In the launch he mopped his face with a handkerchief. Vargas opened the throttle and asked, “Good business?”
“That’s an honest man.”
“Ah! That is too bad.”
Smith turned from the side and found Knight waiting with the decoded telegram. Knight seemed excited. Smith read the telegram and said only, “Very good,” in dismissal.
He read the telegram again until laughter broke into his thoughts and he saw Cherry and Sarah Benson attended by a little group of grinning officers who shredded away as Smith looked up at them. He said flatly, “Signal from Admiralty to be passed to all H.M. ships. The German cruisers Wolf and Kondor are now known to be at sea and to have been at large for some weeks. Their location and destination are unknown.”
Cherry burst out, startled, “Good Lord!”
Smith stared past him. They would have slipped through the North Sea blockade in vile winter weather, not an easy feat but by no means impossible for two fast ships. Wolf and Kondor. He needed to be given no details nor to consult the silhouette book. He had patrolled the North Sea beat for long enough, watching for these two ships and the rest of the High Seas Fleet. Like a policeman. And like a policeman with known criminals he could recite all of their descriptions and histories, their idiosyncrasies and dangerous strengths, though many of them he had not seen.
He had seen these two.
On a wild black night they had obliterated his ship and his men and thrust him to the point of death. They haunted his dreams.
Cherry was saying, “Commerce raiders. They’ve had some success before so they’re trying that game again.”
Raiders. Aimed at Allied shipping. They could wreak terrible destruction before they were hunted down and that would be more than difficult. They could be on their way to Africa or preparing to slash across the Atlantic trade routes, Britain’s jugular vein, or — his mind took a leap in the dark. Sarah Benson said the Germans were watching Thunder. The Pacific was the last place but … His thoughts raced and then were still. He felt cold.
Cherry murmured vaguely, “Maybe the African coast but more likely the Atlantic …”
Smith said with certainty, “No.”
Cherry stared at him, as did Sarah Benson and it was she who asked, “You think they’re coming here?”
Cherry shook his head but stopped when Smith said, “Yes.” And went on: “They’re watching this ship, following her movements. There are two ships, the Gerda and the Maria, flying neutral flags but in fact German and loaded with Welsh steam coal. Yes?” And as Cherry hesitated, then nodded, Smith said, “They’re tenders. Wolf and Kondor are coalburning ships.”
Cherry was silent a moment, then he said doubtfully, “It’s possible, I suppose.”
Smith was to see that look of disbelief on many faces but he did not see it on Sarah Benson’s. She asked, “You know these ships?” And when he nodded: “What are they like?”
“Of a size with this one but only half her age. They’re slightly faster and decidedly better armed.”
“Then you can’t fight them.” She said it with cold common sense.
Cherry went pink. “Really! You can’t tell the Captain his duty —”
“Duty my foot! It isn’t his duty to commit mass-suicide with the six-hundred-odd men aboard here. Either one of those ships could run rings around this old tub and blow her out of the water! He’s just said so!”
Smith’s smile was bleak. Sarah Benson had summed up the situation with brutal clarity.
There was an uncomfortable silence until Cherry asked, “What will you do?”
Smith would not add to his worries. He said slowly, “I will sail now, heading north again but only for the sake of appearances. I have a rendezvous with a collier but I can’t keep it now. Will you see she is sent here to wait for my orders?”
“Of course. And you will patrol these waters?”
Smith side-stepped the question. “That seems the obvious course.”
Thunder sailed.
Every man aboard her knew that she had come to this port at the urgent request of Cherry and they had seen them talking. They knew something was afoot. But Smith conned his ship and was silent.
As Thunder slid past the signalling station at Punta Negro and lifted to the sea, Garrick ventured, “The wardroom would be pleased if Miss Benson and yourself would join us for dinner this evening, sir.”
Smith’s lips twitched. He was sure the invitation was aimed at Sarah Benson and courtesy demanded it be extended to himself. But maybe he was being unfair. “I’d be delighted and I’m sure Miss Benson will be. Will the gunroom be present?”
“Yes, sir. We rather thought that, as this will be your first visit as Captain, it would be suitable.”
So he had been unfair. “It will suit very well. I have one or two things to say.”
He turned to leave the bridge but glanced at the log and read the entry ‘weighed and proceeded’. He laid his finger against the figure of coal remaining and did the sum in his head: sufficient for seven days at an economical ten knots.
Garrick said, “We’ll complete with coal from the Mary Ellen, sir?” The Mary Ellen was their collier.
Smith said absently, “I hope so.”
Garrick blinked. Coaling was a chore as vital as it was filthy, a labour of hours in choking dust that took place almost weekly, vital because the ship moved by burning coal. A Captain coaled his ship or she lay a helpless hulk. Now Smith said he “hoped” they would coal. Hoped?
Then Smith added, “I’ve arranged for her to come down here.” He left the bridge.
Garrick watched him go, relieved, but only partly so. He knew that with the rest of the crew he had been wary of Smith from the moment he stepped aboard and was uncomfortably aware that Smith knew it and had kept himself remote. They knew him only by reputation and rumour. Garrick could never guess at the thoughts behind that impassive face but he suspected they were a deal quicker than his own.
Smith shifted restlessly around his cabin and rubbed at his face that had become a stiff, expressionless mask. He had to make a decision. No, that was not right. He had already made the decision but it appalled him and he was seeking an alternative. He had a cold knowledge inside himself that the cruisers were racing for these waters, and why.
The Atlantic trade routes might be an attractive hunting ground for a pair of cruisers but the Navy had a cruiser squadron off the States and another in the West Indies and reaction from both would be swift. But on the Pacific seaboard the defence of Britain’s trade, and there was more than a hundred thousand tons of British shipping on this coast, rested on one ship: Thunder. The cruisers could sweep British trade from this coast and their marauding would draw ships from the Atlantic, maybe as many as fifty ships that were already desperately needed to blockade the High Seas Fleet and fight the growing submarine menace. And fifty ships would be none too many to find and destroy the cruisers. Hunting them in the vast Pacific wastes would be a heartbreaking business, a thousand times worse than seeking a needle in a haystack.
But that would be later. Thunder would come first. They would know about Thunder; she was under observation. She offered them a victory that would resound around the world. They could annihilate him or bottle him up in some port so that Thunder was interned, humiliated.