CHAPTER XXI
A Stern Chase
It was the work of a few moments for the rest of the highly-disciplined crew to take to the boats that, regardless of the danger, had closed to rescue their comrades.
Captain Meredith was the last to leave. True to the traditions of the British navy, he stood on the bridge until not another soul remained on board. Then, with the confidential code-book under his arm, he leapt nimbly into the stern-sheets of the cutter.
A couple of cables' lengths from the doomed vessel, the crews of the various boats lay on their oars and awaited the end. There was almost dead silence. Although the men were elated at having scored heavily off their treacherous foes, the sight of their erstwhile floating home disappearing for ever from mortal eyes was a sad one. Now and then some of the wounded groaned involuntarily. Those whose hurts were light insisted upon sitting up and watching the awe-inspiring sight.
The Complex went quietly. There was very little commotion in the water, no rush of compressed air. With the White Ensign streaming proudly in the light breeze, she slipped slowly beneath the surface and disappeared from view.
"The seaplanes, my hearties!" shouted a bull voice, and a horny hand was raised with the finger pointed at an angle of about forty-five.
"Smart work, by Jove," commented Cavendish, glancing at his wristlet watch.
Barely fifty minutes had elapsed from the time of sending out the first wireless call, and already the two seaplanes attached to the Basilikon were in sight.
They were manned by officers and petty-officers of the newly reconstituted Royal Naval Air Service. The Royal Air Force, although admirable in its conception, had failed in actual practice. The fusion of the Naval and Military branches had left much to be desired. Apart from mutual jealousy—a very different thing from healthy rivalry—the two branches were not readily interchangeable. It was soon realized that an airman working with a fleet must not only be an aviator—he must have had a naval training. It could not reasonably be expected that a man with little knowledge of ships and the sea could be of much use in an air squadron operating under the orders of an admiral. He might be, and possibly was, an excellent airman, but something more was required. Hence, after prolonged and heated arguments, the Admiralty got their way, and the purely naval airman again came into his own, unhampered by well-meaning but blundering Air Ministry officials. The two seaplanes, flying at two thousand feet, passed almost immediately above the bunch of motionless boats. From each a hand waved over the coaming of the cockpit a distant tribute to the cheers of the late crew of the Complex.
A few minutes later, the seaplanes were lost to view. Already they had received a report of the course taken by the fleeing Cerro Algarrobo, for that information had been embodied in the Complex's wireless for aid. Like vengeful wraiths they were hard in pursuit, with the object of bombing the pirate vessel and crippling her sufficiently to allow the destroyers either to capture or destroy the mysterious cause of the disappearance of so many British merchantmen.
Alone on the deep, the boats' crews became boisterous. They sang, cheered, and yelled, confident in the assurance that they would shortly find themselves on board a British warship. Their Old Man allowed them to "work off steam". It was a natural outlet for their pent-up feelings, after days and nights of ceaseless watch and ward, followed by a glorious climax of self-sacrifice.
It was not long before two trailing clouds of smoke appeared over the eastern horizon.
"Hurrah! here come the destroyers, lads," exclaimed Captain Meredith. "Give them a cheer as they pass and then sit tight for the old Basilikon to roll up. You'll be sleeping in hammocks to-night all right."
Quickly the approaching vessels materialized into two very business-looking destroyers, each armed with five guns—four 4.7-inch, one 3-inch—and six 21-inch torpedo tubes, and credited with a speed of 35 knots. At the present moment they were doing a good 5 knots more than their designed speed, flinging showers of spray on both sides of their pronounced flare and emitting flame-tinged smoke from their glowing funnels.
Then an unexpected manoeuvre took place. The men in the boats, fully prepared to have a terrific dusting from the swell of the swiftly-moving destroyers, had resumed their oars and were heading so as to meet the curling bow waves end on.
Instead of holding on their course, which would have taken them not less than half a mile from the nearest boat, the destroyers altered helm, one passing on either side of the little flotilla. Losing way under the reverse action of their quadruple propellers, the destroyers came to a standstill.
"On board, every mother's son of you!" shouted an officer from the bridge of the Messines.
The survivors of the Complex could hardly realize their good fortune. They were to be in at the death after all. They were to witness, and perhaps take an active part in, the smashing up of the so-called Holton Heath, otherwise the Rioguayan light cruiser Cerro Algarrobo.
Quickly the work of taking off the boats' crews was accomplished, the majority finding a temporary home on board the Armentières, the rest on the Messines.
Sub-lieutenant Cavendish was amongst the latter. He had barely time to exchange greetings with a short, bull-necked brother-officer—one Slade, who was on the same term with him at Dartmouth—when the Messines forged ahead again, leaving three deserted boats bobbing forlornly in her foaming wake.
"How goes it, old thing?" inquired Cavendish.
"Not so dusty," admitted Sub-lieutenant Slade. "We're hoping to finish the job before dark. We've a couple of hours yet.... You've been having a bit of a jamboree, eh what? See anything of the submarine?"
"I did," replied Cavendish grimly. "Both ends with nothing between 'em."
"Are you trying to pull my leg, Weeds?" inquired Slade earnestly.
"No—fact," was the reply. "We did her in with an ash-can—a couple, in point of fact. Couldn't let you know before. Dynamos were flooded and emergency wireless was out of action."
"You must tell our owner that," continued Slade. "He's on the bridge."
Lieutenant-Commander Trehallow received the information with marked enthusiasm and not a little relief. Hitherto, he was hampered by the knowledge that there was a mysterious submarine acting as consort to the pirate surface-craft. The submarine accounted for, left him and his "opposite number" on the Armentières with relatively free hands. They could concentrate all their energies upon the pursuit of the soi-disant Holton Heath without the chance of becoming targets to an invisible foe—unless there were other submarines out.
"It puzzles me," remarked Trehallow to Cavendish as they stood under the lee of the chart-room, the only possible spot on the otherwise exposed bridge where they could converse without having to shout in a howling wind, "it puzzles me to know where these blighters hail from. You can't hide even a disguised cruiser and a submarine in your coat pocket. They must have a base somewhere—but where? There's no port on this part of the coast that isn't under the control and jurisdiction of one or other of the South American republics. It's fishy—very. There's something pretty big behind this. Only the other day——"
The appearance of the yeoman of signals, with a signed pad in his hand, interrupted the Lieutenant-Commander's words.
"By smoke!" he ejaculated. "Here, Carfax!"
The officer thus addressed laid down his telescope and joined his chief behind the chart-house.
"Look here, Carfax," continued the Lieutenant-Commander, "what do you make of this?"
"This" was a crudely pencilled report, almost obliterated in places where the flying spray had played havoc with indelible pencil.
It was to the effect that both seaplanes had been compelled to alight on the surface for the second time in half an hour. On each occasion they had got well to the west'ard of their quarry, hoping to keep in the eyes of the setting sun and thus approach without being observed. They had succeeded in getting within three miles of the fugitive, when unaccountably their engines "konked".
"Alighted and made examination," proceeded the report. "Everything O.K. Restarted; came down again. Are now up again. Will——"
Here the message ended.
"Why didn't the silly owl finish?" inquired Trehallow testily.
"'Cause, sir, he's probably had to come down again," hazarded Carfax. "Can't wireless with the aerial trailing in the water and all hands trying to find out what's wrong with the old 'bus. 'Tany rate, we're only fifteen miles astern."
"And a stern chase is a long one," commented the Lieutenant-Commander, glancing at a western sky.
"Where is the pirate making for, I wonder?" inquired Cavendish, turning to Carfax, when the skipper had gone into the chart-room.
"According to what I've heard, he's making for the estuary of the Rio Guaya," replied the Sub of the Messines. "Goodness only knows what for. There are three potty little republics somewhere there, and they wouldn't dare to give shelter to a filibustering blighter like that. But what is puzzling me is, why do our seaplanes keep failing? We've had 'em up for eight hours on a stretch many a time and they've never had any trouble up to now. And when they're most wanted they're broken reeds. Give me something that floats, any old time," he added, with sublime youthful confidence in the omnipotence of sea power.
Twenty minutes later, another wireless report came through from the seaplanes. It was to the effect that neither was able to approach the fugitive pirate. If they attempted to do so their engines failed, but as soon as the pirate craft drew away there was no further trouble until they again overhauled their quarry.
Lieutenant-Commander Trehallow was obviously perplexed. At first inclined to imagine that the series of forced descents was due to accident, he had at last to admit that on the face of things the seaplanes were under some unknown adverse influence.
He therefore gave the airmen instructions to keep the pirate craft within sight, but not to close, until the destroyers came within visual distance of their foe. Then, rather than risk having to stop and pick up a couple of disabled aircraft, he would order them to return to their parent ship, the light cruiser Basilikon.
At length the masts and funnel of the fugitive ship appeared over the horizon. The destroyers, hard on her track, were now rapidly overhauling her, It was a question whether they would get within striking distance before dark. The odds were against that, for the sun was now only a few degrees above the horizon.
Meanwhile, all preparations were being made for a night encounter. Battle lanterns were provided in the event of the electric lamps being put out of action; night sights were attached to the guns; the parachute star-shells were taken from the magazine and the searchlights prepared for use.
The sun dipped. The short tropical twilight gave place to intense darkness. The moon was not due to appear for another couple of hours, and in that time the pirate vessel might have found an opportunity to evade pursuit.
There was no doubt that she was attempting to do so; but she had overlooked one important circumstance—her phosphorescent wake. Miles astern, clearly defined on the surface of the dark water, was a faint luminous trail and to this the avenging destroyers kept, like bloodhounds to a strong scent.
Suddenly a vivid flash of reddish light sprang out of the darkness ahead. A shell whined through the air, throwing up a column of spray two hundred yards on the Messines' port quarter.
"Six-inch, by the sound of it," commented Lieutenant-Commander Trehallow. "We've found her this time. On searchlights!"