"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.