Read Online Rogue Raider by Nigel Barley - Free Book Online

wanly upon him as upon them all. But every minute spent here was dangerous. A British dreadnought could come over the horizon at any second and catch them napping. There must now be an emotional purgation. He called action stations.
    To deliberately sink a ship is a terrible thing. They had been trained to think of themselves as fearless stalkers and hunters of wild beasts but to destroy a captured ship was more like beating a placid cow on the head with an iron bar until it died. The seacocks on the Indus were brutally smashed so that water shot into engine room and bunkers in great grey geysers. As soon as the scuttling crew had themselves scuttled clear, the forward gunners coldly pumped six shells into the vessel. A terrible hush fell over the spectators lining the rails of the little fleet, suddenly horribly sober. The Indus shivered as though with a spasm of sudden internal agony, steadied and settled a little lower in the water. Then, as the crew watched in suspense, she seemed to fight for life, showing a terrible will to survive her implacable fate. As the minutes ticked by, little by little, she started slipping down, accelerating as she went, gulping down great final draughts through hatchways and stairs and coughing them back out through open portholes. With a groan she twisted on her side and blew huge gouts of filthy oil through the ventilation shafts like a dying whale and the funnels screamed as they were torn apart and rushed to the bottom in a terrible whirlpool. When it seemed that nothing was left but a monstrous vat of boiling water, mighty beams, ripped loose in the depths, shot up in the air and crashed back into the sea and a terrible funereal belch.roared up from the abyss to envelope them in a rank stench of gross decay. Lastly, the lifeboats surfaced, righted themselves correctly according to design, and bobbed cheerfully in the sun. They would give away the fate of the vessel so the Emden tried to run them down like puppies in the road. They swept playfully out of the way, twinkled their sterns and floated happily off towards India. Never mind. They would not be found for several days. The Emden, Pontoporos and Markomannia turned and sailed on towards Calcutta. The captain of the Indus stood on the deck and wept openly and without shame. It sent a shiver up every seaman’s spine.
    The next day they sank the Lovat , another troop transport. The crew were courteously allowed time to gather their personal effects before being installed on the junkman. Just off Calcutta, perilously close to the harbour entrance, they took the Kabinga , carrying British goods to North America. In fact, they were so close to land that they mistook a temple stupa in Puri for a ship and steamed towards it. Lauterbach had never been one of the world’s great navigators and now he was the butt of shipboard humour with lookouts spotting the Brandenburg gate and the Eiffel tower in mid ocean. The Kabinga ’s goods were deemed neutral so that the ship could not be sunk. Lauterbach rebuked his own crass sentimentality – the master had his wife and child on board – for settling for only a very small sweetener to explain to von Mueller the need to spare the vessel.
    Then they took the Killin. More foul Indian coal, unwanted, so she would be sent straight to the bottom. The morning was ended with a pleasant lunch, the officers playing bridge or sitting in Lauterbach’s easy chairs thumbing Lauterbach’s books – young von Guerard, – himself the ship’s pet – tousled, unshaven, giggling in delicious agony at the kittens boiling in his lap and poking their tiny claws through the thin stuff of his uniform and into his thighs. Their fur had already added itself as the latest crust on the sticky green paint.
    â€œWe have given them names Juli-bumm. Ah! Eee! They are Pontoporos, Indus, and so on – one for each of the ships we have sunk. What do you think?”
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