During the period when Joey Gurney was busy doing all that Cappy
Ricks desired him to do and some things that were slightly off Cappy's
program, the president emeritus of the Blue Star Navigation Company and
allied interests was discovering that it is one thing to declare for the
simple life and quite another to live it. The Great War challenged
so much of the Ricks interest that he could not bear to live far
from morning and evening editions--and he wanted them red hot off the
presses. Things were doing in the shipping world. The most inconceivable
trades were being consummated daily, freights were soaring, lumber
prices had reached an unprecedentedly high level and promised to go
higher; there was something doing every minute and not enough minutes
in a working day to accommodate half of these somethings. What more
natural, therefore, than that Cappy presently should find himself caught
in the maelstrom, even though he told himself daily that, come what
might _he_ would keep out of it.
The first indefinite evidence that he was about to be engulfed came in
the form of a newspaper story, ex the steamer _Timaru_, from Sydney, via
Tahiti. There it was, as big as a church--a paragraph of it, tucked away
in a column-and-a-half story of the bombardment of Papeete by the German
Pacific fleet early in September of 1914:
“An incident of the bombardment was the sinking of the German freight
steamer _Valkyrie_ by shells from the German fleet. The vessel had been
captured by the French gunboat _Zeile_ some weeks previous and was at
anchor in the harbor, under the guns of the _Zeile_, when the German
squadron appeared off the entrance. The gunboat immediately was made the
target for the German guns, and sunk. During the attack, however, a wild
shell missed the _Zeile_ and struck the _Valkyrie_, tearing a great hole
in her hull and causing her to sink in ten fathoms at her anchorage.”
Ten fathoms! Sixty feet! Why, at that depth Cappy should have known that
her masts and funnel would be above water; that in all probability
she carried war-risk insurance; that she was so far from anywhere the
underwriters would have abandoned her, even had she not been a prize of
war, since there are no appliances in Papeete for salving a vessel of
her size; that she could be raised if one cared to spend a little money
on doing it; that one projectile probably had not ruined her beyond
repair; that she was a menace to navigation in Papeete Harbor and hence
would have to be gotten out of the way, either by dynamite or auction;
that--well, any number of thats should have occurred to Cappy Ricks
to suggest the advisability of keeping track of the wreck of the
_Valkyrie_. However, for some mysterious reasons--his resentment against
the German cause, probably--the golden prospect never appealed to him,
for when he had finished reading the article he merely said:
“Well, what do you know about that? Skinner, it's a mighty lucky thing
for that German admiral that I'm not the Kaiser, for I'd certainly make
him hard to catch. The idea of sinking that fine steamer--and a German
steamer at that! Here was the little old French gunboat, about as
invulnerable as a red-cedar shingle; and instead of moving into proper
position and raking her with their light guns--instead of calling on her
to surrender--these Germans had to go to work in a hurry and inaugurate
a campaign of frightfulness. The minute they were off the harbor--Zowie!
Blooey! Bam! It was all over but the cheering, and they'd chucked an
eight-inch projectile through a ship that was worth four of the gunboat.
“Skinner, that's what I call spilling the beans. Why they didn't take
their time, recapture that freighter and give her skipper a chance to
hustle across to San Francisco or Honolulu and intern, is a mystery to
me. The idea! Why, for that German fleet to waste ammunition on that
Jim-Crow town and a hand-me-down gunboat was equivalent to John L.
Sullivan whittling out a handle on a piece of two-by-four common fir in
order to attack a cockroach!”
Cappy was so incensed that he growled about the Germans for an hour.
Then he forgot the _Valkyrie_, notwithstanding the fact that the press
jogged his memory again when the German fleet, deciding that prudence
was the better part of valor, fled from the Pacific to escape the
Japanese, only to be destroyed in the South Atlantic by the British
fleet. A resume of the operations of the German squadron in the
Pacific brought forth mention of the destruction of the _Zeile_ and the
_Valkyrie_. However, Cappy's mind was not in Tahiti now, but off the
Falkland Islands, for he was very much pro-Ally and devoted more thought
to military and naval strategy than he did to the lumber and shipping
business.
However, the climax of Cappy's indignation over the disaster to
the _Valkyrie_ was not attained until a few months later when, in
conversation on the floor of the Merchants' Exchange with the skipper
of the schooner _Tarus_, who happened to have been in Papeete at
the bombardment, he learned he had done the German admiral a grave
injustice. He came back to his office, boiling, declaring the French
were a crazy nation, and that, after all, he could recall meeting one or
two fine Germans during the course of a fairly busy career. He summoned
Mr. Skinner and Matt Peasley to hear the sordid tale.
“Remember that steamer _Valkyrie_ the Germans were supposed to have sunk
by accident in the harbor of Papeete during the bombardment in September
of 1914?” he queried.
“I believe I read something about it in the papers at the time,” Mr.
Skinner replied.
“What about her?” Matt Peasley demanded.
“Why, the Germans didn't sink her at all, Matt! The Frenchmen did it,”
Cappy shrilled. “The crazy, frog-eating jumping-jacks of Frenchmen! The
tramp wasn't flying the German flag--naturally the Frenchmen had hauled
it down; so the Germans didn't investigate her. Besides, they were in a
hurry--you'll remember the Japs were on their trail at the time; so they
just devoted forty minutes to shooting up the town, and beat it. I don't
suppose they ever knew they hit the _Valkyrie_; perhaps they figured
that, having sunk the gunboat, the _Valkyrie_ could up hook and away at
her leisure, since there was nothing left to prevent her.
“Huh! Makes me sick to talk about it; but the skipper of the _Taurus_
was there at the time and he tells me that, though the _Valkyrie_
was pretty well down by the stern, her bulkheads were holding and she
wouldn't have sunk if those blamed Frenchmen, fearful that the German
fleet was coming back after her, hadn't gone aboard and opened her sea
cocks! Yes, sir. Rather than risk having her recaptured, they opened her
sea cocks and sunk her! And, at that, they didn't have sense enough to
run her out to deep water. No! They had to do the trick as she lay at
anchor; and there she lies still, a menace to navigation and a perennial
reminder to those Papeete Frenchmen that he who acts in haste will
repent at leisure.”
To this outburst Mr. Skinner made some perfunctory remark, attributing
the situation to a lack of efficiency, while Matt Peasley went back to
his office and grieved as he reflected on the corrosive action of salt
water on those fine, seven-year-old engines.