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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