The Stolen Cruiser

by Percy F. Westerman

To the surprise of everyone on board, the reply came—"Tow remains to Devonport." Not a word was said about continuing the chase, so, to the disappointment of all ranks, the Indus took the sorry remnants of the Frome in tow, and at an easy ten knots headed towards Plymouth Sound.

Thousands of people assembled to see the shattered forepart of the destroyer pass up Drake's Passage. Hundreds of cameras were levelled at her, shoals of boats accompanied the Indus and her tow, till the latter was docked, safe from public observation, in the basin at Keyham.

Then followed several days of irritating official inquiries, which, while the Independencia still roved the high seas, was an utter waste of time. Drake wanted to be off again. His one desire was to retrieve his reputation by capturing the pirate vessel, and rescuing his brother officers.

Cruisers, scouts, and destroyers were despatched, and, spreading fanwise, scoured the Atlantic from Rockall to the Azores; but somehow or other the filibustered ship escaped detection. Then came the news of the holding up of L'Égalité, which, according to the French captain's report, had taken place within twenty miles of the British cruiser Khartoum.

The immediate result of this affair was that a squadron of fast cruisers and a flotilla of destroyers left Brest to join in the hounding-down of the Independencia. The Spanish Government, eager to lay hands upon the notorious anarchist, also despatched two cruisers and four destroyers; so that there was the keenest rivalry between the various nations engaged in the enterprise as to who should have the honour of laying the running and desperate Juan Cervillo by the heels.

All concerned realised that the business must of necessity be a peculiar one, for Drake had reported how the hostages from the Yosen Maru, as well as his own officers who had been trapped, were utilised as screens to prevent the Independencia from being sunk by gun fire. There were three alternatives: either to overhaul and board the pirate vessel, a feat that could only be accomplished on a calm day, and with the Independencia compelled to heave-to; or to sink the offender by torpedoes, trusting that the pirates would cut their hostages adrift ere the ship sunk; or else to dog her so tenaciously that, unable to capture any more liners or tramps, she would be compelled to haul down the red flag through sheer starvation.

The British Admiralty decided to adopt the last alternative, and orders were given that once the Independencia was sighted, all cruisers and destroyers within a certain radius were to be summoned by wireless, and form a close cordon around the modern buccaneer.

All merchant ships fitted with wireless were informed of this new terror of the seas, and requested to "speak" with other vessels not so equipped, as well as to transmit news of the appearance of any suspicious craft answering to the Independencia's description, so that aid could be quickly forthcoming from the nearest warships. Yet in spite of these precautions the officers of the trans-atlantic liners and tramps had an anxious time. Never had the deck officers kept such a keen look-out, especially at night, when the pirate, steaming without navigation lights, might at any moment loom through the darkness and peremptorily order her prey to heave-to.

At Lloyd's the insurance rates went up 60 per cent. The "Atlantic ferry" paid heavily, for would-be passengers, as a matter of precaution, deferred their journey until the time when the danger ceased to exist. Grain-laden tramps from the States and Canada either remained in port or else sailed under convoy, as in the days of the Napoleonic war. The price of food, in consequence, rose tremendously, and coming as it did after a succession of disastrous strikes, the effects of the modern pirate-ship's depredations began to be felt by all classes of the community.

Two days after the receipt of the wireless message from the French cruiser Desaix, announcing the outrage upon L'Égalité, the liner arrived at Cherbourg in tow of the armoured cruiser Chanzy. Then followed the customary Press interviews with the passengers and crew, with the stock of conflicting and of ten misleading reports. Some of the eye-witnesses, partly through a love of exaggeration, and partly through the result of a highly strung temperament, told ghastly tales of butchery, some even going to the length of asserting that they had seen the passengers who had been removed from the liner being made to walk the plank. No satisfactory explanation could be given as to why, if the pirates were so bloodthirsty as they had been made out to be, the liner had not been scuttled with all hands, until someone explained that Juan Cervillo had spared the ship on account of the third-class passengers.