Текст книги "Shout at the Devil"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

A hundred yards later she abandoned the pursuit, and trotted back to the water, wiggling her little ears and snorting in triumph. Half a mile farther on the survivors had stopped running.

They camped there that night without food, bedding or weapons, and the following morning, after a heated council Of war, Sebastian was elected to return to the river and ascertain whether the hippo was still in control of the channel. He came back at high speed to report that she was.

Three more days they waited for the hippo and her calf to move away– During this time they suffered the miseries of cold nights and hungry days, but the greatest misery was inflicted on Flynn O'Flynn whose case of gin was under eight feet of water and by the third morning he was threatening delyrium tremens again. just before

Sebastian set off for his morning reconnaissance of the channel, Flynn informed him agitatedly that there were three blue scorpions sitting on his head. After the initial alarm, Sebastian went through the motions of removing the imaginary scorpions and stamping them to death, and

Flynn was satisfied.

Sebastian returned from the river with the news that the % hippo and her calf had evacuated the island, and it was now possible to begin salvage operations.

Protesting mildly and talking about crocodiles, Sebastian was stripped naked and coaxed into the water. On his first dive, he retrieved the precious case of gin.

"Bless you, MY boy," Flynn murmured fervently as he eased the cork out of a bottle.

By the following morning Sebastian had recovered nearly all their equipment and booty, without being eaten by crocodiles, and they set off for Lalapanzi on foot.

Now they were in their last camp before Lalapanzi, and Sebastian felt his impatience rising. He wanted to get home to Rosa and baby

Maria. He should be home by evening.

"Come on, Flynn. Let's go." He flicked the coffee grounds from his mug, threw aside his blanket, and shouted to Mohammed and the bearers who were huddled around the other fire.

"Safari! Let us march." Nine hours later, with the daylight dying around him, he breasted the last rise and paused at the top.

All that day eagerness had lengthened his stride, and he had left

Flynn and the column of heavily laden bearers far behind.

Now he stood alone, and stared without comprehension at the smoke-blackened ruins of Lalapanzi from which a few thin tendrils of smoke still drifted.

"Rosa!" Her name was a harsh bellow of fear, and he ran wildly.

"Rosa!" he shouted as he crossed the scorched and trampled lawns.

"Rosa! Rosa! Rosa!" the echo from the kopje above the homestead shouted back.

"Rosa!" He saw something amongst the bushes at the edge of the lawn, and he ran to it. Old Nanny lying dead with the blood dried black on the floral stuff of her nightgown.

"Rosa!" He ran back towards the bungalow. The ash swirled in a warm mist around his legs as he crossed the stoep.

"Rosa!" His voice rang hollowly through the roofless shell of the house, as he stumbled over the fallen beams that littered the main room. The reek of burned cloth and hair and wood almost choked him, so that his voice was husky as he called again.

"Rosa!" He found her in the burnt-out kitchen block and he thought she was dead. She was slumped against the cracked and blackened wall.

Her night-gown was torn and scorched, and the snarled skeins of hair,

that hid her face, were powdered with white wood ash.

"My darling. Oh, my darling." He knelt beside her, and timidly touched her shoulder. Her flesh was warm and alive beneath his fingers, and he felt relief leap up into his throat, blocking it so he could not speak again. Instead, he brushed the tangle of hair from her face and looked at it.

Beneath the charcoal smears of dirt her skin was pale as grey marble. Her eyes, tight closed, were heavily underscored with blue,

and rimmed with crusty red.

He touched her lips with the tips of his fingers, and she opened her eyes, But they looked beyond him; unseeing, dead eyes. They frightened him. He did not want to look into them, and he drew her head towards his shoulder.

There was no resistance in her. She lay against him quietly, and he pressed his face into her hair. Her hair was impregnated with the smell of smoke.

"Are you hurt?" he asked her in a whisper, not wanting to hear the answer. But she made no answer, lying inert in his arms.

"Tell me, Rosa. Speak to me. Where is Maria?" At the mention of the child's name, she reacted for the first time. She began to tremble.

"Where is she?" more urgency in his voice now.

She rolled her head against his shoulder and looked across the floor of the room. He followed the direction of her gaze.

Near the far wall an area of the floor had been swept clear of debris and ash. Rosa had done it with her bare hands while the ash was still hot. Her fingers were blistered and burned raw in places, and her arms were black to the elbows. Lying in the centre of this cleared space was a small, charred thing.

"Maria?" Sebastian whispered, and Rosa shuddered against him.

"Oh, God," he said, and lifted Rosa. Carrying her against his chest, he staggered from the ruins of the bungalow out into the cool, sweet evening air, but in his nostrils lingered the smell of smoke and burned flesh. He wanted to escape from it. He ran blindly along the path and Rosa lay unresisting in his arms. The following day Flynn buried their dead on the kopje above

Lalapanzi. He placed a thick slab of granite over the small grave that stood apart from the others, and when it was done he sent a bearer to the camp to fetch Rosa and Sebastian.

When they came, they found him standing alone by Maria's grave under the man da trees. His face was puffy and purply red. The thinning grey hair hung limply over his ears and forehead, like the wet feathers of an old rooster. His body looked as though it was melting.

It sagged at the shoulders and the belly. Sweat had soaked through his clothing across the shoulders, and at the armpits and crotch.

He was sick with drink and sorrow.

Sebastian stood beside Rosa, and the three of them took their silent farewell of the child.

"There is nothing else to do now," Sebastian spoke huskily.

"Yes," said Flynn. He stooped slowly and took a handful of the new earth from the grave. "Yes, there is. "He crumbled the earth between his fingers. "We still have to find the man who did this and kill him." Beside Sebastian, Rosa straightened up. She turned to

Sebastian, lifted her chin, and spoke for the first time since he had come home.

"Kill him! "she repeated softly.

PART TWO

With his hands clasped behind his back, and his chin thrust forward aggressively, Rear-Admiral Sir Percy Howe sucked in his lower lip and nibbled it reflectively. What was our last substantiated sighting on Blitcher?"he asked at last.

"A month ago, sir. Two days before the outbreak of war.

Sighting reported by S.S. Tygerberg. Latitude 027N. Longitude 5"-16"E. Headed south-west; estimated speed, eighteen knots."

"And a hell of a lot of good that does us," Sir Percy interrupted his flag-captain and glared at the vast Admiralty plot of the Indian Ocean. "She could be back in Bremerhaven by now."

"She could be, sir," the flag-captain nodded, and Sir Percy glanced at him and permitted himself a wintry smile.

"But you don't believe that, do you, Henry?"

"No, sir, I don't.

During the last thirty days, eight merchantmen have disappeared between

Aden and Lourenco Marques. Nearly a quarter of a million tons of shipping.

That's the Blitcher's work."

"Yes, it's the Blitcher, all right,"

agreed the Admiral, and reached across the-plot to pick up the black counter labelled "Blitcher', that lay on the wide green expanse of the

Indian Ocean.

A respectful silence held the personnel of the plotting room South

Atlantic and Indian Oceans while they waited for the great man to reach his decision. It was a long time coming. He stood bouncing the

"counter in the palm of his right hand, his grey eyebrows erect like the spines of a hedgehog's back, as his forehead creased in thought.

A

full minute they waited.

"Refresh my memory of her class and commission." Like most successful men Sir Percy would not hurry a decision when there was time to think, and the duty lieutenant who had anticipated his request,

stepped forward with the German Imperial Navy list open at the correct page.

"Blitcher. Commissioned August 16, 1905. "B" Class heavy cruiser. Main armament, eight nine-inch guns. Secondary armament, six six-inch guns."" The lieutenant finished his reading and waited quietly.

"Who is her captain?" Sir Percy asked, and the lieutenant consulted an addendum to the list.

"Otto von Kleine (Count). Previously commanded the light cruiser

Sturm Vogel.""

"Yes," said Sir Percy. "I've heard of him," and he replaced the counter on the plot, keeping his hand on it. "A dangerous man to have here, south Of Suez," and he Pushed the counter up towards the Red Sea and the entrance to the canal, where the tiny red shipping lanes amalgamated or here," and he pushed it down into a thick artery, towards the Cape of Good Hope, around which were curved the same red threads that joined London to Australia and India. Sir Percy lifted his hand from the black counter and left it sitting menacingly upon the shipping lanes.

"What force have we deployed against him so far?" and in answer the flag-captain picked up a wooden pointer and touched in turn the red counters that were scattered about the Indian Ocean.

"Pegasus and Renounce in the north. Eagle and Plunger sweeping the southern waters, sir."

"What further force can we spare, Henry?"

"Well, sir, Orion and Bloodhound are at Simonstown," and 4, he touched the nose of the African continent with the pointer.

"Orion that's Manderson, isn't it?" "Yes, sir."

"And who has Bloodhound?"

"Little, sir."

"Good," Sir Percy nodded with satisfaction. "A six-inch cruiser and a destroyer should be able to deal with Bkicher," and he smiled again. "Especially with a hellion like Charles Little handling the Bloodhound. I played golf with him last summer he damn nigh drove the sixteenth green at St. Andrews!"

The flag-captain glanced at the Admiral and, on the strength of the destroyer captain's reputation, decided to permit himself an inanity.

"The young ladies of Cape Town will mourn his departure, sir."

"We must hope that KapitAn zur See Otto von Kleine will mourn his arrival, "chuckled Sir Percy.

"Daddy likes you very much."

"Your father is a man of exquisite good taste," Commander the Honourable Charles Little conceded gallantly, and rolled his head to smile at the young lady who lay beside him on a rug, in the dappled shade beneath the pine trees.

"Can't you ever be serious?"

"Helen, my sweet, at times I can be deadly serious."

"Oh, You!" and his companion blushed prettily as she remembered certain of Charles's recent actions, which would make her father hastily revise his judgement.

"I value your father's good opinion, but my chief concern is that you endorse it." The girl sat up slowly and while she stared at him her hands were busy, brushing the pine needles from the glorious tangle of her hair, readjusting the fastenings of her blouse, spreading the skirts of her riding-habit to cover sweet legs clad in dark, tall polished leather boots.

She stared at Charles Little and ached with the strength of her want. It was not a sensual need she felt, but an overpowering obsession to have this man as her very own. To own him in the same way as she already owned diamonds, and furs, and silk, and horses, and peacocks, and other beautiful things.

His body sprawled out on the rug with all the unconscious grace of a reclining leopard. A secret little smile tugged at the corners of his lips and his eyelids drooped to mask the sparkle of his eyes. His recent exertions had dampened the hair that flopped forward onto his forehead.

There was something satanical about him, an air of wickedness, and

Helen decided it was the slant of the eyebrows and the way his ears lay flat against his temples, but were pointed like those of a satyr, yet they were pink and smooth as those of an infant.

"think you have devil's ears, she said, and then she blushed again, and scrambled to her feet avoiding Charles's arm that reached out for her. "Enough of that!" she giggled and ran to the thoroughbred hunter that was tied near them in the forest. "Come on, "she called as she mounted.

Charles stood up lazily and stretched. He tucked the tail of his shirt into his breeches, folded the rug on which they had lain, and went to his own horse.

At the edge of the pine forest, they checked their mounts and sat looking down over the Constantia valley.

"Isn't it beaUtiful? she said.

"It is indeed, "he agreed.

"I meant the view."

"And so she did Twice in the six days he had known her, she had led him up this mountain and Subjected him to the temptation. Below them lay six thousand acres of the richest land in all of Africa.

"When my brother Hubert was killed there was no one left to carry it on. just my sister and I and we are only girls. Poor Daddy isn't so well any more he finds it such a strain." Charles let his eyes move lazily from the great squat buttress of Table Mountain on their left, across the lush basin of vineyards below them, and then on to where the glittering-wedge of False Bay drove into the mountains.

"Doesn't the "homestead look lovely from here?" Helen drew his attention to the massive Dutch-gabled residence, with its attendant outbuildings grouped in servility behind it.

"I am truly impressed by the magnificence of the stud fee,"

Charles murmured, purposefully slurring the last two words, and the girl glanced at him in surprise, beginning to bridle.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It is truly magnificent scenery," he amended. Her persistent efforts at ensnaring him were beginning to bore Charles.

He had teased and avoided more artful huntresses.

"Charles," she whispered. "How would you like to live here. I

mean, forever?" And Charles was shocked. This little provincial had no understanding whatsoever of the rules governing the game of flirtation.

He was so shocked that he threw back his head and laughed

When Charles laughed it sent shivers of delight through every woman within a hundred yards. It was a merry sound with underlying tones of sensuality. His teeth were very white against the sea-tan of his face, and the muscles of his chest and upper arms tensed into bold relief beneath the silk shirt he wore.

Helen was the only witness of this particular perform and she was helpless as a sparrow in a hurricane.

once, Eagerly she leaned across the space between their horses and touched his arm. "You would like it, Charles. Wouldn't you? She did not know that Charles Little had a private income of twenty thousand pounds a year, that when his father died he would inherit the title Viscount Sutherton and the estates that went with it.

She did not know that one of those estates would swallow her father's own three times over; nor did she know that Charles had passed by willing young ladies with twice her looks, ten times her fortune, and a hundred times her breeding.

"You would, Charles. I know you would!" So young, so vulnerable,

that he stopped the flippant reply before it reached his lips.

"Helen," he took her hand. "I am a sea creature. We move with the wind and the waves," and he lifted her hand to his lips.

A while she sat, feeling the warm pressure of his lips upon her flesh, and the burn of tears behind her eyes. Then she snatched her hand away, and wheeled her horse. She lifted the leather riding-crop and slashed the glossy black shoulder between her knees. Startled, the stallion jumped forward into a dead run back along the road towards the

Constantia valley.

Charles shook his head and grimaced with regret. He had not meant to hurt her. It had been an escapade, something to fill the waiting days while Bloodhound went through the final stages of her refit. But Charles had learned to harden himself to the ending of his adventures to the tears and tragedy.

"Shame on you, you heartless cad, he said aloud, and touching his mount with his heels ambled in pursuit of the galloping stallion.

He caught up with the stallion in the stable yards. A groom was walking it, and there were darker sweat patches on its coat, and the barrel of its chest still heaved with laboured breathing.

Helen was nowhere in sight, but her father stood at the stable gates, – a big man, with a square-cut black beard picked out with grey.

"Enjoy your ride?"

"Thank you, Mr. Uys." Charles was noncommittal,

and the older man glanced significantly at the blown stallion before going on.

"There's one of your sailors been waiting for you for an hour."

"Where is he?" Charles's manner altered abruptly, became instantly businesslike.

"Here, Mr." From the deep shade of the stable doorway, a young seaman stepped out into the bright sunlight.

"What is it, man?" Impatiently Charles acknowledged his salute.

"Captain Manderson's compliments, sir, and you're to report aboard

HMS. Orion with all possible speed. There's a motor car waiting to take you to the base, sir."

"An untimely summons, Commander." Uys gave his "opinion lounging against the worked stone gateway.

we will see no more of you for a long time." But Charles was not listening. His body seemed to quiver with suppressed excitement, the way a good gun dog reacts to the scent of the bird. "Sailing orders,"

he whispered, at last. At last!" There was a heavy south-east swell battering Cape Point, so the sea spray reached the beam of the lighthouse on the cliffs above. A flight of mal gas came in so high towards the land that they caught the last of the sun, and glowed pink above the dark water.

Bloodhound cleared Cape Hangklip and took the press of the South

Atlantic on her shoulder, staggered from it with a welter of white water running waist-deep past her foredeck gun-turrets. Then in retaliation she hurled herself at the next swell, and Charles Little on her bridge exulted at the vital movement of the deck beneath his feet.

"Bring her round to oh five, oh

"Oh-five, oh sir, "repeated his navigating lieutenant.

"Revolution s for seventeen knots, pilot." Almost immediately the beat of the engines changed, and her action through the water became more abandoned.

Charles crossed to the angle of the flimsy little bridge and looked back into the dark, mountain-lined maw of False Bay. Two miles astern the shape of HMS. Orion melted into the dying light.

"Come along, old girl. Do try and keep up," murmured Charles

Little with the scorn that a destroyer man feels for any vessel that cannot cruise at twenty knots. Then he looked beyond Orion at the land. Below the massif of Table Mountain, near the head of the

Constantia valley a single pin prick of light showed.

"There'll be fog tonight, sir," the pilot spoke at Charles's elbow, and Charles turned without regret to peer over the bows into the gathering night.

"Yes, a good night for pirates. "The fog condensed on the grey metal of the bridge, so the foot plates were slippery underfoot. It soaked into the overcoats of the men huddled against the rail, and it de wed in minute pearls on the eyebrows and the beard of Kapitan zur See

Otto von Kleine. It gave him an air of derring-do, the reckless look of a scholarly pirate.

Every few seconds Lieutenant Kyller glanced anxiously at his captain, wondering when the order to turn would come. He hated this business of creeping inshore in the fog, with a flood tide pushing them towards a hostile coast.

"Stop all engines," said von Kleine, and Kyller repeated the order to the helm with alacrity. The muted throbbing died beneath their feet, and afterwards the fog-blanketed air was heavy with a sepulchral hush.

Ask masthead what he makes of the land." Von Kleine spoke without turning his head, and after a pause Kyller reported back.

"Masthead is in the fog. No visibility." He paused.

Toredeck reports fifty fathoms shoaling rapidly." And von Kleine nodded. The sounding tended to confirm his estimate that they were sitting five miles off the breakwater of Durban harbour. When the morning wind swept the fog aside he hoped to see the low coastal hills of Natal ahead of him, terraced with gardens and whitewashed buildings but most of all he hoped to see at least six British merchantmen anchored off the beach waiting their turn to enter the congested harbOUr, plump and sleepy under the protection of the shore batteries;

unaware just how feeble was the protection afforded by half a dozen obsolete ten-pounders manned by old men and boys of the militia.

German naval intelligence had submitted a very detailed report of the de fences and conditions prevailing in Durban.

After careful perusal of this report, von Kleine had decided that he could trade certain betrayal of his exact position to the English for such a rich prize. There was little actual risk involved. One pass across the entrance of the harbour at high speed, a single broadside for each of the anchored merchantmen, and he could be over the horizon again before the shore gunners had loaded their weapons.

The risk, of course, was in showing Blitcher to the entire population of Durban city and thereby supplying the Royal Navy with its first accurate sighting since the declaration of war. Within minutes of his first broadside, the British squadrons, which were hunting him,

would be racing in from all directions to block each of his escape routes. He hoped to counter this by swinging away towards the south,

down into that watery wilderness of wind and ice below J latitude 40',

to the rendezvous with Esther, his supply ship.

Then on to Australia or South America, as the opportunity arose.

He turned to glance at the chronometer above the ship's compass.

Sunrise in three minutes, then they could expect the morning wind.

"Masthead reports the fog dispersing, sir," Von Kleine aroused himself, and looked out into the fog banks. They were moving now,

twisting upon themselves in agitation at the warmth of the sun. "All engines slow ahead together," he said.

Masthead," warbled one of the voice-pipes in the battery in front of Kyller. "Land bearing green four-oh. Range, ten thousand metres.

A big headland." That would be the bluff above Durban, that massive whale-backed mountain that sheltered the harbour. But in the fog von

Kleine had misjudged his approach; he was twice as far from the shore as he had intended.

"All engines full ahead together. New course. Oh-oh-six." He waited for the order to be relayed to the helm before strolling across to the voice-pipes. "Guns. Captain."

"Guns," the voice from far away acknowledged.

"I will be opening fire with high explosives in about ten minutes.

The target will he massed merchant shipping on an approximate mark of three hundred degrees. Range, five thousand metres, You may fire as soon as you bear."

"Mark three hundred degrees. Range, five thousand metres. Sir," repeated the pipe, and von Kleine snapped the voice-tube cover shut and returned to his original position, facing forward with his hands clasped loosely behind his back.

Below him the gun-turrets revolved ponderously and the long barrels lifted slightly, pointing out into the mist with impassive menace.

A burst of dazzling sunshine struck the bridge so fiercely that

Kyller lifted his hand to shield his eyes, but it was gone instantly as the Blucher dashed into another clammy cold bank of fog. Then as though they had passed through a curtain on to a brilliantly lit stage,

they came out into a gay summer's morning.

Behind them the fog rolled away in a sodden grey wall from horizon to horizon. Ahead rose the green hills of Africa, rimmed with white beach and surf and speckled with thousands of whiter flecks that were the buildings of Durban town. The scaffolding of the cranes along the harbour wall looked like derelict sets of gallows.

Humped on the smooth green mirror of water between them and the shore, lay four ungainly shapes looking like a troop of basking hippo.

The British merchantmen.

"Four only," muttered von Kleine in chagrin. "I had hoped for more." The forty-foot barrels of the nine-inch guns moved restlessly,

seeming to sniff for their prey, and the Blucher raced on, lifting a hissing white wave at her bows, vibrating and shuddering to the thrust of her engines as they built up to full speed.

"Masthead" the voice-tube beside Kyller squawked urgently.

Bridge," said Kyller but the reply was lost in the deafening detonation of the first broadside, the long thunderous roll of heavy gun-fire. He jumped involuntarily, taken unawares, and then quickly lifted the binoculars from his chest to train them on the British merchantmen.

All attention, every eye on the bridge was concentrated ahead,

waiting for the fall of shot upon the doomed vessels.

In the comparative silence that followed the bellow of the broadside, a shriek from the masthead voice-pipe carried clearly.

"Warships! Enemy warships dead astern!" "Starboard ten." Von Kleine raised his voice a little louder than was his wont, and still under full power, Blitcher swerved away from the land, leaning out from the turn, with her wake curved like an ostrich plume on the surface of the sea behind her, and ran for the shelter of the fog banks, leaving the rich prize of cargo shipping unscathed.

On her bridge von Kleine and his officers were staring aft, the merchantmen forgotten as they searched for this new threat.

"Two warships." The masthead look-our was elaborating his sighting report. "A destroyer and a cruiser. Bearing ninety degrees. Range,

five-oh, seven-oh. Destroyer leading." In the spherical field of von

Kleine's binoculars the neat little triangle of the leading destroyer's superstructure popped up above the horizon. The cruiser was not yet in sight from the bridge.

"If they'd been an hour later," lamented Kyller, "we'd have finished the business and..

"What does masthead see of the cruiser?" von Kleine interrupted him impatiently. He had no time to mourn this chance of fate his only concern was to evaluate the force that was pursuing him, and then make the decision whether to run, or to turn back and engage them immediately.

"Cruiser is a medium, six or nine-inch. Either "O" class, or an

"R". She's four miles behind her escort. Both ships still out of range." The destroyer was of no consequence; he could run down on her and blast her into a burning wreck, before her feeble little 4.7-inch guns were able to drop a shell within a mile of Blitcher, but the cruiser was another matter entirely. To tackle her, Blitcher would be engaging with her own class; victory would only be won after a severe mauling, and she was six thousand miles from the nearest friendly port where she could effect major repairs.

There was a further consideration. These two British ships might be the vanguard of a battle squadron. If he turned now and challenged action, engaged the cruiser in a single ship action, he might suddenly find himself pitted against imponderable odds. There could very well be another cruiser, or two, or three even a battleship, below the southern horizon.

His duty and his orders dictated instant flight, avoiding action,

and so prolonging Blitcher's fighting life.

"Enemy are streaming their colours, sir," Kyller reported.

Von Kleine lifted his binoculars again. At the destroyer's masthead flew the tiny spots of white and red. This time he must leave the challenge to combat unanswered. "Very well," he said, and turned away to his stool in the corner of the bridge. He slumped into it and hunched his shoulders in thought. There were many interesting problems to occupy him, not least of them was how long he could run at full speed towards the north while his boilers devoured coal ravenously, and each minute widened the gap between Blitcher and Esther.

He swivelled his stool and looked back over his stern.

The destroyer was visible to the unaided eye now, and von Kleine frowned at it in irritation. She would yap at his heels like a terrier, clinging to him and shouting his Course and speed across the ether to the hungry British squadrons, that must even now be closing with him from every direction.

For days now he Could expect to see her sitting in his wake.

Come on! Come on!" Charles Little slapped his hand impatiently against the padded arm of his stool as he watched Orion.

For a night and a day he had watched her gaining on Blitcher but so infinitesimally slowly that it required his range finder to confirm the gain every thirty minutes.

Orion's bows were unnaturally high, and the waves she lifted with the passage of her hull through the water were the white wings of a seagull in the tropical sunlight; for Manderson, her captain, had

Pumped out her forward freshwater tanks and fired away half the shell and explosive Propellant from her forward magazines. Every man whose presence in the front half of the ship was not essential to her operation had been ordered aft to stand on the open deck as human ballast all this in an effort to lift Orion's bows and to coax another inch of speed from the cruiser.

Now she faced the most dangerous hour of her life, for she was creeping within extreme range of Blucher's terrible nine-inch armament,

and, taking into account the discrepancy in their speeds, it would be another hour before she could bring her own six-inch guns to bear.

During that time she would be under fire from Blucher's after turrets and would have no answer to them.

It was heart-breaking for Charles to watch the chase, for

Bloodhound had not once been asked to extend herself.

Below there was a reserve of speed that would allow her to close with Blucher in fifty minutes of steaming always -A provided she was not smashed into a fiery shambles long before.

Thus the three vessels fled towards the ever-receding northern horizon. The two long shapes of the cruisers flying arrow straight,

solid columns of reeking smoke pouring from the triple funnels to besmear the gay, glittering surface of the sea with a long double bank of black that dispersed only slowly on the easterly breeze; while, like a wwater beetle, the diminutive Bloodhound circled out to the side of Blitcher from where, when the time came, she could spot the fall of