The Rival Submarines

by Percy F. Westerman

The detector showed that the "Vorwartz" was maintaining her distance; evidently she was in luck, and had negotiated the difficult entrance in the nick of time.

For twenty-eight days the "Aphrodite" lay in sight of the clump of high, straight trees, that lay very close together, giving the point the appearance of a cliff, to which the name of First Bluff Point owes its origin.

Meanwhile the news of the great disaster to H.M.S. "Topaze" had been sent by wireless to Cape Town by the captain of the "Pique," and in a very short space of time the Admiralty were in possession of the salient facts of the latest outrage by Karl von Harburg. There was a panic amongst the merchantmen in East African waters; the scanty harbours of that coast were filled with ships whose skippers feared to put to sea. Even the mail-boats took particular care to give the supposed cruising-ground of the "Vorwartz" a wide berth; while the liners running between London and Liverpool and Australia and New Zealand abandoned the Cape route and stuck to that via Cape Horn.

People began to ask what was the use of having command of the sea when one solitary submarine could do practically what it liked beneath the surface. Vast sums had been spent to keep the British navy in a state of efficiency and numerical supremacy; money had been poured out like water to provide defence against hostile aircraft that might menace our shores; yet one submarine--not a new invention, but merely a great improvement on existing types--was playing a one-sided game not only with British shipping, but with the mercantile marine of the whole of the nautical world. And now even warships were being sent to the bottom without so much as a glimpse of the attacker.

In the midst of this gloomy outlook came a consoling gleam of light. The "Aphrodite" was now known to have survived the attack made upon her by her rival; and to Captain Restronguet the entire civilized world pinned its faith.

Although Captain the Hon. C. L. Sedgwyke had refused to make any public statement concerning the disaster to his ship until the impending court martial took place, he telegraphed a full report to the Admiralty. It was the plain, unvarnished story of a brave yet unfortunate British officer. He laid particular emphasis upon the fact that Captain Restronguet was in the "Aphrodite," ready and willing to grapple with the modern buccaneer, but only at earnest solicitation of the captain of the "Topaze" did he stand passively aloof in order to give the British cruiser a chance to distinguish herself.

Britons are generally supposed to be a phlegmatic race, but when they have an attack of hero-worship they get it pretty badly. Captain John Restronguet was the hero of the day. A photograph that an amateur photographer on the "Persia" took of him during the "Aphrodite's" passage through the Red Sea appeared in all the papers, edition de luxe copies were sold by hundreds of thousands, and the firm who bought the copyright for one guinea made nearly £30,000 out of the transaction. Restronguet coats, hats, and boots were all the rage; in fact the name Restronguet applied to any article ensured it a ready sale. The nation was Restronguet mad.

But the captain of the "Aphrodite" was not a man to have his head turned by fatuous hero-worship. He knew perfectly well that in the course of a few years his name would be a mere byword. Reports of his popularity had been transmitted to him by his agents. He merely shrugged his shoulders, and impressed upon the wireless operator who received the messages to maintain a strict reticence as to their nature. He had a mission to perform, and he meant to accomplish it. Thus, with ill-concealed impatience he waited and waited till, with his crew, he became heartily sick of the sight of First Bluff Point and the forbidding bar of the mighty Zambezi.

On the morning of the twenty-ninth day of the "Aphrodite's" detention a native boat, manned by half a dozen blacks, was observed to have managed to cross the bar and was bearing down towards the vessel. In the stern was a European, a sallow-faced man dressed in dirty white clothes and a broad sun-hat.

As soon as the boat came alongside the bowman dexterously threw a rope, and when this was made fast the white man, without waiting for an accommodation ladder to be shipped, swarmed up on deck.