was aglow with butterflies. They floated on wide, beating wings of
greens, violets, and reds.
Once, in the middle of the night, I was awakened by a small, sharp,
repeated sound--knick, knick, knack. It was the opening of tropical
flowers. I went outside and there I saw the lovely Queen of Night,
which blossoms by the light of the tropical stars. It is a great,
gorgeous bloom, eight or ten inches across. There were thousands of
them. Scores of glowworms, far brighter than any we know, hovered
above each, eager to catch the magnificent perfume that the opening
Queen of Night gives forth. In the darkness I could see the flowers
only by the light of the glowworms. On every side were these eerie
nocturnal lights, a dancing lamp of gathered glowworms illuminating
each flower. In that unearthly gleaming, like a kind of moonlight
only stranger, the odorous petals shone with the ghostly nuances of
their naturally flaming colours, white, crimson, sapphire blue,
violet blue. In the South Seas, the flowers have little scent by
day, while the sun shines on them. At night, when the dew falls,
perfume awakens. It is truly a perfumed night. And the nostrils of
man are excited by the rich and almost oppressive blending of odours.
The Queen of Night gives off the perfume of vanilla. Mingled with it
comes the scent of hyacinth, orchid, mayflower, and heliotrope.
Sweet-smelling breezes blow, and above is the tropical sky with its
clustered flashing stars and gorgeous Milky Way. Hanging above the
horizon is the far-famed Southern Cross.
XXV
LET'S GO RAIDING AGAIN
My "subjects" somehow managed to get along on terms of general amity.
Our American prisoners took no exception to my mandates handed on to
them by Leudemann, my prime minister. They said that, since they had
been treated so well aboard the _Seeadler_, they wanted no other
command over our colony. The two captains and their lady had made
mutually satisfactory arrangements among themselves, and, so far as
we knew, there was no unpleasant incident, although, for the purposes
of my tale, it would have helped a lot if they had fought a duel with
swords or cocoanuts or chunks of jagged coral on the shore of our
tropic lagoon.
The three Kanakas proved to be thoroughly good fellows and helped us
in many ways. We got along with them in pidgin English at first
until one of them picked up a little German.
In the middle of the camp we made a sort of plaza. The _Seeadler's_
batteries furnished electric light for it, and there we gathered
every night. We still had plenty of champagne and cognac left from
the capture of the champagne ship. So, in the cool of the evening,
we sat out there on the edge of this equatorial Potsdammer Platz
sipping drinks out of wine and brandy glasses, just as we might have
at the Adlon in Berlin. There was plenty of pipe tobacco, and Dr.
Pietsch had taken care to rescue from the wreck a store of his
endless cigars. The wind blew, the stars shone, and the orchestra
alternately played German classics from the operas and American
ragtime melodies. Ah, yes, this last bit of the once glorious
overseas German Empire wasn't such a bad little paradise at all. We
castaways out there in the solitude of the South Seas felt as though
we were the only people left in the world, like Noah and his family
on Mount Ararat.
But after about three weeks of this Garden-of-Eden-without-an-Eve
existence, the monotony of it began to get on our nerves. Of course,
there was the "wife" of the officer of the ... but she was far too
busy to be interested in the rest of us. We hadn't been sent out to
colonize the South Seas and take life easy. So we cast about for a
way to go buccaneering again. Our first need was for a ship to take
the place of our unfortunate three-master impaled out there on the
coral reef. The Kanakas told us that a French sailing vessel visited
the island every year to take away turtle meat. The best guess that
they could make was that it would be another six months or so before
she arrived. Well, after six months, we would have a ship. We could
always fall back on that. But, by Joe, six months was a long time to
wait. The war might be won or lost by then. And it was highly
unlikely that any other ship would stray into those waters for Heaven
knows how long. We all grew impatient. Few sailors are keen about
remaining cast away on a tropical isle for long, and especially on an
atoll as small as Mopelia. We felt the itch to get out to sea again.
I was particularly anxious to set something stirring. Before long
the tropical sun and lazy life would sap my men's vitality, and all
they would be good for would be to loll around.
We still had our lifeboats, and the hurricane season was not on. So
why not put to sea in one of them? We devised rigging and sails for
our best lifeboat, mast, jib boom, main boom, gaff, stays, and back
stays. We scraped, caulked, and painted her. She was not in any too
good condition, and despite our labour she continued to leak a bit
and needed constant bailing. Even in calm weather, we had to bail
forty pails a day. We loaded her with provisions for half a dozen
men over a long voyage. She was eighteen feet in length and only
about fourteen inches above water amidship. Into this small space we
stored water, hardtack, machine guns, rifles, hand grenades, and
pistols. The only luxuries we allowed ourselves were a few tins of
pemmican, a side of bacon, and an accordion. The music of the
squealer was to be our solace during a cruise the length of which
none could foretell. The great question was, could our tiny craft
survive a storm? At any rate, she could sail, and that was
something. We christened her the _Kronprinzessin Cecilie_--without,
however, painting her name on the stern.
Of course, everybody wanted to go, but there could be only six of us
at the most. So I picked the men who seemed to be in the most
vigorous health at the time, Mate Leudemann, Lieutenant Kircheiss,
Engineer Krauss, Boatswain Parmien, and Yeoman Erdmann. This left
the colony on the atoll in the hands of Lieutenant Kling.
Our overloaded cockleshell with a crew of six was the smallest
auxiliary cruiser in the war. For cruiser we were, and we were
setting out to capture a ship, sail back to Mopelia, pick up our
comrades there, and continue our raid. To find and take a ship on
the high sea was a doubtful proposition, but we might get to some of
the other islands, not too well populated and guarded, and find a
vessel at anchor. We could board her at night, overpower the captain
and crew, and sail off with her. We planned first of all to visit
the Cook Islands, some eight hundred miles distant, and if we found
no ship there, continue on another thousand miles farther to the Fiji
Islands, where there were sure to be ships loading with copra for the
ammunition factories of Europe. We figured on making around sixty
nautical miles a day, so that, if we had to go all the way to the
Fijis, it would take us approximately thirty days. Thus we should be
back with a ship in three months at most. We discussed our tactics
thoroughly for the expected capture. We would steal aboard.
Half-past three in the morning was the best hour. Men sleep their
soundest then. A couple of us would go to the officers' cabins, the
rest to the forecastle. We would show our pistols, disarm them, and
herd them below. It would be good to sneak to their clothing first
and take away their belts and snip the buttons off their trousers.
Then, when you have them put on their clothes they stand, without
belts, suspenders, or buttons, holding up their trousers. Thus they
are helpless. We had a few bombs loaded only with powder, harmless,
but capable of making a terrific noise. If there is any trouble, you
throw one. It hurts nobody, but the terrible explosion creates a
general panic. A couple of men with their heads about them can do
wonders with dozens in a panic. Another good thing is to have a
couple of fellows outside shout suddenly and make a great
disturbance. That creates excitement and throws people off their
guard. I said to my bo's'n:
"Don't hurt anybody unless you have to. We don't want to spoil our
clean record by killing anybody. But, by Joe, if a captain or a
watchman raises a rifle or a pistol, don't wait till he shoots. Get
him first."
On a bright summer morning--August 23, 1917, to be exact--we all
shook hands. There was no cheering, merely quiet, earnest words of
friendship and good luck. It was the first time that we sixty-four
seamen had parted since the _Seeadler_ had set sail to run the
blockade eight months before, and it was only now, at the moment of
saying good-bye, that we realized how closely attached to one another
we had become. We who were going could see a brooding question in
the eyes of those who were staying behind:
"How will that overloaded cockleshell stand heavy weather?"
Never mind, we would probably find out soon enough. The
understanding was that, if we did not return in three months,
something had happened to us. They should wait for us until then.
Afterward, Kling and his men were to get away from the atoll as best
they could.
We sailed out of the lagoon, through the coral entrance, into the
open sea. The hulk of the _Seeadler_ lay there helpless on the reef.
The tide was high, and the breakers swept over the coral. She was a
red brown now from rust and weathering. Each flooding billow raised
her a bit, and then she sank back hopelessly with loud groans and
creaks of despair on the coral bed. As we passed her she seemed to
call over to us:
"Come aboard, I want to take you on your voyage. Don't desert your
old friend."
And as a wave raised her it seemed as though she were struggling to
get on an even keel again and come to us, only to find that the coral
held her in a relentless grasp. Tears filled our eyes.
"Good-bye, _Seeadler_" I called; "perhaps we shall never see you
more. And even if we do, you can never sail again. Nevermore will
songs resound on your decks. Nevermore will you raise your sails and
fly a flag from your masts."
A brisk wind carried us westward with a swelling of our sails. The
happy island receded. The last German colony and the wreck of the
_Seeadler_ slowly dropped out of sight over the rim of the horizon.
To-day the _Seeadler_ still remains on the reef at Mopelia. After we
had gone, Lieutenant Kling, afraid that the stumps of her mast might
attract a passing warship, blew them out with dynamite. The
explosion set a fire that burned away part of the woodwork. A
quantity of ammunition still aboard blew up and cracked the forepart
of the hulk. Afterward, when the _Seeadler's_ history became
generally known, the Harris-Irby Cotton Company of New York, which
had originally owned the ship as the _Pass of Balmaha_, investigated
the possibilities of salvaging the ship. A party of engineers was
sent to Mopelia. They reported that the ship was unsalvageable. In
my cruise around the world aboard the _Vaterland_ I shall stop at the
island and survey what once was my tropical domain. And again I
shall board the old _Seeadler_ on which we sailed and raided. So,
until then, old ship! _Auf wiedersehen!_
XXVI
FROM THE SOCIETY ISLANDS TO THE COOK ISLANDS IN
AN OPEN BOAT
It has been something of a sport of recent years to cross the
Atlantic and even the Pacific in a small boat, sometimes under sail
and sometimes under motor power. Tiny craft have done it, and at
best it is not a comfortable kind of voyage. In sporting events,
your ocean-going small boat always had a cabin, or an imitation of
one. That is what we should have had, but we were not so lucky, and,
besides, the load we carried made existence aboard our lifeboat that
had been converted into a cruiser a cramped affair indeed.
There was only one place we could trust to be dry, the buoyant air
tanks at the sides of the boat. In these we packed our hardtack, a
few pieces of clothing, photographic apparatus, and the all-important
tobacco. It affected the buoyancy of our craft, but we had to keep
some things away from the sea water. In the body of the boat were
placed the water tanks, our large supply of weapons and ammunition,
cordage for the rigging, and several spare sails. Canvas shields at
the side, which could be drawn over at the top and be made to form
some kind of tent, sheltered us somewhat from waves and dirty
weather. Without these we should have been practically drowned.
Four mattresses could be stretched on the bottom, where four men
could sleep while two kept watch. As a concession to civilization,
we had six pairs of knives and forks, six mugs, a coffee pot, and
$5,000 in silver, gold, and paper, much of it in pounds sterling.
At six in the morning, the two men on watch filled the coffee pot and
applied fire to it from a soldering lamp. With the slightest breeze
and a rocking of the boat, it was impossible to bring the water to a
boil. Then we were glad to get tepid coffee-bean soup instead of
coffee. After toilets had been made with salty sea water, we
squatted in the cockpit for breakfast of coffee and hardtack.
Navigation was difficult in so small a boat. It was impossible to
spread the charts out properly, and with the slightest carelessness
the wind might take our priceless navigation papers overboard. We
had to use the sextant and other navigation instruments in a boat
that often pitched so much we could scarcely stand. The papers,
charts, tables, logarithms, and so on, got sopping wet, and when we
dried them in the sun they grew swollen and difficult to handle.
It was cool at night, but not unpleasant so long as our clothes were
dry. The weather was fair, but an occasional whale would come
alongside and douse us with the spray of his spout. Then, in our
damp clothing, we felt the chill of the night. The days were
broiling hot, but even while taking advantage of what little shade we
had, we grew heavy and torpid. We had, above all things, to be
careful of our water supply. We never dared drink enough to quench
our thirst completely, and were, in fact, continually thirsty.
By way of amusement, we had readings aloud from the one book we had
brought along, Fritz Reuter's comic story, _A Trip to
Constantinople_, and at night the squealer wheezed and blared, and we
whiled away the tedious hours singing old German folk songs.
After three days we sighted Atiu, the first island of the Cook group
and a British possession. There was no ship in sight. Too bad, but
perhaps a ship might be expected soon. Anyway, we had to make port
and get fresh food. Aside from the danger of storm, if our voyage
continued for any length, we feared most of all beri-beri and scurvy,
which our diet of hardtack would inevitably bring upon us unless we
varied it with fresh vegetables.
A crowd of natives, fine-looking Polynesians, watched curiously as
our little craft drew up to the dock. Kircheiss and I went ashore
and straight to the house of the British resident. He lay stretched
out in his shirt and trousers on a Borneo long chair on his porch,
and didn't even get up when we approached. He was a good-looking
fellow, but lazy as the devil. The lassitude of the South Seas had
certainly got him.
"My name is Van Houten," I began, "and this is my chief officer
Southart."
The resident looked at me suspiciously. It was a true British
mistrust. Ordinarily, your Englishman is the best of fellows, a
pleasant chap to meet, a perfect host. But in wartime you had to
admire them. They were on the lookout for everything. Their brains
seemed made only of suspicions. Kircheiss, who spoke English better
than I did, continued:
"We are Americans of Dutch birth. A few months ago we made a bet at
the Holland Club in San Francisco that we would sail from Honolulu in
an open boat via the Cook Islands to Tahiti and back to Honolulu.
The wager is for twenty-five thousand dollars. Would you, my dear
sir, kindly give me a certificate that we have been here in
accordance with the terms of our bet? Also, we should like to lay in
a supply of fresh water, canned goods, and fresh fruit."
The resident yawned, looked us over with a watery eye and replied:
"Well, a man must be a hell of a fool to go in for that kind of
sport."
"Sure," Kircheiss said politely, "but, just the same, we should like
to have the certificate. Won't you give it to us or tell us who
will?"
"Oh, to hell with you, don't bother me. I've just had dinner and
want to take my nap."
Even his British mistrust, with which he first regarded us, subsided
into the indescribable something that comes over a white man who
yields to the soft enervation of the tropics. He now looked at us
merely as mad fellows who wanted him to do something too crazy to
merit his consideration.
"Any news from the bloody war?" he asked. "Why are they so stupid as
to carry on with this fighting business? In the end, it will only
help these yellow races."
He continued like this and spoke highly of the Germans. Naturally,
we did not express any pro-German sentiments.
"We simply must get this old bird to give us that certificate," I
said to my comrade in Low German, pretending that it was Dutch.
"Yes," he replied in the same dialect, "it may come in mighty useful
later on."
The resident, as he told us, had served in the Boer War, and should
have known better, but he took our Plattdeutsch for the language of
Holland. Presently he scribbled a note saying that we had called on
him in the course of our sporting cruise.
"Any ships expected in port soon?" Kircheiss asked quite casually.
"How in hell do I know?" the resident responded wearily. "Everything
goes to the bloody war, and we don't see anything around here but
these Kanakas." He continued in this strain and cursed his boredom
on the island.
The resident was still rambling on in his lazy monotone when along
came a man who wore a cassock and had a beard down to his waist. He
was a French missionary priest who was overjoyed when we saluted him
with a few words of French. The resident and an English trader were
the only two white men on the island besides himself, and neither
talked any French.
"_Allons, allons_," he shouted, "by Joe, boys, you must pay me a
visit."
And straightway he seized our arms and took us over to his mission
house. There he poured out glasses of excellent wine.
"You are Americans," he cried, "you fight for la France? You are
Hollanders? Ah, it is too bad that your country is not in the war
with France. But I can see that you love la belle France."
With that he put on the gramophone a record of _La Marseillaise_, and
had us sing it along with him, which we did with all our lungs.
Since it had been written and dedicated to my great-grandfather, I
didn't mind a bit. He chattered in French incessantly, in an ecstasy
over having someone with whom he could talk his native tongue. He
embraced us a dozen times and made us sit down to dinner. It was an
excellent meal. The wine was particularly good. The conversation
made us squirm a little. The good father was the best fellow
possible, but patriotic to the very finger tips. He treated us to
some choice denunciations of the Germans.
After another rendition of the _Marseillaise_, we took our leave.
"What will be your next stop?" asked the jovial missionary in parting.
"I think we will put in at Aitutaki," I replied. That was the
nearest island and the next field of action in our hunt for a ship.
"Fine," exclaimed the priest cordially. "I have a friend there. You
must call on him. Just mention my name. He will be delighted to see
you. He is a Hollander, too."
A Hollander, too? And our knowledge of the Dutch language was so
strongly salted with a German accent! In that case, when we got to
Aitutaki we certainly would be anything but Hollanders, probably
Norwegians.
Everywhere on the island were trees and fruits, cocoanuts, bananas,
mangoes, and oranges. On the streets of the village, with its
thatched huts, were South Sea beauties who wore wreaths of flowers
and had dark, flashing eyes. They gazed with interest on the foreign
sportsmen, the story of whose cruise on a bet had spread among the
natives. We took aboard what provisions we needed and set sail for
Aitutaki.
The weather turned miserable, by Joe. It rained every day, those
drenching tropical downpours. Our sailcloth covering was not tight
enough to hold the water out. The sea was heavy and continually
washed into the boat. Often we bailed as many as two hundred and
fifty pails an hour. Everything not stowed in the side tanks got
wet. When the rain stopped for a while, the waves and spray kept
things from drying. We were soaked to the skin and never did get
dry. Our blankets and mattresses were dripping wet. When we lay in
the sodden bedding, we were freezing cold, and could sleep scarcely
at all. Often it was a relief to be called to go on watch. Then at
least we could thresh our arms about and get warm. Cooking was
almost impossible now, and we seldom ever got coffee anything like
hot.
Once we saw a waterspout forming right before our eyes. A fine,
whirling drizzle close to the water attracted our eyes. It revolved
ever more rapidly, seizing wider masses of water. In the sky was a
little black thundercloud extending downward in the shape of a
funnel. The whirl of spray on the water ran up swiftly. The cone of
the thundercloud stretched down to meet it. They came together and
united. A roaring and sound of bursting, a tremendous suction of
water, and sky and sea were connected by a whirling column. Gyrating
and swaying, it moved in our direction. Our boat lay in a calm. Not
a breath of air around us. Will this wandering giant strike us and
break upon us, deluge and swamp us? Automatically Leudemann at the
rudder tries to steer us. Without wind our boat cannot move, much
less steer. But the roaring monster collapses with a deafening clap.
Its mass of water falls upon the sea, and from it a circular swell
spreads out. We rock uncomfortably and thank heaven. During our
voyages among the islands we narrowly escaped several similar spouts.
After three days we found ourselves steering our way through the maze
of reefs, very beautiful but perilous, that extend out in front of
the landing place at Aitutaki. Again there was no ship in sight, but
again one might be scheduled to arrive within some reasonable time.
That was our hope. A crowd of natives gathered to watch us come in,
also half a dozen white men, among whom was the British resident. He
was a tall, lanky fellow who wore glasses, and looked a perfect
picture of President Wilson. We found this resident to be full of
the same British suspicion. Unlike his colleague at Atiu, he was in
no wise lost in tropical indolence, but was active and shrewd. We
saw that he entertained the liveliest doubts about us. Might we not
be wandering Germans? Of course, he could not venture any forcible
measures to investigate our case, such as searching our boat, for if
we really were Germans we would doubtless be armed to the teeth, and
in that case where would he be? He had no force to match ours. We
tried our level best to quiet his suspicions by our offhand natural
behaviour. We thought our sporting voyage explanation and our
request for a certificate, such as we had got from the resident at
Atiu, plausible enough. It was too bad that we could not use the
other resident's certificate, but in it were written our supposed
Dutch names, and now we were Norwegians.
The resident began by saying to us that we would no doubt be
delighted to meet a fellow countryman of ours. This "countryman"
turned out to be a Norwegian carpenter. We surmised at once that he
had been instructed by the resident to talk with us and see whether
we were really Norwegians. My Norwegian was bad, but Kircheiss spoke
the language like a native. I kept severely out of the way, and let
Kircheiss have a long, friendly talk with the carpenter. Kircheiss
convinced his man that he was as Norse as the Vikings. The carpenter
was delighted to meet a fellow countryman so jovial and, as Kircheiss
represented, so wealthy. He promptly reported to the resident that
we were the truest Norsemen alive and could in no wise be Germans.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: Alfred Kling, second officer of the _Seeadler_, was
left in command at Mopelia. A passing French schooner, the _Lutece_,
saw the wreck, came near to investigate, and was captured. Then
Kling and his companions re-named the schooner the _Fortuna_ and set
sail for Easter Island.]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: German prisoners in the internment camp on the little
island in Hauraki Gulf.
The New Zealand prison camp motor launch in which the Count made his
getaway.]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The resident, with his inscrutable President Wilson face, invited me
to his house for dinner. I accepted. A British merchant named Low
invited my lieutenant to his house. We suspected it was a dodge to
separate us. Seemingly, the Norwegian's assurance had not fully
allayed the mistrust of these uneasy Britons. Kircheiss and I made
every excuse we could to keep together, but the hospitality was so
pressing that we could not refuse any longer without practically
giving ourselves away.
"Even if we are apart," I said to Kircheiss on the side, "we have our
pistols and hand grenades, by Joe. We will keep our eyes open, and
we can take care of ourselves single-handed. If anything looks
wrong, we will fight our way to the boat."
At the resident's house, a fine stone structure, I had a much-needed
bath and shave. When I rejoined him, the resident studied my smooth
jaws.
"Why," he exclaimed, "you are shaved."
"Yes, thanks to you, and I feel a hundred per cent. better."
"But one doesn't shave on a sporting trip, does one?"
He did not believe in anything, that Englishman. He was a true
sceptic.
We dined pleasantly enough. The resident talked a lot, although he
did not seem to be naturally a talkative kind. He asked me many
questions, which I answered cautiously. A native servant brought him
a note, and he scribbled a note in return. After a few minutes, the
servant brought him another message, and again he answered it. This
happened several times.
"Important messages?" I asked.
"Oh, no," he replied hastily, "they are from my friend Low. He wants
to arrange to have us all take coffee at his bungalow."
It was very queer. I was prepared, though, and thanked my stars for
the pistol and hand grenade in my pockets. I learned later that
their scheme was, in fact, to question Kircheiss and me separately.
The purpose of the notes was to arrange questions to be asked of us,
so that they might check up our separate answers to the same
questions. These answers, it happened, had jibed fairly well,
although not well enough to disarm suspicion altogether.
I thought it an imprudent time to ask when a ship might be expected,
and hoped that some voluntary information on the subject might be
vouchsafed. None was, however. I resolved to let the subject wait.
People suspected of being a boatload of armed Germans might too
readily be suspected of being interested in the arrival of ships.
When the time for leaving came, the resident told me that, if we
would return on the following day, he would give us the certificate
we desired, certifying that in the course of our sporting voyage we
had called at the island of Aitutaki. The delay about the
certificate was, of course, to detain us a day longer.
Away from this unsatisfactory interview, we encountered the Norwegian
carpenter who informed Kircheiss that the natives believed we were
Germans. The British had been recruiting soldiery among them for
service in France, and for the purpose of getting recruits had
stirred them up with a bit of war fever. The islanders therefore
hoped that we were enemies so they could seize us. They planned to
get our boat ashore and capture it. Upon hearing of this, I ordered
that two men be on watch all the time, ready to repel any attack.
"Any ships expected in port?" Kircheiss asked the carpenter.
"There may be one to-morrow," was the reply, "or it may not be here
for a month."
We held a council of war that night. Should we sail straight on?
That would make them certain that we were Germans, but there was no
wireless station on the island, and they could not warn the other
islands until a ship arrived to take away the news. Or should we
capture the island, which we could easily do with our extensive
armament, and then wait for a ship? Or should we still try to
convince the resident that we were the Norwegian sportsmen we
pretended? This latter temporizing measure we adopted, and decided
to call on the resident the following day and try to get our
certificate from him. In preparation for the visit, I instructed the
men who remained behind to be ready for trouble ashore. If we needed
them, they would hear a pistol shot. They should immediately open
fire with machine guns and hand grenades. They should shoot into the
air and throw the grenades into the water, where they would make the
most noise. The row would create a diversion, and then they should
hurry ashore with machine guns, rifles, and grenades to rescue us if
need be.
The following day provided us with plenty of thrills. When Kircheiss
and I went to the resident's house, crowds of natives followed us.
The resident greeted us with a worried expression but came straight
to the point.
"I shall have to examine your boat and papers," he said sternly.
"How so?" said I.
"The natives think you are Germans. I know you are not, but I must
inspect your boat to satisfy them."
He vacillated between the desire of not letting us get away and the
fear of a fight.
Outside, the Polynesians were gathering from all quarters. They made
a menacing, ugly-looking mob. Left hand in pocket, I attached a
carbine hook to the fuse of the grenade. With that mob of heathens
on the rampage, there was no use in trying to carry the deception any
further.
"It is true," I said to the resident, "we are Germans. But don't you
think it would be better if we remained friends? We are white men.
I am with you in front of these natives. Act the part that will
impress them. Come and examine our boat."
"Very well," he replied, growing pale, "but you won't take me with
you?"
"No, upon my word, no."
When we stepped out on the porch, the islanders raised a howl. I
never thought there were so many Polynesians in the world. I had
never before stood in the face of a mob. Sailors or soldiers would
not have made me so afraid.
"Don't be a coward," I said to myself. "On, by Joe, on."
Kircheiss and I stayed close together. The resident led us through
the mob, which was overawed by his presence. We were halfway to the
boat when a native in Colonial uniform stepped up. He had seen
service with the British in France, we were afterward told.
"Shall I arrest them, sir?" he asked.
"Arrest what?" I shouted. "Shut your trap. Why should a fool like
you try to arrest Norwegians?" Then I muttered to the resident: "If
that fellow makes any fuss, I'll shoot him dead."
"Don't talk that way," he replied nervously, and waved the native
soldier away.
The crowd followed us to the landing. A small rowboat picked us up.
"You won't keep me with you?" the resident asked again.
I assured him that we would not. So we rowed over and climbed into
my boat, impelled less by his own desire than by the attitude of the
natives.
"Here is the log," Kircheiss, with an impassive face, handed him a
log we had taken from one of our captured ships. He perfunctorily
turned the pages and came upon a chronometric diary we kept in the
book. Above was stamped in fat type: KAISERLICHE MARINE.
"What is that?" he stammered.
"Something in Norwegian," Kircheiss grinned sardonically. "I don't
understand it."
The resident saw: GAND UND STAND.
"What language is that?" This time he was a trifle ironical.
"Oh, Norwegian, of course," said Kircheiss.
The resident raised a tarpaulin, but dropped it quickly. He had seen
rifles. He raised another. There were neat rows of hand grenades,
as easy to pick up as apples.
"Keep those covered," he exclaimed, as pale as ashes.
"Well," I asked, "how do you find everything?"
"Quite all right--quite all right." He smiled a very acid smile.
"Won't you tell your people here that everything is all right?" I
suggested.
He turned to the crowd on the pier.
"Everything is in order," he called. "These gentlemen are Norwegian
sportsmen, as they say."
"And now the certificate," I reminded him.
He wrote a note just as the resident at Aitu had done.
"You don't intend to take me with you?" he repeated.
"No," I responded, "but I should like to have your company until we
can get some fruit and tobacco."
I stood chatting with him on the pier while Kircheiss went to procure
the fruit and tobacco. Hadn't we better take the island and wait for
a ship instead of sailing off? I debated the question with myself,
and then decided we had better go.
The last scene of this little drama was played as the resident and I
shook hands and bade each other an apparently cordial farewell. He
was a decent fellow, even if he had been suspicious, and I had eaten
an excellent dinner at his house. I was glad that we didn't have to
humiliate him before the natives, a dreadful fate for an Englishman.
As we hoisted anchor and raised sail, a cheer went up from the
natives lined along the shore. They were trying to make amends for
having treated us so shabbily and for having taken us for Germans!
But there at Aitutaki I had made the great mistake of our cruise. We
should have captured that island. Three days later a schooner
arrived. We could have taken it, rejoined our comrades, and
continued our raids. Instead, the resident told the officers the
story of our visit. The schooner sailed the next day and in a little
while met a steamer to which it transferred the news about us. The
steamer in turn radioed a warning to the whole South Seas. So we
were now in for a warm welcome.
XXVII
THROUGH A SEA OF FLOATING BRIMSTONE TO FIJI
At Rarotonga, another island of the Cook group, we had a fright. By
Joe, we were scared. It was night. We suddenly saw, right before
us, in the shadow of the shore, a big steamer. She had no lights.
She must be an auxiliary cruiser. Hard on the helm and every stitch
of canvas up. We turned and sailed the other way as fast as the wind
would carry us. We expected every moment to be spotted by their
lookout and then see the ghostlike searchlight beam fingering toward
us through the dark.
"Our luck is with us," I said to Leudemann, when finally we were far
enough out at sea to consider ourselves past danger.
Months later, while discussing our adventures with a group of ship's
officers, I was told by one of them that the supposed auxiliary
cruiser that had frightened us at Rarotonga was really nothing more
than a wreck. Several months before our approach to the island, a
steamer had gone aground on a reef just offshore, and had been
abandoned. The position of the wreck was such that at night it might
readily be taken for a ship lying at anchor.
But we had decided when we got well away from Rarotonga that the Cook
group of islands was no place for us. At Atiu we had found no ship
to capture. At Aitutaki no ship either, only a lot of trouble,
including the misfortune of being recognized as Germans. And now at
Rarotonga we had nearly sailed into what we supposed to be an
auxiliary cruiser in the dark.
"By Joe," I said to the boys, "we'd better clear out of here and try
our luck in other waters."
"Aye, but where? The Fijis?"
"The Fijis," I responded. "We'll find plenty of ships there."
We had all along figured that we might have to go to the Fiji
Islands, where a constant stream of sailing ships was always taking
aboard copra for the munition factories in the United States. But we
also were fully aware that sailing in a little open boat from the
Cook Islands to the Fijis might easily be a perilous venture. Our
voyage so far had gone fairly smoothly. There had been no
hurricanes, and we thanked God for that. Our itinerary from our
starting point at Mopelia in the Society group to the adjoining Cook
group and among the islands of the latter represented jumps of
several hundred miles each and quite a few days at sea. On to the
Fijis, however, meant a sail across twenty degrees of longitude. The
first half of the jaunt, or about a thousand miles, was over a vast
open space of sea where there were no islands on which to find fresh
food or on which to take refuge in case of need. In fact, we were to
sail for thirteen days out of sight of land. We had expected, when
we left Mopelia, that the leg to the Fijis would be a hard one, even
if we had fair weather all the way. But now the weather turned
against us for a whole week, and we began to think we had run across
St. Swithin's day. We had forgotten--if we had ever known it--that
this was the time when the equinoctial storms broke in those waters.
Had we known it, we never would have headed for the Fijis.
For ten days we sailed through a drenching downpour, the rainy
season. The sea was choppy. The wind whipped the spray and the
crests of waves over us in driving sheets. In our cockleshell,
things were afloat, and it was bitter cold o' nights. We threw our
mattresses overboard. In their soaked condition they were far worse
to sleep on than the wet planks, and there was no use keeping them
any longer. When the sun occasionally shone, our drenched clothes
would dry quickly and stiffen like boards of salt. They rubbed and
scratched the skin off our bodies. When they got wet again, which
they promptly did, the salt would soak into the raw flesh and inflame
it. Our bodies felt as though they were on fire. We had no regular
sleep. Instead, a man would doze away suddenly at almost any time.
Even the helmsman would drowse off like that, and, with a free
rudder, the boat would veer around crazily.
One morning, when dawn came, we could hardly believe our eyes. The
sea had turned from its normal blue to yellow. On scooping up a pail
of it we found a scum that we concluded must be brimstone and ash.
We were sailing through a field of brimstone. For three days we saw
from horizon to horizon this yellowish expanse of volcanic dust. It
no doubt came from some submarine eruption, perhaps the one we could
thank for the tidal wave that had wrecked the _Seeadler_. The waves
carried the gritty dust into the boat. It penetrated everything.
Every surface became like sandpaper. Our skin grew rough and caked
with it. Our blankets were like sandpaper, and so were our clothes.
As the voyage grew longer, we had to be more and more sparing with
our drinking water. The supply began to run low. We could no longer
collect rain water in our sails. They were coated with salt. We
tried to wash them out in the rain, but then the spray and the waves
kept washing in and kept the sails salty and added a further salting
to any water we collected. Our supply of fruit that we had picked up
in the Cook Islands ran out now, and about all we had left was
hardtack, not in itself a thirst-quenching kind of food. We also had
a side of delicious bacon, but of course we dared not touch it for
fear of increasing our thirst. You have often heard of the torments
of thirst at sea? Well, they are not exaggerated, for exaggeration
is impossible. When the rains stopped and the blazing tropical sun
beat down on us all day and we still had days to sail on and on, then
the torments of the damned, the torments of thirst smote us with a
fiery agony. Our gums dried out and were like rough iron. We sucked
our fingers and gnawed at our knuckles to bring a flow of saliva and
refresh our burning mouths.
And then came the sailor's worst enemy, scurvy. Our diet of
hardtack, lack of exercise, and general hardships brought it on. Our
knees swelled up so badly that we had to cut our trousers. The
rocking of the boat knocked them together or against the wooden
sides, and then the pain was almost unendurable. Our lips were black
and broken. Our tongues were swollen and hard. It was as if you had
a stone in your mouth. Our gums became snow white and seemed to
recede. Our teeth felt as though they were sticking far out of our
jaws. They hurt constantly and were loose and felt as if they were
going to drop out. With these shaking teeth we ate our hardtack. I
never before knew how hard hardtack was. We had unending headaches,
and it seemed as if something were pressing our eyes right out of
their sockets. We got water in our legs, and could hardly stand any
more. We had to slide around the seats to do what had to be done in
navigating the boat. In scurvy, the blood turns to water, first in
the legs and then upward. When it reaches the heart you die. Where
the blood is water the flesh is white, and you can see the line of
the white creep slowly up. We wondered who would be the first--the
first to have the line of white rise to the heart. My boys made
marks to show the line clearly and mark its daily progress upward.
It was a kind of sport. It was keeping a daily log, a log of death.
Parmien was the youngest of us, but he seemed to be on his way to win
the race. The line was higher on him than on the others. He joked
about it. There was nothing terrible in it. We were all in a deep
apathy. Our brains were like balls of cotton. Nothing mattered,
certainly not death. Death would come, we thought, as a relief from
these sufferings. The prospect of its arrival became more and more
attractive.
"Boys," I said, "let us take pieces of ballast iron and tie them
around our necks. One plunge and in a few seconds all of our pains
will be gone."
"Yes. All right." There were mutterings of assent.
But Parmien, the youngest, the one who was nearest death, picked up
the comic volume, Fritz Reuter's _Trip to Constantinople_, and began
to read a funny story. We all laughed. That book had eased many a
hard hour before, on this ghastly voyage, and now, perhaps, it saved
our lives.
And so we continued on with but one instinct left in us, the sailor's
instinct to navigate his craft. Mechanically, without any particular
hope, without any particular thought, we trimmed the sails, guided
the helm, and calculated our position as best we could. Nautical
science was at a low ebb among us now. We were too far gone to
reckon exactly where we were, and were only vague in our steering.
All we knew was that we should steer to the west where the island
groups were.
You have read in many a sea story about the delight, the almost
insane ecstasy, of castaway men adrift in open boats who are dying of
hunger, thirst, and disease, when, at last, a rescuing ship
approaches or they see land. No matter how the writers describe it,
even the greatest of writers, they can tell you only a tiny bit, only
a grain of sand. So, I won't try to say how we felt when we saw a
speck on the horizon and the speck grew bigger and turned into the
familiar green of a tropical island. We had been so much like dead
men, who had thought that nothing could ever make us glad again. By
Joe, that sight gladdened our hearts, though. We grew even weaker,
but it was the weakness of happiness. As we drew near, we thought of
nothing but land, fresh water, and soft food, a soft banana, for our
loose, shaky teeth. Never mind ships or capturing ships. Never mind
being taken prisoners. We headed straight toward a crude pier that
stuck out into the water.
A crowd of a hundred natives, perhaps less, were gathered at the
landing place watching our approach. They were ferocious-looking
black warriors. We had now passed from the region of the brown,
indolent Polynesians to those of the black, warlike Melanesians.
"What ugly customers," I said to Leudemann. "They look like
cannibals."
The forbidding battle array on shore stirred a new strength in us.
It certainly looked like a cannibal island, and miserable as we were,
still we could not escape the thought of our skin and bones being
fattened up in preparation for an old-time South Sea banquet.
"Clear the boat for action!" I ordered. Even in our present straits,
we could still remember our old naval ways.
The German flag went jerking to our masthead, and rifles and machine
guns were displayed.
A shout went up on shore and a babel of talk. Voices yelled in
pidgin English.
"You Germans? How you get here from way off? Come on. Germans
great warriors."
Still wary, we drew near the landing pier and talked with the
natives. They were unmistakably friendly, very cordial. From what
they told us they had, in the first place, grievances against their
masters, the British. Then quite a number had been recruited and
sent to the trenches in France. There some had been killed and some
wounded, and most who survived had contracted tuberculosis from the
unaccustomed climate and had been returned to the island worn-out
shells of men. One of their most influential chiefs was particularly
concerned about the war. He was on the pier, and he reasoned thus:
"White man send missionary. Missionary say we must not fight.
Because all men children of God. All men brothers. They say we can
have war no more. Then they say we must go fight. They have war.
We no fight for ourselves, they say, we fight for them. How, if men
are brothers? Our men killed. Our men come back sick with cough.
Cough never goes away."
These people were of a warrior race. What the British had told them
about how bad the Germans were had not made much impression. What
stuck in their minds was the fighting power of the Germans. They had
heard about it from the British, and those who had been in the
trenches of Flanders knew about it first-hand. The sudden appearance
of armed Germans at their remote island could but increase their
admiration. Morality among them had principally to do with a man's
fighting spirit.
They said there were no white men on the island, and we longed to go
ashore. With our scurvy-swollen legs we could hardly stand, however.
It wouldn't do to be hauled ashore as cripples. It would not
increase these warriors' respect for Germans as fighting men:
Cripples do not fare well among savage peoples, and we thought it
best not to reveal our impotence. So, we refused the natives'
invitations to partake of their hospitality, told them we must hurry
on to fight the British, and asked for fresh water and bananas. They
brought great gourds full of water and bunches of bananas. We drew
up to the dock and they handed these precious supplies down for us.
We had our fill of bananas and water, and, with shouts resounding
from the shore, set sail again. This lucky spot was Niue, an
outlying isle of the Fiji group. The sun blazed down upon us, but a
fair wind carried us along briskly. The first day after leaving Niue
we felt better. The second day we were on the road to high good
health. It is amazing the curative effect of fresh fruit, especially
bananas, when you are suffering from scurvy. They seem to put new
life and blood into you and draw the sickness right out of the body
as though some huge and marvellous poultice had been applied.
Our cure was completed at the isle of Katafanga. It is quite a large
isle and inhabited by more natives. But we hit upon a stretch of
shore that seemed permanently deserted. At any rate, we remained
there for five days and saw not a soul. When we went ashore, we all
walked with a comical staggering gait. You know the characteristic
rolling gait of the sailor accustomed to having a deck under his
feet? Ours was an exaggeration of it. After two weeks in our
constantly pitching boat and never a foot on land, we could not get
our legs used to solid, unmoving earth. Even after five days of
extensive pedestrianism on the beach we rolled along rather than
walked. There was plenty of fruit around, and many streams ran down
to the sea. We ate enough fruit to expel all the scurvy in the world
and bathed luxuriously in the clear water.
On the island was a deserted house. We inspected it and saw that it
had been owned by a German planter. We afterward learned that, at
the outbreak of the war, the planter fled to the interior of the
island, and an Englishman had taken possession of his house, then,
not liking the island, had left it pretty much to itself. Among the
rubbish in the house was a German mercantile magazine, and on the
first page that I turned to I saw an advertisement of the paint firm
of Erdmann and Kircheiss. One of our sailors was named Erdmann and
my lieutenant was named Kircheiss. No relations of the paint firm,
but we took it as a good omen. At any rate, coming upon the
planter's house was certainly good luck. It had gone to seed a bit,
but there still were Christian beds in it. For the first time since
sailing away from Mopelia, we slept comfortably, and between sheets,
too.
We were now getting near the larger islands of the Fiji group, where
the sailing ships loaded with copra would be encountered. If we did
not succeed in capturing a ship here, we never could hope to capture
one. We found a handsome little sailboat belonging to the Englishman
who had taken over the German's house, but we left her where she lay.
She was more comfortable than our battered old lifeboat--but the
latter was a last relic of our old _Seeadler_. She had brought us
this far, so we wanted to keep her until we had captured a ship. We
raised sail, knowing that, for better or for worse, we were on the
last leg of our voyage in the lifeboat.
We came to the main body of the Fijis, and sailed into a large gulf
surrounded by distant islands. It was night, and we decided to wait
till morning to see how many ships were passing and what island they
were bound for. We reefed our sails and threw out our sea anchor,
that sacklike drag of canvas that keeps a boat from turning broadside
to the wind and waves and from drifting too fast. We lay down for a
decent night's sleep. We would need all our energies for the morrow.
A sudden shout. I awakened. It was just daybreak. Straight ahead
was a wild white line of surf. It broke over a long, low coral reef,
and just behind it was a high cliff. We had run into a strong
current during the night. Krauss had awakened just in time to see
that it had carried us perilously near the reef. The wind was
sweeping us toward the breakers.
"Raise sail," I shouted.
We scrambled frantically and raised the canvas. The wind was
inshore. We could not head into it. We were being blown slowly,
inexorably on to the reef.
People accustomed to the surfs along ordinary coasts have no idea of
what breakers are like off the islands of the South Pacific. The
surf all over the Pacific is particularly strong. But when it breaks
over a mid-oceanic coral reef nothing can live in it. The strongest
swimmer is sure to be dashed to pieces against the jagged coral.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: The Sea Devil is caught again. With bayonets at his
back they strip him of his weapons.]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: The Sea Devil and Kircheiss as prisoners on the New
Zealand isle of Motuihi.
The New Zealand colonel in whose uniform Von Luckner made his
sensational escape]
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And there wasn't the slightest hope of our moving against the wind
and backing away from the reef. Slowly, slowly we were nearing it.
The breakers roared like thunder. In a few moments, we would be
flung into that death trap of water and coral.
Pistol in hand, I shouted something to the effect that I didn't
intend to be ground to death by the breakers on that jagged coral.
The others looked for their pistols. One could not find his.
Between the pull of the current and the power of our sails, we were
drifting along the reef, edging toward it. The wind gave us an extra
push. We were in the backwash, only a few yards away from the
breakers. And still one man could not find his pistol.
Instinctively, we all waited. And that was what saved our lives.
Suddenly we saw the reef drop away, slanting back at a sharp angle,
and a moment later we were drifting parallel to the coral.
It was then that I discovered there were two kinds of breathing. In
times of terrible danger, the breath comes in short, quick puffs.
The danger gone, you breathe deeply. By Joe, when we got clear of
that reef I breathed such a breath that it seemed to go right down to
my heels. I sat looking at my boys' faces. When we got our pistols
ready, their faces had set tense, as if cast from bronze. With the
danger past, their faces held the same set expression. It was an
hour before their old expressions came back again. Two of my fellows
found patches of gray in their hair afterward. (Maybe they had been
there for years only to be discovered now!) Another's leg was
absolutely blue in spots. In those frightful moments he had, without
knowing it, grasped his thigh in a clutch like a drowning man. I
tell you, by Joe, it was the hand of God that put the curve in that
reef! When one of the boys, I don't know which, said in surprise,
"We are clear!" I knew it was the hand of God.
XXVIII
CAUGHT BY THE BRITISH AT WAKAYA
The island was Wakaya. Several old sailing ships were in the
harbour. We gazed at them with hungry eyes, and eager plans of
capturing one ran through our minds. Natives on shore spied us, took
us for shipwrecked sailors, and put a boat out to meet us. It suited
our plans to let them go right on thinking we had been shipwrecked.
That might make it much easier for us to get some information about
the vessels at anchor. Leaving a couple of my boys in the boat, the
other four of us accompanied the natives to their huts, where they
treated us hospitably. They were a simple, trusting people. Several
half-breeds and a couple of white men, however, looked at us
suspiciously. One half-breed was particularly offensive and insisted
on asking us many questions. We did not like his behaviour at all.
Kircheiss and I took a walk along a path in the woods to talk over
what seemed another menacing situation. A white man came galloping
by on horseback. He was pale with excitement. He slowed down for a
moment, gazed at us, responded curtly to our greeting, and went on.
Thoroughly alarmed, we hurried back to the village. Some curious
business was afoot, and we were determined to find out what it was.
"Our last half gallon of rum," Kircheiss murmured regretfully.
"Yes," I responded, "it is too bad, but it will go to a useful
purpose."
We got hold of the half-caste who had been so inquisitive. The white
man we had seen on horseback was with him. Something, indeed, was
afoot. We talked casually with them and then suggested drinking.
They were interested, and became enthusiastic when we produced our
half gallon of rum. In the half-breed's hut we staged a drinking
bout, which lasted half through the night. Nothing like rum to make
men friendly and conversational. The half-breed got so
conversational that he blurted out,
"Why, you're all right. But at first we thought you were Germans.
We could get fifty pounds if you were Germans."
Now, as an American sailor would say, you've got to "hand it" to the
English. They know how to spend money when it is useful. We Germans
are usually more niggardly, or "careful" some might call it. We will
try to save a mark and then lose thousands. Having received the
wireless warning from the resident at Aitutaki of mysterious armed
Germans in the South Seas, the authorities in the Fijis had passed
word among the natives to be on the lookout for us, and had offered a
two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar reward to anyone who turned in definite
information about a party of Germans posing as neutrals.
It was clear enough that the half-breed and the white man had been
plotting to hand us over to the authorities, but how far they had
gone we did not know. We didn't find out that night. It was not
until later that we learned the white man's horseback ride had been
to give a warning about us to the captain of a cutter in the harbour,
and that the cutter had at once shoved off to carry the message to
the officials on one of the larger islands a day's sail away. Not
knowing this, we used a good deal of persuasion to put the idea
firmly into the heads of the two men that we could not possibly be
Germans. It may have been our eloquence, or, more likely, the genial
influence of the rum, but, at any rate, they seemed to lose all of
their suspicions and became convinced that we were the truest
Norwegians from Scandinavia. Kircheiss and I, somewhat the worse
from our session at detective work, slept at the Englishman's house.
The four others were offered quarters ashore for the night, but two
of my boys remained in the boat as a precaution. It was well they
did, too. During the night, native swimmers went out to her and cut
the anchor rope. They were put up to it by a Malay police officer
who was suspicious of us. Not knowing any or my men would remain on
board her, since she was only an open lifeboat, he planned to search
her. So he sent his swimmers out to pull her ashore and beach her.
The wind was inshore. The anchor rope cut, the boat drifted in. Our
two men were asleep, and only awakened when keel jarred against
bottom. Dark figures were around in the water, trying to pull the
boat on the beach. Our men, pistol in hand, drove them away and then
pushed out into open water.
On the following day, we made our final costly error. The ships in
the harbour weighed anchor and raised sail. We picked the one that
seemed the newest and arranged with the skipper to take us along with
him to Suva, on the main island Viti Levu. Of course, our plan was
simply to sail a few miles out to sea with him and then take the ship
ourselves after donning our uniforms and getting out all of our
weapons. A sudden squall blew up and forced the vessels back to
port. We returned with her. And now we should have taken her while
she lay at anchor. The people ashore would have seen what was going
on, but we could have held up the island and then put to sea, storm
or no storm. That was our first impulse. We should have followed
it. Always trust your first impulse--at any rate, if you go into the
pirate business. It is the boldest and best. Instead, we chose a
more cautious course. Prudence ceases to be a virtue when you are on
an adventure like ours. We had been bold enough heretofore, and I
have no satisfactory explanation for our caution now. It may have
been that we were not quite ourselves. Our voyage down from the
Societies and the Cooks to Fiji, with those days of hunger, thirst,
and scurvy, had sapped our strength and vitality. Perhaps, although
we felt quite well, we had not yet got back our full vigour of body
and mind. Perhaps we were low on red corpuscles. At any rate, we
resolved to wait until the following day and capture our ship when it
had got out to sea. While we waited, another vessel arrived.
She was a beauty, too, and would have delighted any seaman's eye as
she came sailing into the harbour. She had just arrived, we were
told, from Suva. She ran regularly among the islands, carrying
merchandise to the traders. She was a handsome three-masted schooner
with auxiliary motor power, new, clean, and trim, just the kind of
ship we wanted.
"By Joe," I said to my boys, "there's our ship."
We immediately dismissed all idea of the old windjammer we had
intended to capture, and devoted ourselves to this new beauty. A
council of war was held, after which Kircheiss went to the captain of
the vessel, which now had docked, and told him that we were
Norwegians who, while making a cruise in a lifeboat, had missed our
ship, which was taking coal from Australia to Suva. Could we not
take passage with him to Suva instead of on the other slower old
craft, so that we could get back to our own ship? We would pay
regular rates for the passage.
"All right," replied the captain, a jovial, unsuspecting fellow.
"Come aboard at eight o'clock this evening. We sail in the morning."
It was our plan again that, once aboard this lovely ship and out at
sea, we would suddenly appear in our uniforms and hoist the German
flag.
We made ready to abandon the lifeboat. Our belongings required
careful packing. We put rifles, machine guns, cartridges, and
grenades in our canvas bags, wrapped our naval uniforms around these,
and then rolled each bundle in a couple of blankets and tied it
securely. A casual handling would not reveal the armament inside.
Each of us took a pistol in one pocket and a hand grenade in the
other. At eight o'clock we went aboard the schooner. Our
manœuvres had been made carefully, and we had attracted no undue
notice of the people who were suspicious of us.
Aboard, the captain received us hospitably, and we went around
looking over what we expected to make our next prize of war. And a
prize she was, just a year out of the shipyard and beautifully
finished in every detail.
"Look at the saloon," I muttered to Leudemann as we wandered around,
"think of what meals we will have here. No more hardtack with loose
teeth to bite it. And look at those cabins. Won't those bunks be
comfortable when it blows and rains? And what a fine big level deck
to walk on, so different from the bottom of our lifeboat."
The schooner had two new motors capable of driving her along at a
lively clip. They would enable us to cover a lot of the wide Pacific
and run down many a copra-laden clipper.
The captain told us he had aboard a miscellaneous cargo of cloth,
white shoes, helmets, silk underwear for the wives of planters and
traders, silk stockings, and so on. He was provisioned for a cruise
of six months, and had aboard large stores of preserved fruits and
vegetables and six thousand pounds of fresh meat. I said to myself:
"Just what we want, by Joe."
Here was the perfect prize. What would our comrades marooned back
there on Mopelia say when we turned up with this beautiful schooner
in tip-top shape, with powerful motors, well-provisioned and all?
Already we could hear the lusty cheers, as, with the German flag at
our mast, we drew up and cast anchor off the coral reef. I looked up
at the trim masts and spars and around at the freshly scrubbed
woodwork of the deck and spoke silently to the schooner, calling her
by a new name.
"Ho, there, _Seeadler-the-Second_! You'll like it as an auxiliary
cruiser. We'll have a lot of fun together, by Joe."
I could hardly wait for her to raise anchor and set sail. But we had
counted that brood of mental chickens before they had hatched, by Joe.
A steamer slid into port!
The skipper of our clipper who was standing next to me said he
supposed she had brought over the proprietor of the island. The new
arrival lowered a boat. In it were a military officer and four
Indian soldiers. The boat rowed straight toward our ship. We
surmised at once that they were coming for us. Having received the
message sent by the suspicious half-breed and the white man that
there were six Germans on the island, the authorities had sent a
force of military police to arrest us. There had been some delay in
this, as the only available boat on which to send the police was a
cattle steamer, the _Amra_, and she could not raise anchor for some
hours. She had arrived now right in the nick of time, had
communicated with the shore, and been informed that we were aboard
the schooner.
The storm had cleared during the early morning. The palm trees
ashore were ablaze with the tropical sunshine. The water under us
was of the deep blue that you see only in the South Seas. A brisk,
refreshing wind blew from the west. The boat with the officer and
four soldiers came rowing with long, powerful strokes. The Indians
wore puttees and those funny little pants that leave the knees bare.
They carried no arms other than bayonets. The officer had a sword
and a revolver. We could easily have shot them down with our
pistols, or thrown a hand grenade in their boat, or held them up at
pistol point when they came aboard. Then we could have captured the
ship and sailed away. The steamer would have been powerless in the
face of our machine guns. There were mutterings among my men. They
were full of fight. We should, they urged, make the capture and get
away.
I passed an uncomfortable moment of indecision. Our uniforms were
packed in our bundles, stowed below. We would have to fight off
arrest and take the ship in the guise, not of naval soldiers but of
civilians, and as civilians we would have to raise our weapons
against soldiers. That not only went against the grain, but it went
against the unwritten laws of the game. There are many sporting
traditions that are carefully inculcated in every German naval
officer. If we could have fought in our uniforms, it would have been
as honourable naval men. In the end, the odds would be all against
us and the chances were at least a hundred to one that we would be
captured before getting back home. If we fought as naval men and
were later captured, we would be entitled to the treatment due
honourable prisoners of war. If we fought in citizen's clothes, we
were nothing more than international bandits and as such almost sure
to hang finally from a yard arm. They say that all is fair in love
and war, but this does not alter the fact that there are things you
can do that are not playing the game. Of course, each side has its
spies, and a spy, if caught, expects no quarter and gets none.
But during the War of 1870, and during the late war, too, we Germans
were most severe with franctireurs, civilians who sniped at soldiers.
It has been one of our cardinal principles that war must be waged by
uniformed soldiers. In the World War, both sides were charged with
introducing new methods of warfare that were not in accordance with
the ethics of the game. But you will recall that even Allied cargo
and passenger ships armed with guns to fire on submarines made it a
general rule to carry gun crews of uniformed marines to handle the
guns.
"No," I said to my men, "in the uniforms of our country we can fight.
As civilians we cannot. At any rate, we are not going to drop a bomb
down there and kill that poor defenseless police officer and his men
in those short pants! There would be neither fun nor glory in that."
My officers were with me, and the men also saw the point, but agreed
with much reluctance. Certainly, none of us wanted to go to a
British prison camp. But there seemed no help for it.
It was the twenty-first of September, just two days short of a month
since our departure from Mopelia. The lieutenant and his four men in
those short pants and bare knees came aboard. Followed by his men,
he stepped up to me.
"I've got to arrest you," he began decently enough. "Who are you?"
"Allow me," I responded, "to introduce myself. I am Count Luckner,
commander of the _Seeadler_. These men here are part of my crew."
"Are you Count von Luckner?"
"Yes."
He gazed around bewildered, frightened, and certainly nonplussed. I
imagined I could see his legs shake. Apparently, he was digesting
the fact that he and his men were practically unarmed and the
certainty that we must be armed to the teeth.
"We have," I continued, "hand grenades and firearms enough to send
you and your knee-pants army here to Kingdom Come, and if we were in
uniform, you would be our prisoners. However, be that as it may, you
have caught us in civilian clothes--but look here."
We took our weapons out of our pockets. I had had two of our men
bring up our bundles. We cut them open and displayed the grenades,
pistols, and machine guns. The lieutenant stared, still aghast in
spite of my reassuring speech. The soldiers were funny. You could
see the goose pimples on the skin below the lower edge of those short
pants. They edged to the rail, evidently ready to tumble overboard.
The captain of the schooner and his crew now knew what kind of guests
they had welcomed aboard. They stood gaping.
"I must ask you to stand back a moment, Lieutenant," I exclaimed,
"while I destroy my war material. Overboard with it all!" I called
to my men.
Pistols, grenades, and machine guns dropped splashing into the water.
"And now, Lieutenant," I saluted, "at your service!"
"Right ho, Count," he replied, "you men have made a great name for
yourselves on your cruise, and now you have played cricket with me.
You will receive decent treatment. You have my word as a Briton for
that." He emphasized the word "Briton."
Aboard the _Amra_ we heard a different tune piped. They had an old
black stewardess aboard, a particularly bad-tempered scold. The
moment she saw us her shrewish tongue began to wag.
"Just look at those Huns, and look at their muddy boots, soiling our
clean deck. And then the black men are supposed to scrub it after
them. These Huns should be painted black, and with tar. I'd rather
be black than one of those Germans. Sinking ships with women and
children is all they can do. I'd like to get a gun and shoot every
one of them."
She certainly had been filled right up to her ear lobes with this war
of frightfulness propaganda, and that old Jezebel knew how to do her
bit of spiteful tongue-lashing. A ducking in cold water would have
done her no harm. But we were prisoners now, and the berating of an
ill-tempered old Melanesian woman was likely to be the smallest of
our troubles.
I had no doubt as to what our first ordeal was to be. Unless the
British had more recent news than we concerning our comrades whom we
had left at Mopelia, which was not probable, we would be questioned
as to the whereabouts of the _Seeadler_ and the remainder of her
crew. I told my men that they should give the same reply to all
interrogations, namely that I had bidden them to keep silent and that
I would answer for all. That would prevent us from tripping one
another up. We had taken care to throw away any notes or papers we
had that gave any hint as to where we had gone ashore in the Society
Islands. They could search us as much as they liked, but they would
find nothing. One mischance, though, befell us. I was to learn in a
few days that one of my comrades had dropped a notebook, which
presently was found. In it he had a brief diary of the _Seeadler's_
voyage. I questioned the diarist who had kept the unfortunate
record, and he told me that his notes about Mopelia were very
sketchy. He remembered clearly that he had written we had captured
the sailing ship _Manila_. After that was a single entry.
"Landed stores at Mopelia."
There his diary broke off. There was no mention of our having sunk
the _Manila_ or of our having lost the _Seeadler_ at Mopelia or taken
refuge on the island.
"And now," I said to my men as we came in sight of Suva, "you keep
your mouths shut, by Joe. Let me do the lying. They've got us, but
they must not get the boys back at Mopelia."
XXIX
JAILED IN FIJI WHILE THE OTHERS ESCAPE
TO EASTER ISLAND
Our arrival as prisoners was the event of the year at Suva, the
capital city of the Fiji Islands. Our capture was the only warlike
happening that had come along in those parts to break the monotony of
life in the dreary South Seas. The newspaper got out a lurid special
edition filled with a harrowing account of the capture of the captain
and a part of the crew of the desperate raider, the _Seeadler_. It
gave the hour when we were expected to reach Suva. So a huge crowd,
that is, a huge one as crowds go in Fiji, had gathered at the pier to
look us over. A company of infantry lined both sides of the approach
to the pier with bayonets fixed. They certainly were a
comic-opera-looking lot in their hot-weather knee pants.
During our march down the street between the gauntlet of bayonets and
the crowd behind them, a half-caste fellow, seeing us unarmed and
helpless, stepped forward and spat in the face of one of my boys. I
jumped out of line and gave him a blow straight from the shoulder
that sent him down in a heap. His friends had to carry him away. I
had acted on the impulse of the moment and expected to be run through
with a bayonet, but the officer in command of the soldiers shouted:
"Serves him right! Good for you, Count!" Then addressing himself to
the crowd he added: "These men have done nothing to deserve such
treatment." He said it as though he meant it, too. That Englishman
was a real fellow, I tell you.
We were promptly questioned. Where were the _Seeadler_ and the
remainder of its crew? Of course, my boys kept mum. I, on the other
hand, invented a story about accidentally getting separated from the
rest, who were still aboard the _Seeadler_--where, we didn't know.
The story, of course, was not believed.
At first they kept us at the Governor's Rest House, a fine place with
a garden, where visiting white people often stopped. Our meals were
borne to us by coolies from the local hotel. The temporary
commandant of the Rest House was a Lieutenant Wodehouse, a fine
fellow. After a day or so he was replaced by a Lieutenant
Whitehouse, whom we didn't like so well. He was what the British
themselves would call "a bit of an ass, y'know." Whenever he talked
with me he kept his hand on his pistol. He apparently thought me a
sort of ogre, a bad man sent to frighten nice young lieutenants.
Presently he came, hand on pistol, and announced:
"General Mackenzie wants to see you, all of you."
"More questions, by Joe," I thought.
Appearing before a general was an event of some moment. We felt we
had to look worthy of the German Navy. We had our uniforms, which
were somewhat faded after the long trip at sea. But we slicked them
up as best we could and generally made ourselves as presentable as
possible. They loaded us into stinking cattle cars. For a visit to
a general? _Qurre!_ we thought. They led us to a stone building and
ushered us in. It was a jail!
"Is this your General Mackenzie?" I sneered at Whitehouse. "You're
a fine British officer."
He walked away, ashamed, himself, of the dodge he had used to get us
to the jail without the desperate attempts he, in his stupid
timidity, expected us to make.
But the jail was not so bad. We got our meals from a restaurant.
They separated me from my men, which I did not like. Nor was it
exactly military ethics to confine prisoners of war in a common
calaboose. But the authorities were nervous. They believed the
_Seeadler_ was lurking somewhere near by, and they expected our
comrades to come raiding ashore and try to rescue us. Of course,
they kept on trying to get us to tell them where the _Seeadler_ was,
but they learned nothing.
Lieutenant Whitehouse was still our jailer. Keeping a good hold of
his pistol, he came up to me again. He spoke very politely this time:
"A Japanese admiral wants to see you, sir."
I laughed at him.
"First it was General Mackenzie, and now it is the Japanese admiral.
Ho! Ho! What tricks are you up to this time?"
"No, really, upon my word, really, Count, the Japanese admiral wants
to see you."
"By Joe, Lieutenant, I was fool enough to get all slicked up to see
your General Mackenzie. But I'll be hanged if I'll budge an inch to
see your old Japanese admiral."
I didn't know what kind of foolishness it was this time, and intended
to protest and stall as long as I could. He went away rather
sheepishly. In a few minutes another lieutenant showed up.
"There is a Japanese admiral who really does want to see you, Count
Luckner, you know," he said.
"Oh, since you say so, Lieutenant, it must be so," I replied.
I brushed up my uniform and accompanied him through the courtyard to
a pier. A splendid cruiser, the _Ysuma_, lay out there at anchor in
the harbour. A boat manned by Japanese sailors was waiting there for
me at the landing. Aboard the cruiser, the magnificent deck
contrasting with the dingy jail that now was my home, I felt like a
man who, long confined in darkness, suddenly walks into sunlight.
My feelings changed to those of discomfort as the Admiral welcomed
me. He was a grave, courteous little man, clad in an immaculate
white uniform. My own uniform had once been white, but in spite of
all the washing I had given it, it was now a dingy gray. The gold
braid had turned green from the corrosion of the sea water. So I
tried to make up in dignity of bearing what I lacked in perfection of
dress. He introduced me to his officers:
"Here is the man we have chased for three months." And then turning
to me:
"I am sorry, sir, to meet you in this situation. I would rather it
had been in a good, square fight."
"I should far rather be your prisoner, Admiral," I answered, "than
the ignominy of living in this beastly Fiji Island jail."
The Japanese had not known of the jail part of it. The officers
looked in cold astonishment at the British lieutenant, who was much
embarrassed.
In the luxurious saloon I was extended gracious, indeed ceremonious
hospitality, the hospitality of Japan. The admiral offered me cigars
and cigarettes and poured out the champagne for me. I took a cigar,
but refused the wine.
"I am a teetotaller," I said, "a prohibitionist, as the Americans
would say."
I suspected that I would be questioned about the _Seeadler_, and
didn't want my tongue lubricated with champagne!
The admiral placed three books before me. The frontispiece of one
was the picture of the _Emden_; of the other, a picture of the
_Moewe_. He turned the pages. Both were filled with Japanese
writing. The third book was empty. The admiral placed this book
before me and presented me with a pen.
"Write something about your cruise," he asked. "In our country we
write about the deeds of the enemies we have met. We tell what they
did for their countries, so that it may fill our youth with
enthusiasm to do as much for our country. Write down one or two
things that I can use."
"Gladly," I replied, and began to write briefly of our experiences
while rounding Cape Horn.
"Just a question first," interrupted the admiral. "Did you put to
sea from a neutral port, the United States, Argentine, or Chile?"
"We sailed from Hamburg," I responded. "We flew the Norwegian flag
and were searched for an hour and a half by a British cruiser."
"Examined by the British?"
"Yes."
Those grave Japanese faces lighted up with smiles of exquisite
amusement.
After I had written my short piece, the admiral spoke again.
"And now, Count, tell me where you have been."
"Admiral," I responded, "that is a question I should prefer not to
answer right away. First tell me where you looked for me."
He brought out a big chart. A quick glance, and I saw the island of
Mopelia. Around it was a faint line in pencil. That told me what I
wanted to know. Undoubtedly, they had found the diary my boy had
lost, the last entry of which mentioned Mopelia.
The admiral pointed to the Tasman Sea, between Australia and New
Zealand.
"I was on your trail here, Count, but I lost you near New Zealand."
"I am sorry to say, Admiral, that my ship was never within six
thousand miles of those waters."
"But," he responded, "the ships you sank in the Pacific were all to
or from Australia."
"I know, but--" A little judicious hesitation.
"But where were you, Count? Tell me."
"I cruised back and forth south of the Hawaiian Islands over the
waters where the Australia-San Francisco ships, the eastbound and
westbound, pass." There is nothing like the truth.
"You are right, Count. I should have thought of it."
"I am glad you didn't," I replied, "or you would have captured me."
He dropped the questioning for a while and asked me about the Battle
of Jutland, which always seems to interest Japanese naval men
tremendously. When I said I had been through the battle, they made
me tell them every detail I could remember. They were interested in
everything. The admiral's comment on what I told him was interesting.
"Another proof," he exclaimed, "that the smaller fleet was superior
per ship to the larger."
And now the admiral came square to the point.
"Tell me, Count, where your _Seeadler_ is."
I was in a tight hole. I must strike a blow for my comrades out
there on Mopelia. The elements I had to work upon lay in the fact
that the diary which had been found mentioned merely that we had put
stores aboard at Mopelia and told of the capture of the _Manila_ and
said nothing of the fact that we had sunk that ship. Then, also, the
truth is rarely believed. I proceeded to skate very near the truth.
"The _Seeadler_," I replied, "was lost."
"How was it lost?"
"We got on the coral reef at Mopelia. We tried our best to get off,
put our stores ashore to lighten the ship. But it was no use."
"What did you do then?"
"We went aboard the _Manila_."
"The four-masted schooner, _Manila_?"
"Yes, we captured her and took her along with us."
"Where is the _Manila_ now?"
"She is waiting for me off Mopelia. My men are having a good
vacation on the island until I come back."
"I say, Count, we Japanese are not such fools. You had the
four-master _Manila_, and you sailed from Mopelia to the Fijis in a
small boat."
"Yes," I replied. "There was not room enough for all of us aboard
the _Manila_."
The admiral looked at me with a sly Oriental smile. Fine, I thought.
I had figured out their minds correctly. They had not set straight
out for Mopelia, in spite of their knowing that we had landed stores
there, because it seemed wildly impossible that I with my five men
had sailed from Mopelia to the Fijis in an open boat.
"Count," exclaimed the admiral, "I will tell you where your crew is.
You did not leave a four-masted schooner and sail twenty-three
hundred miles in a lifeboat. You sailed here in the _Manila_, and,
having got here, you put out in your lifeboat to capture another ship
in a near-by harbour. You tell me your crew is at Mopelia, hoping I
will get up steam immediately, go hurrying away for a few thousand
miles on a wild-goose chase, and leave them in peace. The _Manila_
is in these waters. In four days, your crew will be my prisoners."
He respected me too much to think that I would ever give my crew
away. He knew I would try to throw him off the scent. His object
was to outwit me, to get my story and read between the lines.
"Very good, Admiral," I thought, "let us see how it will work out."
We parted the best of friends. He was an excellent fellow. Our
meeting had been one of mutual deceit with lies that no gentleman
would tell in ordinary times. Now they were quite respectable, as
ruses of war.
The ironical thing was that my men, who under the command of
Lieutenant Kling were still living like lords at Mopelia, were
destined to have much better luck in getting a ship than my little
party had had through all our terrible hardships.
They caught a wireless message one day telling of our capture. So,
fearing that their own whereabouts might soon be discovered, they
hastily began to build a boat to sail away in, but, with the
materials at their disposal, they were unable to construct anything
like a seaworthy craft, capable of carrying that whole crowd. Then
Dame Fortune smiled on them.
A French square-rigged schooner sighted the island and the wreck of
the _Seeadler_.
"By Joe," exclaimed the captain, "we passed here six months ago and
there was no wreck here! We may find castaways on the island. It
looks as though we may find a good profit, too."
You see, a captain gets a third of the value of any wreck, ship, or
cargo, that he saves. The schooner quickly veered toward the island.
It was a Sunday morning. On the island the men were sitting around,
washing clothes, writing diaries, and so on. The chef was shooting
snipe for dinner. Then the cry:
"Ship ahoy."
Kling took out a lifeboat with a boarding party, the strongest men he
had, some of them the champion wrestlers. As they approached the
schooner, the captain leaned over the rail and shouted down to them:
"Don't row so hard, boys. We will come for you."
Our sailors swarmed aboard. Pistols out.
"Hands up!"
The Frenchmen recognized the German uniform.
"_Mon Dieu--des Allemands_. I turn off my course to save castaways
and I am captured by the _Boches_! _Mon Dieu!_"
The schooner was not big enough, nor had aboard provisions enough,
for both the Germans and the prisoners. Kling decided to leave the
prisoners, including the crew of the schooner, on the island, where
they would be comfortable enough. When he was a week or so out, he
would send a wireless that would bring ships to their rescue. So,
the whole of Seeadler-town was given over to the prisoners, and the
schooner sailed away. She was named the _Lutece_, but my men
discovered that she had been the German ship, the _Fortuna_. She had
been seized by the French during the war. So she got her old name
back. She was German again--a German auxiliary cruiser. For Kling
fully intended to go right on buccaneering.
Three days after the _Fortuna_ sailed, our former prisoners saw a
cloud of smoke on the horizon. Steaming at full speed, her funnels
belching smoke, the Japanese cruiser, _Usuma_, steered to the island.
On her bridge the admiral swore in Japanese.
"By Joe, the Count fooled me all right. He told me the truth. There
is the wreck, and there are his men. Everything except the _Manila_.
He tricked me with the tale about the _Manila_."
The Japanese found only men of the Allied nations.
"Where are the Germans?"
"I'm sorry," replied the French captain, "but they sailed away three
days ago in my ship, the _Lutece_."
The Japanese admiral was thoroughly disgusted at that, but of course
he took the whole crowd aboard and took them back to the Fijis. It
was of no use to go racing about the immense spaces of the Pacific
looking for a solitary sailing square-rigged schooner.
Kling's plan was to sail around Horn into the Atlantic, sink a few
ships there, and then try to steal through the blockade and get back
home. His course took him to Easter Island, a small, remote
possession of Chile where there was no wireless station. There he
intended to overhaul the ship, which was in bad condition, and take
aboard supplies and fresh water. On October 4th, they sighted the
island, but while sailing into the harbour struck an uncharted,
sunken rock. The _Fortuna_ was old and worm-eaten. The rock crashed
right through her planks. The ship pounded and quickly broke up.
The men had to swim for it.
The lives of some of them, at least, were saved in a curious way--by
two pigs. These animals we had brought from Germany aboard the
_Seeadler_ to serve as fresh pork. They soon became pets, however,
and we kept them. They were quite companionable and romped around
the decks with the men. Kling had them aboard the _Fortuna_. When
the ship sank, the swimmers, including the two pigs, found themselves
among sharks. These seemed to prefer pork to human flesh. They
seized the two pigs and began to fight over them among themselves.
You bet the men in the water swam as hard as they could. They were
quickly picked up by native canoes that had put out as soon as the
wrecking of the ship had been seen from shore.
The cargo of the _Fortuna_ consisted of Parisian fineries, silk
stockings and underclothing, handkerchiefs, parasols, tennis shoes,
brilliantine, scented soaps, perfumes, and such. It had been
destined for the natives of the South Seas, to whom the French bring
a truly Parisian elegance. In the breaking up of the ship, many
cases filled with these swanky trappings of civilization remained
afloat. The natives salvaged them, and pretty soon it seemed as if
the whole island had been on a shopping tour through Paris and had
visited the women's shops chiefly, or the Galeries Lafayette. Men
and women alike arrayed their dusky selves in all manner of silk and
lingerie! The population was delighted. Kling and his men were the
bringers of this treasure. They graciously told the natives they
could have anything they found, and in return they were granted all
the hospitality the island could muster. The Chilean governor, an
excellent fellow, placed a house at the disposal of the officers,
while the sailors were sought after by the natives as guests in their
huts.
They remained on the island for nearly two months enjoying life and
surveying the strange monuments there, huge monoliths that tell of an
ancient, forgotten civilization of people who long since have passed
into oblivion. On November 25th, a Chilean steamer that made regular
trips to the island hove in sight. When it raised steam for its
return voyage, our men were aboard. The Chilean authorities on the
mainland received them with friendly hospitality, regarding them as
shipwrecked sailors and therefore not interning them. They lived as
guests of German colonists in Chile from then on until the end of the
war.
XXX
THE ESCAPE FROM NEW ZEALAND TO THE
SMOKING ISLE
The thought of every prisoner is--escape! That was what we thought
about, by Joe, and what we dreamed about. Occasionally, I'd wake up
with a start, dreaming we were still in our small boat and about to
be dashed against that coral reef. Usually my sleep was not troubled
with such nightmares. But I often dreamed of getting away, capturing
another ship, and continuing our cruise. This did finally come
about, but not for many months.
No opportunity of escape presented itself during our stay at Suva,
which was not long. Kircheiss and I were shipped from the Fijis to a
little isle off the coast of the north island of New Zealand, right
near the entrance to Auckland harbour. The other four went to the
island of Somes, where they had a hard time under a bad camp
commander, a Major Matthis. No chance to escape came their way, but
with Kircheiss and me it was different. We had a highly exciting
time, and thus were spared the mental and physical stagnation that is
the lot of the average prisoner of war.
The public of New Zealand was inflamed against us. When we arrived
there was a great outcry and demand that we be shot. This amazed us,
but we discovered the reason a few days later. You see the
inhabitants of these islands thought that we had sunk the big New
Zealand passenger steamer _Wairuna_, with all on board. As a matter
of fact, we knew nothing of the _Wairuna_ and hadn't even heard of
her. Later, it developed that she had been captured by our fast
auxiliary cruiser _Wolf_, sister ship of the _Moewe_, and her crew
taken aboard as prisoners. But so far as the New Zealanders were
concerned, their ship and all on board her had vanished as though
swallowed up by the sea. So they were frantic about it, and my boys
and myself nearly lost our lives as a result. After carrying out her
raid, the _Wolf_ slipped through the blockade again and back into
Germany. At the time of our arrival in New Zealand from Fiji,
nothing was known of the _Wolf_, and it was supposed that we had sunk
the _Wairuna_ with her passengers and crew. The rage of the public
was such that the authorities had to hide us away in their naval
barracks at the Devonport Torpedo Yard, and then transfer us secretly
to a prison camp on the island of Motuihi, near by. Meanwhile, the
populace clamored for us to be turned over to them so they could
lynch us.
The little island of Motuihi, a beautiful strip of land, had long
been the internment place of many Germans who had been captured when
the British seized our possessions in Samoa and in other parts of the
South Seas. They were all civilians, from ten to seventy years of
age, traders, plantation owners, and officials. They greeted us with
pride and affection, but more particularly with anxiety. They said
we were sure to be shot. I laughed at this. "By Joe, who wants to
kill us? On what grounds could mere prisoners of war be shot down in
captivity?" I asked.
But things looked a little less rosy when, forty-eight hours later,
we were taken by boat to Auckland and then whisked by automobile,
under cover of night, through valley and forest to a freight train
pulled up in a wild, remote place. They locked us up in a freight
car, where there were two beds. They told us it was to protect us
against the public. The train pulled out and, after an all-night
journey, stopped near the outskirts of the city of Wellington, the
capital of the islands that comprise New Zealand. Here they put us
into another automobile and rushed us to the Danish Barracks in
Wellington, an old jail, an almost prehistoric relic of more
primitive days in New Zealand. A native keeper who led us along a
corridor tugged at my coat and pointed into a cell. There were my
boys, Leudemann, Krauss, Parmien, and Erdmann. They were in chains.
We were all to stand trial together. We spoke to one another for a
minute, and then Kircheiss and I were led to our cells.
On the following day, Kircheiss and I were taken aboard an old
cruiser in the harbour and ushered into the saloon, where there were
about a dozen men who wore black coats and four-cornered caps with
tassels. Our four boys were standing in a corner. I was boiling mad.
"What's this?" I said. "Is justice becoming ridiculous? Why are we
put in jail like this and some of my boys in chains? Is that for
prisoners of war? And what man of you is able to judge of our
warfare? You are civilians. Are we to be judged by civilians? I
will answer only to naval men."
Just then Sir Hall Thompson, British naval commander in New Zealand
waters, came down the stairway. I turned to him.
"I am glad to see you, sir. Why are we treated like this? And are
prisoners of war to be tried by civilians?"
"Count," he replied, "public opinion forces it. The public has
demanded that within three days of your arrival in this country you
must reveal where you sank the _Wairuna_ and why you sank her without
saving a single life, and also where your ship _Seeadler_ is."
"But I know nothing about the _Wairuna_," I replied. "I did not sink
her. In every single capture that we made, I took the crews aboard
my ship, kept them there until we were overcrowded, and then sent
them home."
"You say you didn't sink the _Wairuna_?"
"No! Nor ever even heard of her!"
"Will you give me your word of honour on this?"
"I give it to you now."
"Very well, Count, that is good."
"But why do you keep my men in chains?"
"We want to know where the _Seeadler_ is."
"I want to tell you, sir, that my men will die before they will say
anything. They have orders from me not to talk. If anyone is to
tell anything about the _Seeadler_, it is I. You would give your men
the same command under the same circumstances, and you would want
them to obey as my men are obeying."
"You are the one to ask, Count, about information of the _Seeadler_?"
"Yes."
"Then tell me where she is."
"Captain, may I sink deep in the earth if I ever betray my crew. I
respect you. I would not put such a question to you if you were my
prisoner."
"Count," he replied, "your men have set an example to our sailors. I
understand and appreciate your attitude. So long as your men show
themselves to be disciplined sailors, they will have excellent
treatment. And I hope that you, yourself, will have a pleasant stay
with us and find nothing of which to complain. Gentlemen," he
addressed the judges, "the court martial is over."
My four men were taken back to their island, and Kircheiss and I to
ours.
At Motuihi things were not so bad. The food was good and discipline
was not too strict. The camp commander, Turner by name, seemed very
proud to have a couple of real war prisoners in his charge. He had
really excellent cause to be pleased. Now that he had enemy naval
officers in his camp, he was raised to the rank of Lieutenant
Colonel, and his force of guards was increased to eighty men. It
likewise seemed to add to his dignity that he had among his captives
someone whom he could call Count. The principal annoyance now was
the strict watch they felt obliged to keep over us to prevent our
escape. Headquarters at Auckland had to be telephoned every other
hour and told that everything was all right. Colonel Turner was also
provided with a fine new motor boat, so that, if anything went wrong
with the telephone wire, he would still have a means of swift
communication with the mainland.
"By Joe, what a fine motor boat," I exclaimed when I saw it.
"Maybe we could use it," commented Kircheiss.
You couldn't blame the authorities for being a bit nervous. They
still did not know where the remainder of the _Seeadler's_ crew was,
and were worried about a possible raid to liberate us. Likewise,
Kircheiss and I had the idea of escape buzzing furiously in our
heads. In fact, the prisoners on Motuihi before we arrived had
already thought of a jail break. They had formed no definite plan,
but had gathered materials that might be useful. One had contrived
to filch and hide away a number of tools. Another had found a
derelict floating mine and taken the fuses from it and also a large
quantity of guncotton, which he stowed in his mattress. He slept on
the guncotton every night. Another had succeeded in "finding" charts
of the harbour with the location of the mine fields. In any plan of
flight, I could, by including the men who had collected them, have
these materials at my disposal.
The motor boat was, of course, the centre of all scheming. The idea
was to sail away in it with an able-bodied company of prison camp
comrades, capture a sailing ship, and go buccaneering again. One of
the prisoners, a young fellow, was a motor expert. The camp
commander had assigned him to look after the engine of his motor
boat. So he was one man whom we would have to have with us. I
didn't think there would be much trouble in getting away with the
boat. Although there were sentries all over the island, we were sure
we could invent some way of outwitting them. We would have to stow
the boat with a large amount of supplies. This, our motor expert
could do while pretending to tinker with the engine. He could hide
the material away in the air chambers of the boat. Much more
difficult was the job of collecting all the food, weapons, and other
equipment. This took a long time, and all the patient manœuvring
that is traditional of prisoners and their schemes of escape.
First it was necessary to quiet the uneasiness of the camp commander.
He apparently expected me to go breaking out of his camp breathing
fire from my nostrils. The camp doctor was a German Pole, quite
intelligent, but of degenerated spirit, who was used by the
commandant to spy on the prisoners. He made the friendliest sort of
overtures to me, and I, having been told that he was an informer,
made it seem as though I were being completely taken in by his smooth
ways.
Nearly everybody in the camp suffered severely from rheumatism. I
was one of the few who had the good luck to escape the malady. But I
pretended to get it badly, so badly that I was only able to walk with
crutches. The commandant was pleased when he found that I was almost
helpless. For how could a cripple attempt an escape? The doctor
pretended to try his best to cure my supposed ailment, but gave me a
kind of treatment that was designed to make it worse. His
hoodwinking was complete when I asked him to help me to get word to
my people in Germany to send me five thousand pounds, and promised
him part of this in return for his aid. I kept the hypothetical five
thousand pounds dangling before his nose, and his avarice blinded him
so much that I was able to make a ready tool of him.
My crew for the projected flight consisted of nine men, seven of whom
were North German Lloyd merchant-ship cadets captured by the British
in Samoa. When war broke out, they happened to be at the American
South Sea port of Pagopago. Slipping away in a small boat, they got
to German Samoa, only to find it in the hands of the New Zealanders.
I did my recruiting secretly. The plan of escape was kept from the
other prisoners. Always to keep your secret among as few as possible
is a good rule even among prisoners. You never know who is a spy.
The fellows I chose were all lively lads, ready for anything.
One day a couple of the prisoners said to me:
"Count, let's get up a show for Christmas, a play."
Show, play, theatre--that was an idea for me.
"Certainly I will," I replied. "I often got up shows in the navy.
We will have a theatre here at Motuihi that will beat the best in
Berlin. But you must leave everything to me. I will direct
everything."
"All right," they said.
I got permission from the commandant to produce the show. In fact,
he waxed quite enthusiastic about it. Not only would it give the
prisoners something to do, but it would also provide amusement for
the jailers. Life on the island was mighty boresome to all of them.
In a little while, the prison camp was humming with preparations for
the grand spectacle I was going to stage. This was the cover under
which my fellows and I prepared all of our equipment for our escape.
It deluded the guards, and also fooled the prisoners whom we couldn't
take with us. When we wanted material, always apparently innocent
things, we asked for it and said it was for the show. When we built
anything, it was for the show.
We even built a wireless set out of things supposed to be for our
_grosses shauspielhaus_. We made bombs out of tin cans and the
guncotton that had already been procured. The bombs had fuses that
could be lighted from a cigarette. One of my men worked on a farm in
the interior of the island, and got a lot of dynamite and blasting
powder used in blowing up stumps. We stole a couple of pistols from
the camp arsenal. We made a fake contrivance which looked like a
perfect Lewis or Maxim machine gun, but it worked well enough and it
looked even more formidable. Cadet von Zartowsky took odds and ends
and made a sextant that afterward took us fifty nautical miles off
our course, pretty fair, considering the circumstances.
We had no great trouble in hiding away a considerable supply of food
in the air chambers of the motor boat. Of course, I not only had
talked of elaborate plans for the supposed theatrical events that I
was directing, but I also had the prisoners prepare a lot of
bona-fide stage props, more even than could be used. These were made
up by the rest of the fellows who were not in our plot. Most of the
actual material needed for our escape and subsequent raiding cruise
had to be fixed up stealthily by the boys who were to make the dash
for freedom with me.
One midnight, a guard happened to notice three of my men busily at
work. One was painting a large German flag. Another was making a
red pistol holster. The third was sewing a sail out of bed sheets.
We intended hoisting a sail on the motor boat in order to conserve
fuel if we had to cruise about in that little boat for a long time.
The guard reported what he had seen to the commandant.
"Oh, it's all right," said Colonel Turner, "it's stuff for the
theatre."
But next day he came and questioned me:
"Look here, Count, I can understand how you might need a flag and a
pistol holster for your show, but what about the sail?"
"Oh, that's the curtain!" I replied.
Of all the people I met in New Zealand, there was but one for whom I
had a complete contempt. He was a fellow named Hansen, a German by
birth and a naturalized New Zealander. In spite of his
naturalization, he had been interned. He happened to notice that the
motor expert, while supposedly working on the engine of the _Pearl_,
the colonel's boat, had carried something suspicious aboard. Anxious
to curry favour with the commandant, he reported that we were acting
suspiciously. The commandant was contemptuous of a rat like that in
the first place, and then he was utterly infatuated with our theatre.
He said that whatever we were doing could only be in preparation for
our show. Nevertheless, he tried to investigate, but found nothing
to confirm what the squealer had told him.
After weeks of hard labour, we were ready. At night we cut the wires
connecting the island with the mainland and set a barracks afire.
That created the diversion we needed. Everybody, guards and all,
flocked to put the blaze out. I was among the foremost, and
attracted all attention to myself. I seemed to have a passion for
fighting fires. My boys were with me. When the excitement was at
its highest, we stole away singly and boarded the motor boat. The
engine purred, and we were away in the darkness.
We were safe from pursuit for a while, anyway. There was no other
boat at the island, and Motuihi could not communicate with the
mainland. It was only when the wires were repaired or when the
mainland was due to get its next report that the chase after us could
begin. When our escape did become known on the mainland on that
night of December 13, 1917, every kind of craft available went out to
look for us. Private owners took up scouting for us as a sport.
Boats chased one another and shot at one another, and one steamer
went on the rocks. Finally, a false rumour spread that we had
capsized and drowned, and the weary pursuers were glad to accept it
as true and return home.
We had our difficulties in finding our way in the night through the
Hauraki Gulf on which Auckland lies, but at an hour or so past
midnight we saw sweeping shafts of light. The authorities at
Auckland were looking for us with a searchlight, a ridiculous
procedure, but one calculated to impress the population. We steered
by the searchlight beams now, and picked our way along easily enough.
Of course, it would take a separate volume to record all of the
details of our work of preparation and our final escape. I am only
giving you a description of the high spots. But, by the way, I
almost forgot to tell you how we were dressed. We all had New
Zealand uniforms. Mine was the most interesting of the lot and
provided material for Australian humorists and cartoonists for many
weeks. As the commander of a man-o'-war, even of a twelve-foot
wooden one, with the unwarlike name of _Pearl_, I absolutely had to
have a sword. One of my boys, just an hour before our escape,
slipped into the wardrobe of the prison camp commandant. Not only
did he take Colonel Turner's best dress uniform, but he also swiped
his sword and scabbard.
We lay off an isolated bay of Red Mercury Island, northwest of the
Bay of Plenty, for two days, during which we had a couple of narrow
escapes from searching boats. A government cutter had almost sighted
us when she damaged her propeller on the rocks and had to limp back
home. The third day we put out to sea, and as we bounced about on
the waves I swore in the cadets as regular midshipmen of the Imperial
Navy and promoted Vice Corporal von Egidy to the rank of naval junior
lieutenant. As commander of a war vessel, even though she was only
the colonel's motor boat, I had the authority to do this. Then each
helped the other cut his hair short in naval fashion.
Two sailing vessels came by. We decided to seize them both, sink
one, and keep the other. We went after the first one, but a sudden
puff of wind carried her along at a great rate, and we could not
catch her. This was very unfortunate, for she reported our capture
of the second boat, which she witnessed. Bombs poised, machine gun
pointing, and German flag raised, we swiftly approached the _Moa_.
She hove to. My boys and I clambered on deck. With Colonel Turner's
sword in my hand, I ordered the captain and crew herded below, the
captain, an excellent old salt, growling:
"You're escaped prisoners, eh? Our boys are doing their bit in
France, and at home they can't even guard prisoners."
The _Moa_ was a fine craft but as flat as a match box. Intended for
coastwise trade, she had no keel and drew only three feet of water,
but she had huge masts. A storm blew up, and we scudded before the
wind. The _Moa's_ captain rushed up bristling with excitement. His
boat, he protested, was not adapted for sailing on the high sea, much
less through a storm. We were risking our lives, he expostulated.
We should take down sail.
"We are sailing for our lives, by Joe," I responded, and kept all
canvas up.
The skipper stayed on deck all night and poured out oil to quiet the
waves. We went on our watches, undisturbed. Ordinarily, we would
have been somewhat worried, but the storm was taking us along
swiftly--away from pursuit. The waves began to break over our stern,
and the _Moa_ bobbed up and down. She had a deckload of lumber.
Overboard with it. We started to work and were ably assisted by a
breaker that crashed over us and in an instant swept most of the
lumber into the sea. We were towing the motor boat we had taken from
the commandant at Motuihi. A wave swamped her, and she tore loose
from the towline and sank.
We steered to the Kermadec Islands, an uninhabited group where the
New Zealand government keeps a cache of provisions for castaway
sailors. Curtis Island, one of the group, came in sight on December
21st. It appeared in a cloud of smoke, a land of volcanoes and
geysers. Presently we spied the sheet-iron shed where the provisions
were stored. Kircheiss and four men landed on the inferno-like coast
and in due time returned, their boat loaded deep with provisions.
The New Zealand government was kind enough to provide many useful
things for shipwrecked sailors and sometimes for escaped prisoners of
war. There were tools, oars, sails, fishing tackle, blankets, bacon,
butter, lard, canned beef--in short, everything. We had intended to
leave our prisoners on Curtis Island, but that den of steam and
sulphur fumes seemed unfit for anyone. So we decided to take them on
to near-by Macauley Island, there put them ashore with a supply of
provisions, and send a wireless message to summon aid for them.
"Smoke to the north, behind island," sang the lookout.
Two men were still on the island. I sent hastily for them. The
_Moa_ raised sail and ran before the wind. The steamer was in sight
now. She sailed toward us. We changed our course. She, too,
changed her course. The skipper of the _Moa_ recognized her as the
New Zealand government's cable steamer, _Iris_, an auxiliary cruiser.
She had cannon, and we had none. Our goose was cooked.
We still tried hopelessly to run away. She gained on us, and
signalled us to stop. We kept on. A flash, a distant roar, a
hissing in the air, a splash in front of us. She was firing on us.
"Heave to," I commanded, and we were prisoners once again.
The _Iris_ was manned, not by naval men, but by a nondescript crowd
that put pistols to our backs as we came aboard, and searched us to
the soles of our shoes. Then these gentry robbed us of our personal
possessions. They were wildly jubilant over their victory. I
gathered from them that the ship that had escaped us having brought
the news of our capture of the _Moa_ to Auckland, the authorities
there had surmised that we must be headed for the cache of supplies
at Curtis Island. When we arrived at Auckland, the New Zealanders
had their own little victory celebration. Sightseers in all sorts of
boats came out to have a look as the _Iris _with the _Moa_ in tow
steamed into harbour, the victor of the Battle of the Kermadecs.
We were jailed at Mount Eden, the local prison of Auckland, as a
punishment for our flight. For a calaboose, it was not bad. After
twenty-one days there, we were distributed among various prison
camps. Kircheiss and I went to River Island near Lyttelton on the
south island of New Zealand. Even the yard of our prison in Fort
Jervois was a veritable cage. It was screened not only around but
also across the top with lines of barbed wire. The commander of the
camp, Major Leeming of Tasmania, was one of the best fellows I have
ever met. He, too, felt himself a prisoner here on this lonely
island and soon became our third man at cards, which we played to
while away the hours during the long evenings.
A drawbridge that had been smashed by a hurricane was being repaired,
and we prisoners had access to the waterside for a while. In the
yard stood a row of empty tar barrels. One of the barrels fell over,
and I happened to notice that it was picked up by a small coastwise
schooner that often lay at dock farther down the shore. I threw in
another barrel. It floated. The boat picked it up. My plan was
made. I could arrange one of those barrels so that I could float out
in it. I would pick the time when the little schooner was at shore.
Then I would get into the barrel and roll myself off the dock. The
boat would pick the barrel up. It might seem a bit heavy, but they
would think it had tar in it. The barrel once aboard, its lid would
open and a man armed with a knife would step out, like a
jack-in-the-box. Thus I would have a boat. I would pick up
Kircheiss, who would be waiting, and we would go sailing and perhaps
get to some neutral island.
I had everything, and waited. Major Leeming had been so kind to me
that I did not want to embarrass him by escaping under his command.
He, expecting an addition to his family, was to take a furlough. I
would do my jail-breaking while he was away. But soon after Major
Leeming went on his furlough, Kircheiss and I were ordered back to
the prison camp at Motuihi. Of course, there was a new commandant at
Motuihi now, a Major Schofield. Most of the prisoners there received
us with enthusiasm. Even the treacherous Polish doctor brought me a
bottle of champagne, hoping that I would not mention our former
little business transaction in which he was to get a percentage of
that $25,000.
Some of our own countrymen who had spent so many hours learning parts
for that theatrical show seemed to hold it against us. But, after
all, had I not treated them to a far better melodrama from the life
of a sailor?
Presently, several fellows came to me and asked if I did not think
something could be undertaken. They had already contrived to get a
few pistols and build a folding canvas boat. We could not very well
go to sea in that. But if we could contrive to station ourselves at
some other part of the island, we could wait until a sailing ship
came along, put out in our flimsy little craft, and attack her. We
consulted with the former governor of German Samoa, Dr.
Schultz-Ewarth by name, who was a prisoner at Motuihi. He with his
personal servant, a giant fellow, formerly a German baker, was
allowed to wander where he pleased on the island. It was his man who
hit upon the idea of hiding in the interior of the island by building
a cave in the side of a dry river bed that he had discovered, the
cave to be so disguised that searchers would not notice it. We could
easily get out of the camp and into the other parts of the island,
and, at the same time, give the impression that we had escaped over a
cliff to the shore and been picked up by a boat. We could keep to
our retreat until the search had died down, and then we could watch
for a passing sailship and attack it. The plan seemed an excellent
one.
We gathered more weapons, while Dr. Schultz-Ewarth and his man, on
their long rambles, began the construction of the cave. Things
progressed rapidly. Then the Armistice came. If it had been delayed
a week, there would have been another escape at Motuihi.
After the Armistice, we were prisoners for four more months on the
north island near Auckland, but were allowed visitors. One day, a
Maori chieftain's wife from the tribe of the Waikotas, a people who
made a name for themselves as warriors against the English in their
heroic struggle for freedom in 1860-61, called with her retinue.
This lady, whose name was Kaihau, handed me a letter. It was written
in Maori, and translated read as follows:
I come to you, O illustrious chieftain, and pass on to you for the
future preservation of an old tradition the mat of the great
chieftain Wai-Tete.
As she handed me the letter, she brought forth from under her dress a
mat that she had hidden there while passing the prison guard.
My surprise was great, and I nudged Kircheiss, but he was as
mystified as I. Fortunately, there was a German lady present who had
been living in New Zealand for some time. She understood the customs
of the handsome aborigines who once ruled in New Zealand, and
explained to me that I was about to receive the highest honour that
the Maoris can bestow upon anyone.
The chieftain's wife began to dance around me with great rapidity and
wild abandon. The name of this dance was the Haka-Haka, or something
like that, and at the conclusion of it she presented me with a green
stone found only in New Zealand. Again she spoke.
"O great warrior from across the seas, we greet you as a chieftain of
the Waikatos, and among my people you shall be known henceforth as
'Ai-Tete,' meaning 'Holy Water.' We believe that the spirit of our
Maori hero Ai-Tete has returned to us in you."
I accepted the stone and pressed the Maori woman's hand to express my
gratitude. As she was about to take her departure, she requested
that I hide the mat and stone and carry them to Germany with me,
which I did. But before concealing them, I had my picture taken
wearing nothing but the garb of a Maori chieftain, this simple mat.
Except for the absence of full war paint and the usual tattooing, my
friends said I made a perfect aborigine. Perhaps so. Even in
Germany there are those who look upon me as more of an aborigine than
a civilized being.
When the day on which we were to sail drew near, the president of the
Soldiers' Mothers' League visited me and wished me a pleasant trip on
behalf of the mothers of 80,000 soldiers. She said she came because
New Zealand's sons who had been war prisoners in Germany had returned
home in good health to their mothers. Therefore, she considered it
her duty to pray God that I, too, might soon be restored to my
mother's arms.
So at last we sailed away from New Zealand, "the land down under,"
where we had had the last of our adventures, enjoyed a few hardships,
spent many weary and delightful hours, and met many hospitable and
kindly people. On the whole, I have happy memories of the Antipodes.
In July of 1919, I stepped on German soil again and hurried home,
just in time to pass a few more weeks with my father, who died on
September 3d. The old warrior held steadfast to his faith in the
Fatherland to the last. But to his dying hour he was filled with
regret because his government would not let him take an active part
in the Great War.
On January 3, 1920, all my men returned--that is, all save one.
Their clothes were faded from the tropical sun and corroded by the
sea water, but they returned without a stain upon either their honour
or their loyalty.
The only gap in our ranks after those long adventures was the
excellent Dr. Pietsch, our ship surgeon. The news of Germany's
collapse reached the remote part of Chile where he was living. When
he heard it, he fell dead of heart failure.
Returned to my beloved Fatherland, I found so many things changed and
different from what I had hoped. In this connection, there is one
memory always before me. It is of my mother. I was sitting at her
sick bed when even the doctors had given up hope. Only then did I
realize how much I loved her, but I also realized with sorrow and
regret how much more I should have done for her. Exactly the same
feeling I have to-day when I find my country lying low. Never have I
loved my homeland so much as now.
To the youth of America I would like to send a message: Europe is one
continent attached to still another even greater land mass. That
other is the continent of Asia, filled with many strange races, all
speaking different languages. Even Europe itself is split up into
many nations speaking more than thirty different tongues. This I
believe is largely responsible for the constant wars that are the
curse of Europe. As an old sailor who has sailed before the mast
around this world many times, I want to tell you Americans how lucky
you are to live in a great country occupying a large part of this
continent, with the wide Atlantic for a barrier on one side and the
Pacific on the other. Yours is a great inheritance. You should be
proud of it. You should make yourselves worthy of it.
As a sailor who has sailed under many flags and whose friends and
pals are the citizens of many countries and many climes, it is my
dream that one day we shall all speak the same language and have so
many common interests that terrible wars will no longer occur. But
keep your bodies fit, and if your country needs you, just remember
the motto of the sea:
"Don't jump overboard! Stay with the ship!"
To all my countrymen, wherever they may be, I would like to say: Look
up to the bright sun and not into mouse holes where it is dark. Take
my lads for your example. When their ship was wrecked on the coral
reef of that atoll in the South Seas there was one thing that was not
wrecked--their courage. Even when the _Seeadler_ met her fate, from
stem to stern went up the cry, taken from an old refrain, "The German
oak still stands."
AUF WIEDERSEHEN!
---------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: Mopelia]
Mopelia, a coral atoll of the Society Islands, where the Sea Devil
planned a brief sojourn, and where the _Seeadler_ was wrecked by a
tidal wave. "A circular reef studded with waving palms and within
the reef a lovely, placid lagoon. The coral shore was snow white
and, with the sun's rays reflecting from it, it looked like a
sparkling jewel set in an alabaster ring, like emeralds set in ivory."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
APPENDIX
(Note A, see page 107.) Lloyd's Register of 1917-18 describes the
_Pass of Balmaha_ as follows: Steel ship (captured and taken to
Cuxhaven), built 1888 by R. Duncan & Co., Port Glasgow, gross tonnage
1571, length 245.4, breadth 38.8, depth 22.5.
Until the World War, she was British-owned, and up until her fatal
voyage her master was Capt. "Dick" Lee of Nova Scotia.
* * *
(Note B, see page 209.) Author's note: Since the War, it has
developed that the Count was mistaken regarding the identity of this
cruiser. Instead of the _Kent_, she was the _Lancaster_, and her
commander was Captain Phillips, now of the British battleship _Queen
Elizabeth_. Recently an American newspaper man, Robert H. Davis of
the New York _Sun_, met him in the Mediterranean, loaned him a copy
of one of the early editions of this book, and asked him: "Is it
romance or truth?" "Quite accurate, I should say," replied Captain
Phillips, "and in accordance with the records."
* * *
(Note C, see page 216.) "Count Luckner is to be congratulated on
getting his ship through without being seen. Every effort was made
to intercept him.... Those messages came from the cruiser
_Lancaster_ and not from the _Kent_. I was commander of the
_Lancaster_. The raider must have passed within 200 miles of us on
the inside waters as we lay off the west coast of Chile," said
Captain Phillips of the British Navy.--New York _Sun_, May 24, 1928.
[Transcriber's note: several spelling variants have been preserved as
printed.]
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