The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur - Страница 55

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I still have a little schnapps, the captain changed the subject, my officers and I would be honoured. As Lothar descended the steel ladder into the submarine's interior, he felt his gorge rise.

The stench was a solid thing, so that he wondered that any man could endure it more than a few minutes. It was the smell of sixty men living in a confined space for months on end, living without sunlight or fresh air, without the means of washing their bodies or their clothing. It was the smell of pervading damp and of the fungus that turned their uniforms green and rotted the cloth off their bodies, the stench of hot fuel oil and bilges, of greasy food and the sickly sweat of fear, the clinging odour of bedding that had been slept in for I26 days and nights, of socks and boots that were never changed and the reek of the sewage buckets which could only be emptied once every twenty four hours.

Lothar hid his revulsion and clicked his heels and bowed when the captain introduced his junior officers.

The overhead deck was so low that Lothar had to hunch his head down on his shoulders, and the space between the bulkheads was so narrow that two men were forced to turn sideways to pass each other. He tried to imagine living in these conditions and found his face beading with cold sweat.

Do you have any intelligence of enemy shipping, Herr De La Rey? The captain poured a tiny measure of schnapps into each of the crystal glasses and sighed when the last drop fell from the bottle.

I regret that my intelligence is seven days old. Lothar saluted the naval officers with a raised glass, and when they had all drunk went on, The troopship Auckland docked at Durban eight days ago for bunkers. She is carrying 2,000 New Zealand infantry, and was expected to sail again on the 15 th - There were many sympathizers in the civil service of the Union of South Africa, men and women whose fathers and family had fought in the Boer War, and had ridden with Maritz; and De Wet against the Union troops. Some of them had relatives who had been imprisoned and even executed for treason once Smuts and Botha had crushed the rebellion. Many of these were employed by the South African Railway and Harbours Authority, others had key positions in the Department of Post and Telegraphs. Thus vital information was gathered and swiftly encoded and disseminated to German agents and rebel activists over the Union government's own communications network.

Lothar reeled off the list of arrivals and sailings from South African ports, and again apologized. My information is received at the telegraph station at Okahandia, but it takes five to seven days for it to be carried across the desert by one of my men.

I understand, the German captain nodded. Nevertheless, the information you have given me will be invaluable in helping me plan the next stage of my operations. He looked up from the chart on which he had been marking the enemy dispositions which Lothar had given him, and for the first time noticed his guest's discomfort. He kept his expression attentive and courteous, but inwardly he gloated, You great hero, handsome as an opera star, so brave out there with the wind in your face and the sun shining over your head, I wish I could take you with me and teach you the true meaning of courage and sacrifice!

How would you like to hear the English destroyers go drumming overhead as they hunt you, how would you like to hear the click of the primer as the deat -c arge sinks down towards you? Oh, I would enjoy watching your face when the blast beats against the pressure hull and water squirts in through the cracks and the lights go out. How would you like to smell yourself shit with fear in the dark and feel it running hot and liquid down your legs? Instead he smiled and murmured, I wish I was able to offer you a little more schnapps- No, no! Lothar waved the offer aside. This corpsefaced creature and his stinking vessel disgusted and sickened him. You have been most gracious. I must go ashore I and supervise the loading. These Schwarzes, you cannot J trust them. Lazy dogs and born thieves, all of them. They understand only the whip and the goad. Lothar escaped thankfully up the ladder and in the conning tower sucked the sweet cool night air greedily into his lungs. The submarine captain followed him up.

Herr De La Rey, it is essential that we complete bunker- i ing and stores before dawn, you realize how vulnerable we are here, how helpless we would be, trapped against the shore, with our hatches open and our tanks empty?

If you could send some of your seamen ashore to assist with the loading- The captain hesitated. Placing his valuable crew on land would make him more vulnerable still. He weighed the odds swiftly. Way was all a gambler's throw, risk against reward, for the stakes of death and glory.

I will send twenty men to the beach with you. He made the decision in seconds, and Lothar, who had understood his quandary, nodded with reluctant admiration.

They had to have light. Lothar built a bonfire of driftwood on the beach, but built a screen between it and the sea, trusting on this and the hovering fog banks to shield them from any searching English warships. By the diffused glow they loaded and reloaded the lighters and rowed them out to the submarine. As each drum of fuel oil was tunnelled into the vessel's tanks, the empty canister was holed and thrown overboard to sink into the kelp beds, and gradually the long slim vessel sank lower in the water.

It was four in the morning before the fuel tanks were brimming, and the U-boat captain fretted and fumed on his bridge, glancing every few seconds towards the land where the false dawn was giving a hard knife-edge to the dark crests of the dunes, and then down again to the approaching lighter with the long glistening shape of a torpedo balanced delicately across the thwarts.

Hurry. He leaned over the gunwale of the conning tower to urge on his men, as they fitted the slings around the monstrous weapon, gingerly took the weight on the straining tackle and swung it on board. The second lighter was already alongside with its murderous burden, and the first lighter was thrashing back towards the beach, as the torpedo was eased gently into the forward hatch and slid into the empty tube below deck.

Swiftly the light strengthened and the efforts of the crew and the black guerrillas became frantic as they fought off their fatigue and struggled to complete the loading before full daylight exposed them to their enemies.

Lothar rode out with the last torpedo, sitting casually astride its shining back as though upon his Arab, and the captain watching him in the dawn found himself resenting him more fiercely, hating him for being tall and sungilded and handsome, hating him for his casual arrogance, and for the ostrich feathers in his hat and the golden curls that hung to his shoulders, but hating him most of all because he would ride away into the desert and leave the U-boat commander to go down again into the cold and deadly waters.

Captain, Lothar scrambled out of the lighter and climbed the ladder to the bridge of the conning tower.

The captain realized that his handsome face was glowing with excitement.

Captain, one of my men has just ridden into camp. He has been five days reaching me from 0kahandja, and he has news. Splendid news. The captain tried not to let the excitement infect him, hands began to tremble as Lothar went on.

but his jk, The assistant harbour master at Cape Town is one of our men. They are expecting the English heavy battle cruiser Inflexible to reach Cape Town within eight days.

She left Gibraltar on the Sth and is sailing direct. The captain dived back into the hatch, and Lothar suppressed his repugnance and followed him down the steel ladder. The captain was already bending eagerly over the chart-table with the dividers in his hands firing questions at his navigating officer.

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