He passed Somers’s gun, saw the door of the casemate hooked open and inside a section of the deck that had recently been washed down and sprinkled with sand.
Garrick said, “Chaps are in good spirits, sir.”
Smith nodded. He was keenly aware of it, had been watching them, catching at the tone of a voice, the quick reaction to orders, the general air of them. They were working hard and cheerfully. Joking. There was occasional laughter, some of it a little high-pitched, still excited, but laughter.
Then they rounded the turn in the channel and opened the port and the pool. Smith took his ship into port and to her anchorage, performing the evolution neatly with his usual insistence that a job be well done, but with only a part of his mind. He was preoccupied with the thought that his ship was not welcome here. A reminder was there in the way the masts of the Gerda poked out of the water at an angle where she had settled on her side on the bottom. They would be attacked, not with crude force but certainly in diplomatic terms.
He was not inclined to wait for that attack. So that as Thunder anchored, the telegraph rang ‘stop engines’, and the derrick yanked the pinnace up and over the side, he said, “I’m going ashore.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Garrick, then asked, “Do you think they’ll follow us in?”
Midshipman Vincent was on the bridge. Smith saw his startled glance and grinned. “Hadn’t thought of that? They have as much right to come in as we have.” He thought: And may well be more welcome. Then he said definitely, “But they won’t.” He did not explain.
Garrick followed him down to the entry port. “You’re going alone, sir? Do you want Knight as interpreter?”
“No.” Smith did not explain that, either, but the Port Captain would make his feelings clear enough without an interpreter and it would be unpleasant so he would go alone.
It was night, now. Darkness clothed and hid the hills but the town twinkled with a thousand yellow cats-eyes of lit windows. Half-a-dozen ships lay in the pool but Kansas loomed over them all. They were strung with lights, their decks crowded. The picket-boat, at Smith’s order headed for the quay above which lay the house of the Port Captain. The quay was lit by one big lamp and he could see a crowd there, too. He stood quiet, still, alongside Wakely who had the helm.
The cruisers waited for him outside and there would be no help from the battle-cruiser, no help from anyone. His choice was to fight them or be interned. Suicide or surrender.
He had coal for only twenty-four hours’ steaming.
They ran in on the quay. Two boats already lay there, tied-up clear of the steps. One belonged to the Chilean Admiral, the other to Kansas. Thunder’s pinnace slipped between them and Smith climbed the steps. At their head he found the crowd and in the forefront stood a little party. There were several women, all in evening dress, hair piled, bejewelled, gaudy as parakeets against the men. They were also in evening dress or full-dress uniform, black or navy-blue. The Chilean Admiral and the American, Donoghue. And Donoghue’s Flag-Captain and two young men who were obviously the respective Chilean and American FlagLieutenants. All of them glittered with decorations.
He saluted and smiled at them all. “Good evening. I seem to have interrupted a party. I’m sorry.” Like every other man in Thunder, soot streaked his face and his eyes were red-rimmed and stared. He presented a startling contrast to the group he faced.
Encalada, the Port Captain, fluent in English, almost choked at that opening remark. The Chilean Admiral had not understood a word but he scowled at Smith nevertheless. For a moment Encalada was bereft of speech and the American Flag-Lieutenant slipped into the gap. “If I may be permitted, sir, I have some knowledge of Spanish.”
His Spanish was excellent and he made the introductions. One of the party was Herr Doktor Muller, the German Consul, tall and stiff, bald and hook-nosed. The Flag-Lieutenant rolled off the titles in English and Spanish spectacularly: “Contra Almirante Gualcalda, the Navy of Chile, RearAdmiral Donoghue, United States Navy, Captain Encalada …”
Smith thought he had done his homework.
The Flag-Lieutenant came to the end of the titles and the ranks, the long, aristocratic-sounding names. Then he stumbled, “And Commander —” Only then he realised he did not know the name.
Smith supplied it for him, tersely. “Smith.”
And Donoghue remarked on that contrast, too, and grinned to himself. He said, “You didn’t exactly interrupt. We were having dinner when we heard the firing, but in the tradition of Drake we finished the meal. Then we came down to see what we could.” His eyes moved from Smith to Thunder lying in a circle of light out in the pool, aswarm with men. Through the hole torn in her side he could see the men labouring, tiny figures inside the smashed and mangled interior. His eyes moved back to Smith.
One more contrast. Donoghue was tall and broadshouldered, deep-chested, strongly handsome. An aristocrat. He could trace his family back three hundred years to a house in New England and before that to a castle in Ireland. It was a family that had always held rank, in the last hundred years it had enjoyed rank and privilege and wealth. It was now considerable wealth.
Smith had nothing but his pay. No family.
Donoghue saw a slight, young man, too thin, the face drawn. He cut a frail and lonely figure as he faced them all. And yet — there was something about the man, a restlessness, an energy that could be sensed even now when he stood unmoving.
They had a great deal in common and they eyed each other warily.
Donoghue said, “I see you brought your consort safe to port.”
“Ariadne? Yes. But we lost a merchantman, the Elizabeth Bell. She was hit and sank in minutes. I’m glad I was able to take off some of her crew before she sank, but the others were lost.”
Donoghue thought about it. So did his Flag-Captain, Corrigan, lean and vinegar-faced, vinegar-tongued, puritan. Smith had been able to take some off before she sank? Both of them thought there was a deal left unsaid.
But that saw the end of the courtesies. Encalada asked, “What is your business here, Captain?” His face was set. He was angry, or rather still angry. Forty-eight hours before he had been outraged.
This was the attack Smith had come to meet. He met it coolly. “I escorted Ariadne to this port. As you know and can see, I have been inaction and I need to make repairs and coal —”
Encalada brushed that aside with a wave of his hand. “Your presence here is effrontery!”
“My presence here is of necessity, I assure you.”
“You have flagrantly violated the neutrality of this port!”
“This port had harboured a belligerent for —”
“That has not been proved.”
The Herr Doktor put in quickly, “I reiterate, neither my government nor myself accept responsibility for the collier, whose ever she was.”
Smith rapped at him, “Responsibility or no, the Gerda was a belligerent and that was proved by the action of her sister ship, the Maria. She ran when I approached Malaguay.” Muller smiled thinly, and shrugged. Smith said, “I caught her and sank her.” This time the Doktor’s eyes flickered, his head twitched on his neck. Small signs but enough for Smith, who went on, “And before she sank I intercepted signals between her and a German warship and two German cruisers lie outside this port now. That is a fact, Herr Doktor.” He swung on Encalada. “As was also the matter of the Leopard, a German gunboat supposed to be interned at Malaguay but allowed to slip away to fight again and she is outside now! What kind of neutrality is that?”