Damrosch knew in his heart that von Steiger’s bitterness was directed at the other two officers, and yet he felt his cheeks sting with humiliation. There was no answer to his words, no defence against his lashing tongue. Damrosch stood back to allow the Captain to pass and then followed the others along the narrow passageway. They walked in single file, and he was reminded of the same feeling he had known when following his first headmaster to his study to be questioned over some minor prank. Except that this was in deadly earnest, he thought. As they crossed the boatdeck, he could sense the watchfulness of the ship, and saw several groups of silent figures standing in corners or waiting on the darkened deck.

  The sick-bay smelt clean and unused, and beneath the glaring light above the operating table Steuer’s face looked drawn and angry. He stood back as the Captain approached, but Damrosch could sense his unwillingness, as if he no longer trusted the behaviour of his fellow men.

  Pieck looked very small on the table, and beneath the probing light his face seemed almost transparent. Von Steiger’s eyes lifted briefly to Steuer’s, an unmasked question in his grave face.

  Steuer said quietly: ‘I have nearly finished with the dressings, Captain. I cannot yet say the extent of his injuries, but his lungs are not pierced, and that must surely be a miracle.’

  Von Steiger leaned across the table, his eyes taking note of the savage bruises which showed above the temporary dressings and the painful, uneven breathing.

  ‘Well, Pieck, you came back,’ he said at length. ‘Can you understand what I am saying?’

  The boy licked his lips and rolled his eyes to stare first at the closeness of his captain and then at the grim-faced officers behind him. He swallowed and tried to speak, but the agonising pain flooded through him again like fire.

  Von Steiger said quietly, ‘I have a book of pictures here for you to see.’ He lifted a well-worn album of photographs into the boy’s line of vision and raised the cover. He saw Pieck’s frightened eyes move uncomprehendingly to the first photograph, which showed a British light cruiser making full speed through a blurred and choppy sea. ‘If you recognise the ship you saw today with your telescope, let me know.’ He began to turn the stiff cardboard pages, his eyes fixed on the boy’s face. He saw the fear replaced by something else. Urgency, desperation or eagerness. But neither cunning nor deception showed on his undernourished features. He could hear Heuss moving closer, and guessed that he, too, was aware of this important fact.

  The minutes dragged on, and once they had to pause while Pieck lowered his head with exhaustion.

  Steuer said sharply: ‘Captain, sir. He is in great pain! Could this not wait for a while longer? I know it is important for him, but he has suffered a great deal!’

  Von Steiger took Pieck’s cold hand and held it. ‘It is important for all of us, in more ways than you imagine, Steuer!’ In a quieter tone he continued, ‘Just move your hand if you see the ship!’

  Damrosch could feel himself sweating as the stiff pages rasped over the sleeve of the Captain’s jacket. If he cannot find that ship, what will von Steiger do to him? He winced as he remembered the angry, mutinous faces of the seamen when the Quarter Guard had brought Schiller and the others to the ship. He thought, too, of Kohler’s stricken face. Not a shadow of guilt, or sorrow for the boy he had tried to cripple, but only shock to find such humiliation at the hands of his own men.

  The page began to turn, and then von Steiger felt the unsure movement in his hand. Hardly daring to breathe, he held the book steady and watched the pale eyes moving jerkily back and forth across the clearly etched photograph.

  ‘That is the one, sir!’ The voice was weak, but filled with conviction. ‘I can recognise her by that forward funnel. It seems to be built into the tripod mast!’

  Von Steiger squeezed his shaking hand and nodded. ‘So it does, boy! So it does!’ He had seen the small caption under the picture: H.M.S, Waltham, 1915. One of the cruisers which Fleiuss had reported as being in these waters. He felt as if a great weight had been lifted from him. For a brief moment he forgot the menace of that sleek cruiser and what would have happened if the Vulkan had waited until dawn before she sailed. The two ships would probably have met, even as the raider left the coastal waters. He forgot, too, his fear that Kohler had been right and this boy had come back to save himself and not the ship. He forgot all these things for a short while and stared almost humbly at the boy’s searching eyes.

  ‘You have done very well, Pieck. Very well indeed. Once before, your eyes averted what might have been a disaster. This time I cannot even begin to guess what might have happened!’

  He felt Steuer relax, and saw the tears of gratitude well up in the boy’s eyes.

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you, Pieck?’

  He felt the grip tighten on his hand. ‘Please don’t put me ashore with the other wounded! I shall be all right after this, sir! I swear it!’

  Von Steiger tried to smile. ‘I would not part with you now if you had no arms or legs at all! Is there anything else I can do?’ He knew that he should not be here. There was a great deal to do, and at once. But for nothing on earth would he have broken the spell.

  ‘Perhaps, sir, you would find the time to write to my parents? It would mean a great deal to them, for all the trouble I have caused them.’ His voice trailed away, as if he feared that he had gone too far.

  Von Steiger stood up. ‘I shall do so at once. I shall see that it goes ashore with my despatches tonight.’ He moved to the door, aware of the ring of watching faces. ‘I shall also be happy to tell them that I am recommending their son for the Iron Cross!’ He pushed past the startled Dehler and reached the rail in three strides. He drank in the cool, crisp air as if he had been starved.

  All my life I have lived with ships and the naval tradition, he thought with quiet amazement, and I have been able to regard it all with detachment, as if it was incidental, like a backcloth. It has taken the faith and uncompromising loyalty of that poor village boy to show me that my life was a delusion, and everything outside this ship has become false and unimportant.

  16

  IN THE HUMMING engine-room the telegraph jangled and the brass pointer swung suddenly to ‘Stand By’. Niklas pushed the greasy cap to the back of his head, settled his buttocks comfortably against the rail of his catwalk and ran his eye over his gleaming kingdom. He could faintly hear the scrape of shovels and the sound of coal cascading down from the bunkers, while through the rising curtain of steam he could see his artificers making their last checks. He sighed and returned his gaze to the implacable dial, and wondered why he had not found the time to stretch his legs ashore.

  Two decks above, and right forward in the eyes of the ship, Dehler leaned right out over the narrow guardrail, his shaded torch pointing down into the gently swirling water. Behind him he could hear the steam hissing on the capstan and the sharp regular clicks as the pawls dropped into place with each turn. The dripping cable moved reluctantly upwards through the hawse-pipe, where it was quickly hosed and scrubbed with long brooms before it finally vanished into the deep cable-lockers below the fo’c’sle.

  Clank, clank, clank, each link of the slime-streaked cable drew the ship slowly forward towards the straining anchor, and to Dehler it seemed as if they were being drawn bodily to something even worse then before. His men whistled and chattered quietly to one another, indifferent to him, and seemingly oblivious to danger. They had changed, he thought, as if relieved of some great threat. He thought also of von Steiger and the boy on the operating table. How would I have handled that situation? He tried to believe he would have acted like the Captain, but his uncertainty only increased with the realisation that he would probably have shut his ears and relied on Kohler’s explanation as the easiest way out.

  He craned his thick neck as the taut cable suddenly jerked downwards to point straight at the sea-bed. ‘Up and down!’ he yelled, and heard the report being passed to the bridge. The ship trembled, and he felt the distant screw begin to turn. A few more clanks from the capstan and the cable shook convulsively and began to swing gently like a giant pendulum. ‘Anchor’s aweigh!’ They were free of the land once more.

  Von Steiger listened to the hoarse voice shouting from the shadowed deck and dug his impatient hands into his pockets.

  ‘Half speed ahead! Port twenty!’ He walked briskly on to the open wing and stared at the two dancing blue lights on the oily water. The whaleboats bobbed obediently on the gentle swell, the oars waiting to send them scudding ahead of their mother ship to guide her through the treacherous channel.

  ‘Midships! Steer north-east, Cox’n! When we are in the middle of the channel keep her head between the two lights!’ He watched the wedge of the bows settle and steady around. ‘Slow ahead!’ The vibrations died and quietened to a low, confident rumble.

  He imagined the sweating oarsmen in the boats and the two leadsmen who would be leading their crews like blind men with their sticks. He had put two good petty officers in the boats, and had made sure they understood their importance.

  He watched the uneven black shadows sidle past, and once caught a glimpse of a match flaring halfway up the hillside of one small islet. Probably a peasant out searching for his goats, he decided. Very soon the land will fall clear and we shall be away again. The land. So important, and yet so unknown. It might have been anywhere, any country. We touched it, and then left as quietly as we arrived. And yet we have all learned a lot by our brief visit. He thought of the relief on Fleiuss’s fat face when he had handed him the secret despatches for Berlin. The carefully worded report which he doubted if anyone would trouble to study. And Pieck’s recommendation with the letter to two lonely old folk in far-off Schleswig-Holstein. To us all these things are so vital, he thought, but who else will care?

  The islet fell clear, and he could feel the heavier thrust of the unbridled water beyond the reef. ‘Stop engine!’ To his messenger he said curtly: ‘Signal the boats alongside. Quickly, man!’

  A shadow joined him by the screen, and Heuss said formally, ‘Anchor secured for sea, Captain.’

  ‘Very well. Clear lower deck and hoist in both boats at the rush!’ He listened to the twittering of the bosun’s pipes and hear the rush of feet along the boatdeck. Although an anonymous voice rapped harshly for silence, he heard a man laugh equally loudly. A free laugh, free of the land perhaps. The blocks squeaked noisily, and the two streaming boats jerked rapidly up the tall sides.

  He did not wait to see them rise above the deck level. ‘Half ahead! Steer north eighty east.’

  The helmsman repeated the order, and he heard the Coxswain’s rumbling instructions as he handed over the wheel.

  He leaned his chin on his hands and stared unblinkingly at the black curtain with its sprinkling of stars. Faintly against the velvet he could see the thin, sharp line of the foremast, and the watchful pod at its top. Well, H.M.S. Waltham, where are you now? Sleeping, perhaps, and resting until the dawn, or still prowling as close as you dare to the hidden coastline?

  Heuss left the wheelhouse once again. ‘Ship secured for sea, Captain. Boats hoisted!’ He still waited after von Steiger’s non-committal grunt.

  ‘That was a fine thing you did for that seaman, sir. And I have left Alder in the sick-bay too, as you instructed.’

  ‘That man should never have been sent to sea, Heuss. He has suffered enough in this war. His reason is smashed. He cannot even remember if he is missed by those he has left behind, or indeed if there is anyone to miss him.’

  ‘And Schiller, sir?’

  ‘I have released him. A first-class seaman, Heuss. Not at all diplomatic, but not afraid of responsibility. I would make him a petty officer, but I see from his record that he has held rank three times already, and never for more than a week! I think he will be more use as he is.’

  Heuss tried to see the Captain’s expression, and continued slowly. ‘I am sorry to hear of your new loss, sir. Your brother-in-law. I have heard that he was a fine soldier!’

  ‘A fine soldier.’ Von Steiger repeated the words to himself. ‘Yes, he would have liked that.’ He tried to picture the tall, one-armed officer as he had last seen him on Kiel railway station. The haunted eyes, the lost youth. He had looked at the Vulkan’s replacements and had said that his own men were like them. Untrained, pathetic in their helplessness. I hope they followed you as my men followed me, he thought bleakly. I am leading them to their death, yet they follow like sheep. They are happy because I have not turned my back on injustice, yet they are all here because of an even greater injustice. Aloud he said, ‘When I think of men like him, and what they are enduring even at this moment, I thank God that my father put me in the Navy!’

  Heuss asked guardedly, ‘And will you put your son to sea, sir?’

  ‘Rudolf? If I am spared, I should like to see that. When all else has been smashed, there is always the sea.’

  He craned his head to see the wheelhouse clock. ‘I am going to work on my charts, Heuss. Double the lookouts, and alter course away from any other vessel. Anything! Do you understand?’

  As he moved into the wheelhouse, Heuss swallowed his pride and said quietly: ‘And I apologise, sir! I ask your pardon.’ He waited, half expecting von Steiger to prolong his agony.

  But he laughed sadly instead. ‘You have come a long way. Heuss. Make the most of it!’

  * * * * *

  ‘Captain, sir?’ The gentle but insistent grip on his shoulder brought him instantly awake, although his brain still hung reluctantly to the uneasy refuge of sleep. His joints seemed to crack as he levered himself upright in his tall chair, and his body felt chilled and bruised. Rubbing his eyes with his knuckles he glanced quickly at the bridge clock and then at Reeder’s puffy face and the steaming mug of coffee.

  Heuss looked lined and grey in the faint dawn light, and his drill tunic was creased and grubby from the long, searching vigilance. ‘Dawn coming up now. Captain,’ he reported, as von Steiger glanced towards him.

  There was a long silvery light, an endless stroke of brushwork along the eastern horizon, which grew even as they waited. Brazil and the unimportant anchorage of Corata had already been swallowed up in the distance, washed away in the creaming straight line of the Vulkan’s wake. The ship vibrated from stem to stern, and the bridge seemed to be alive with loose fittings and protesting rivets as the thrashing screw pushed the raider along at her maximum speed. Once clear of the hostile coast, the straining engine-room staff had gradually worked up the revolutions until the sharp stem threw back the bow-wave in two great unbroken wings of crested water. The light hardened and strengthened, and a dozen telescopes and binoculars scanned the deep-hued sea and the darkness which the night was still unwilling to vacate.

  Von Steiger sipped the scalding coffee and waited. His eyes strayed occasionally to the brass telephone nearby, and he tried to imagine the masthead lookout peering with sick apprehension from his lonely eyrie.

  There was no warmth in the air as yet, and the decks and rigging gleamed dully with dew, while from forward the guns’ crews could be heard removing the canvas from the long muzzles.

  He reached for his leather case, and then dropped his hand on his lap. His mouth felt bitter and sour, and he knew that a cheroot would bring him no comfort.

  As the grey-and silver light spread slowly down from the horizon, they saw, too, the golden tinge in the colourless sky, and imagined the warmth which would soon follow.

  On the forward deck a small party of men were connecting up the salt-water hoses, and a petty officer unlocked the cabinet which contained the scrubbers and buckets for the first task of the day. There was a smell of coffee and bacon coming out of the spindly galley funnel, and only the extra tension on the crowded bridge marked this dawn as different from any other.

  He slid from the chair and massaged his forearms, conscious of the tingling irritation in his wound. The dressing could come off today, he decided, the air and sun would do more good than that.

  He moved towards the door, and froze in his tracks as the telephone buzzed with jarring insistence. He forced himself to keep still as Heuss snatched it from its hook. They had been expecting it to call, and yet the shock now seemed all the greater.

  ‘Ship, Captain! On the port quarter.

  He moved quickly to the wet and glistening port wing and swung his powerful Zeiss glasses astern towards the glittering sea. There was a thick haze already, but the man at the masthead would have better vision from his height above the deck. He rested the glasses against the canvas shield which draped across the searchlight and began a systematic search of the open sea. He was peering directly into the path which the sun would follow, and the glare rebounded harshly into his eyes. He held his breath. He waited a moment longer, being well used to the tricks which dawn at sea could play with a man’s eyes. It was no illusion. A tall, unmoving cloud of smoke, fine and clean against the brightening sky. No ship as yet, just that white cloud. He lowered his glasses and wiped the lenses with great care, his mind busy and excluding the sharp lookout reports behind him and the sudden clatter of feet on the bridge ladder.

  He glared towards the masthead lookout, and resisted the temptation to call for another report. The man was probably in great difficulties without putting him into a panic. He would be peering almost dead astern, and, with no wind to clear the heavy vapour from the Vulkan’s tall funnel, he had trouble enough. He made up his mind, and, slinging the glasses round his neck, he began to climb the narrow ladder to the top of the wheelhouse.

  Lieutenant Ebert sat behind his camouflaged range-finder, a pair of headphones clamped across his ears. His three ratings were already crouched by their hand-sets and voice-pipes and were conversing in low tones to the hidden gunners.