The African Queen (25 page)

T
HE
post of Senior Naval Officer, Port Albert, Belgian Congo, was of very new creation. It was only the night before that it had come into being. It was a chance of war that the senior naval officer in a Belgian port should be an English lieutenant-commander. He was standing pacing along the jetty inspecting the preparation for sea of the squadron under his command. Seeing that it comprised only two small motor boats, it seemed a dignified name for it. But those motor boats had cost in blood and sweat and treasure more than destroyers might have done, for they had been sent out from England, and had been brought with incredible effort overland through jungles, by rail and by river, to the harbour in which they lay.

They were thirty-knot boats, and in their bows each would have—when the mounting was completed—an automatic three-pounder gun. Thirty knots and those guns would make short work of the
Königin Luise
with her maximum of nine knots and her old-fashioned six-pounder. The lieutenant-commander paced the jetty impatiently; he was anxious to get to work now that the weary task of transport was completed. It was irksome that there should remain a scrap of water on which the White Ensign did not reign supreme. The sooner they came out on the hunt for the
Königin Luise
the better. He gazed out over the Lake and stopped suddenly. There was smoke on the horizon, and below it a white dot. As he looked, a lieutenant came running along the jetty to him; he had binoculars in his hand.

“That’s the
Königin Luise
in sight, sir,” he said breathlessly, and offered the glasses.

The lieutenant-commander stared through them at the approaching vessel.

“She’s nearly hull up from the artillery observing station, sir,” said the lieutenant.

“M’m,” said the lieutenant-commander, and looked again.

“She looks as if she’s expecting action from the number of flags she’s flying,” he said. “M’m—half a minute. That’s not a German ens’n on the foremast. It’s—what do you make of it?”

The lieutenant looked through the glasses in his turn.

“I think . . .” he said, and looked again.

“It’s a white flag,” he said at last.

“I think so too,” said the lieutenant-commander, and the two officers looked at each other.

They had both of them heard stories—which in later years they would be sorry that they had believed—about the misuse of the white flag by the Germans.

“Wonder what they’re after,” mused the lieutenant-commander. “Perhaps . . .”

There was no need for him to explain, even if there were time. If the Germans had heard of the arrival of the motor boats on the lake shore they had one last chance to maintain their command of the lake waters. A bold attack—for which a white flag might afford admirable cover—a couple of well-placed shells, and the
Königin Luise
could resume her unchallenged patrol of the Lake. The lieutenant-commander ran as fast as his legs would carry him along the jetty and up the slope to the artillery observing station. The Belgian artillery captain was there with his field-glasses; below him in concealed emplacements were the two mountain guns which guarded the port.

“If they’re up to any monkey tricks,” said the lieutenant-commander, “they’ll catch it hot. I can lay one of those mountain guns even if these Belgians can’t.”

But the Germans had apparently no monkey tricks in mind. The lieutenant-commander had hardly finished speaking before the
Königin Luise
rounded to, broadside on to the shore, far out of range of her six-pounder. The officers in the observing station saw a puff of white smoke from her bow, and the report of a gun came slowly over to them. They saw the white flag at the foremast come down halfway, and then mount again to the masthead.

“That means they want a parley,” said the lieutenant-commander; he had never used the word “parley” before in his life, but it was the only one which suited the occasion.

“I’ll go,” decided the lieutenant-commander. It was not his way to send others on dangerous duties, and there might be danger here, white flag or no white flag.

“You stay here,” went on the lieutenant-commander to the lieutenant. “You’re in command while I’m out there. If you see any need to fire, fire like blazes—don’t mind about me. Understand?”

The lieutenant nodded.

“I’ll have to go in one of those dhows,” decided the lieutenant-commander, indicating the little cluster of native boats at the far end of the jetty, where they had lain for months for fear of the
Königin Luise
, and where they now screened the activity round the motor boats. He stopped to sort his French sentences out.

“Mon capitaine,”
he began, addressing the Belgian captain,
“voulez-vous . . .”

There is no need to describe the lieutenant-commander’s linguistic achievements.

The lieutenant watched through his glasses as the dhow headed out from shore with a native crew. The lieutenant-commander in the stern had taken the precaution of changing his jacket for one of plain white drill. The lieutenant watched him steer towards the gunboat, far out on the Lake, and in appearance just like a white-painted Thames tug. Soon the yellow sail was all he could see of the dhow; he saw it reach the gunboat, and vanish as it was furled when the dhow ran alongside. There was an anxious delay. Then at last the dhow’s sail reappeared; she was coming back. There came another puff of smoke as the
Königin Luise
fired a parting salute, and then she turned away and headed back again towards the invisible German shore. The whole scene had a touch of the formal chivalry of the Napoleonic wars.

When the
Königin Luise
was hull down over the horizon and the dhow was close in-shore the lieutenant left his post and went down to the jetty to meet his senior officer. The dhow ran briskly in, and the native crew furled the sail as she slid alongside the jetty. The lieutenant-commander was there in the sternsheets. Lying in the bottom of the boat were two new passengers, at whom the lieutenant stared in surprise. One was a woman; she was dressed in a skirt of gay canvas—once part of an awning of the
Königin Luise
—and a white-linen jacket whose gold buttons and braid showed that it had once belonged to a German naval officer. The other, at whom the lieutenant hardly looked, so astonished was he at sight of a woman, was dressed in a singlet and shorts of the kind worn by German native ratings.

“Get a carrying party,” said the lieutenant-commander, proffering no further explanation. “They’re pretty far gone.”

They were both of them in the feverish stage of malaria, hardly conscious. The lieutenant had them carried up on shore, each in the bight of a blanket, and looked round helplessly to see what he could do with them. In the end he had to lay them in one of the tents allotted to the English sailors, for Port Albert is only a collection of filthy native huts.

“They’ll be all right in an hour or two,” said the surgeon lieutenant after examining them.

“Christ knows what I’m going to do with ’em,” said the lieutenant-commander bitterly. “This isn’t the place for sick women.”

“Who the devil is she?” asked the lieutenant.

“Some missionary woman or other. The
Königin Luise
found her castaway somewhere on the Lake, trying to escape over here.”

“Pretty decent of the Huns to bring ’em over.”

“Yes,” said the lieutenant-commander shortly. It was all very well for a junior officer to say that; he was not harassed as was the lieutenant-commander by constant problems of housing and rations and medical supplies—by all the knotty points in fact which beset a man in command of a force whose lines of communication are a thousand miles long.

“They may be able to give us a bit of useful information about the Huns,” said the lieutenant.

“Can we ask them?” interposed the surgeon. “Flag of truce and all that. I don’t know the etiquette of these things.”

“Oh, you can ask them, all right,” said the lieutenant-commander. ’There’s nothing against it. But you won’t get any good out of ’em. I’ve never met a female devil-dodger yet who was any more use than a sick headache.”

And when the officers came to question Rose and Allnutt about the German military arrangements they found, indeed, that they had very little to tell them. Von Hanneken had ringed himself about with desert, and had mobilized every man and woman so as to be ready to strike back at any force which came to molest him, but that the English knew already. The surgeon asked with professional interest about the extent of sleeping sickness among the German forces, but they could tell him nothing about that. The lieutenant wanted to know details of the
Königin Luise
’s crew and equipment; neither Allnutt nor Rose could tell him more than he knew already, more than the Admiralty and the Belgian Government had told him.

The lieutenant-commander looked for a moment beyond the battle which would decide the mastery of the Lake, to the future when a fleet of dhows escorted by the motor boats would take over an invading army which would settle Von Hanneken for good and all. He asked if the Germans had made any active preparations to resist a landing on their shore of the Lake.

“Didn’t see nothing,” said Allnutt.

Rose understood the drift of the question better.

“You couldn’t land any one where we came from,” she said. “It’s just a delta—all mud and weed and malaria. It doesn’t lead to anywhere.”

“No,” agreed the lieutenant-commander, who, like an intelligent officer, had studied the technique of combined operations. “I don’t think I could, if it’s like that. How did you get down to the Lake, then?”

The question was only one of politeness.

“We came down the Ulanga River,” said Rose.

“Really?” It was not a matter of great interest to the lieutenant-commander. “I didn’t know it was navigable.”

“It ain’t. Corblimey, it ain’t,” said Allnutt.

He would not be more explicit about it; the wells of his loquacity were dried up by these glittering officers in their white uniforms with their gentlemen’s voices and la-di-da manners. Rose was awkward too. She did not feel at ease with these real gentlemen either, and she was sullenly angry with herself because of the absurd anticlimax in which all her high hopes and high endeavour had ended. Naturally she did not know who the officers were who were questioning her, nor what weapons they were making ready to wield. Naval officers on the eve of an important enterprise would not explain themselves to casual strangers.

“That’s interesting,” said the lieutenant-commander, in tones which were not in agreement with his words. “You must let me hear about it later on.”

He was to be excused for his lack of interest in the petty adventures of these two excessively ordinary people who had made fools of themselves by losing their boat. To-morrow he had to lead a fleet into action, achieving at this early age the ambition of every naval officer, and he had much to think about.

In fact he had everything to think about

“They may be all right,” said he when they came away. “They look like it. But on the other hand they may not. All this may be just a stunt of old Von Hanneken’s to get a couple of his friends over here. I wouldn’t put it past him. They’re not coming out of their tents until the
Königin Luise
is sunk. They don’t seem to be married, and although they’ve lived together all those weeks it wouldn’t be decent if the Royal Navy stuck them in a tent together. I can’t really spare another tent. I won’t have the camp arrangements jiggered up any more than they are. As it is I’ve got to take a man off the work to act sentry over them. Can’t trust these Belgian natives. Not a ha’p’orth. You see to it, Bones, old man, will you? I’ve got to go and have a look at
Matilda’s
gun mounting.”

T
HE
next day the
Königin Luise
as she steamed in solemn dignity over the Lake she had ruled so long saw two long grey shapes come hurtling over the water towards her, half-screened in a smother of spray. The commander who had been President of the court martial of two days before looked at them through his glasses as they tore along straight towards him. Beyond the high-tossed bow waves he could see the fluttering squares of white. He saw red crosses and a flash of gay colour in the upper corners. They were White Ensigns, flying where no White Ensign had ever been seen before.

“Action stations!” he snapped. “Get the gun firing!”

The prosecuting officer ran madly to the gun; the defending officer sprang to the wheel to oversee the coloured quartermaster and to make sure the commander’s orders were promptly obeyed. Round came the
Königin Luise
to face her enemies. Her feeble gun spoke once, twice, with pitiful slowness.
H.M.S. Matilda
and
H.M.S. Amelia
swerved to one side. At thirty knots they came tearing round in a wide sweep, just outside the longest range of that old six-pounder. The
Königin Luise
was slow on her helm and with a vast turning circle. She could not wheel quick enough to keep her bows towards those flying grey shapes which swept round her in a decreasing spiral. Their engines roared to full throttle as they heeled over on the turn. They had four times the speed and ten times the handiness of the old gunboat. The prosecuting officer looking over his sights could see only their boiling wake now. He could train the gun no farther round, and the gunboat could turn no faster.