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cats,” growled Lauterbach.
    Then the brand-new Diplomat , smelling of paint and full of costly imperial tea, the apoplectic British captain outraged that they would not porter across his golf clubs, sporting trophies and Indian curios. Lauterbach disliked his braying, patrician tone of voice, that transported him back to the childhood days of tight-arsed respectable relatives. They would all go to the bottom and the captain with them if he had his way. Yet part of him was endlessly intrigued by the bizarre objects by which people defined their own identities, the things they prized and wanted to save. Portraits of wives and children, of course, but there had been a man aboard the Indus who brought only a pair of knitted mittens and several gnarled old tars came aboard tenderly clutching debauched teddy bears. He would mention it to Schwabe.
    Then a neutral Italian ship that was allowed on its way but hastened to improperly denounce the Emden’s position to the British authorities. Why? Lauterbach had always liked Italians. He had never done them any harm. Shipping in the area was promptly suspended and five British and Japanese cruisers were called out in emergency to search for them. The Italian captain, they heard later, was given a gold watch and chain by the grateful British.
    They headed east, culling the Trabboch on the way, and finally released the Kabinga , now crowded with prisoners, to return to India. As they were freed, the captive crews crowded the rails and stared at them.
    â€œWhat are they doing?” asked von Muecke, nervously. “Are they going to try to board us? This is madness. Shoot anyone who attempts to approach the side.” Then …
    â€œHip, hip hooray!” Caps were tossed in the air, smiles waves. They were giving their astonished German captors three hearty cheers. In captured newspapers, the crew would now begin to see a legend take form that would cast the Emden , and more particularly von Mueller, as exponents of a gentlemanly and courteous kind of warfare that marked a return to the rules of knightly chivalry and was totally at odds with the emerging horrors of the Flanders trenches. The squalour and despair of the land war had led to a contempt for life that often included one’s own, so that only in the air and at sea did conditions allow men to retain that sense of self-worth that bred humane behaviour and honour-governed, gladiatorial combat. It was, naturally, von Mueller’s high aristocratic principles that received all the credit for this. The Germans, it seemed, were fighting to preserve British values.
    Lauterbach smiled to himself, the latest newspaper from a victim vessel across his knee. It was full of the doings of the Emden and threw around words like “sportsman” and “fair play,” “gallantry” and “gentleman of war” as if war were a genteel match of golf but, as a man of the material world, Lauterbach knew such abstract virtue rested squarely on the abundant supplies delivered by his own astute looting. It was his low purpose rather than their high principle that kept this ship afloat. He folded the paper and bent to enjoy a plate of puffed-up, high-principled Apfelstrudel, conjured up specially for him by the cook to whom he had given looted British flour and base grease.
    â€œMmm. Just the way I like it.” He tongued through the outer carapace. “… dry and rough to on the outside and smooth, moist and sticky within.”
    He opened his eyes to see Schwabe looking at him excitedly, notebook irritatingly poised, pencil ready-licked for the taking of notes. Lauterbach glimpsed odd little sketches in the margins and thought of that of Turpitz in the heads. Surely he could not be the artist? It was an intriguing thought. Her would return to it in moments of contemplation in the latrines. Before Schwabe could say anything, Lauterbach struck first.
    â€œTell me Schwabe. What does your Dr Freud say