Part 13
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.