Read Online Rogue Raider by Nigel Barley - Free Book Online Page B

on the subject of people who lick the tips of their pencils?”
    â€œEr. Well …” He stowed it rapidly away, blushing.
    â€œHave you read this?” Lauterbach chuckled, swallowing dabbed-up crumbs, ostentatiously finger-licking and flourishing the paper in a great paw. “‘There is no doubt that the German cruiser Emden had knowledge that the Indus was carrying 150 cases of North-West Soap Company’s celebrated ELYSIUM Soap, and hence the pursuit. The men on the Emden and their clothes are now clean and sweet, thanks to ELYSIUM Soap. Try it!’ They are using us to sell soap to Indians.”
    But an attentive eye would have seen that Lauterbach’s tunic, taut now over his swelling paunch, unlike those of his slim fellow-officers, was not just clean and sweet. It was discreetly starched at cuffs and collar and the buttons were hand-burnished. Before delivery, the top pocket had received a final dressing of four chinking silver dollars, half the pay of non-existant Number One Washboy. Lauterbach felt he was finally beginning to get the measure of His Imperial Majesty’s navy.
    He felt breath on his neck and turned to see von Muecke reading, incredulous, over his shoulder. “We are the most popular ship in the Indian Ocean even though we are their enemies. The English are truly mad.” Von Muecke, headshaking. “They speak of our campaign as if we were shoppers.”
    â€œAh, yes, Number One, but not just ordinary shoppers. We are at least carriage-trade.”
    But the water in these latitudes was getting too hot for comfort and they would head south for a coaling in the remote Andamans, peopled by neutrally hostile aborigines who fired their arrows at all visitors with an easy indifference to nationality. On the way they picked up the Clan Matheson , more by habit than design. She made the mistake of running before them and they chased her as unreflectingly as a dog does a fleeing cat.
    â€œAre you English?” they called across.
    â€œScottish, damn and blast ye.”
    Von Mueller was crisply punitive. “For failure to comply at once with my orders, the vessel shall be sunk immediately.”
    The cathedral-like holds were an echoing treasurehouse of rich and useless manufactures, luxury cars, typewriters, locomotives that gleamed silently in the dark. Lauterbach stroked the sleek Rolls Royces in quiet reproach, then kicked their tyres in a mixture of respect and vandalism. He was a sword of austerity from the desert, a punisher of the sin of pride and all this vanity was born but to die. But wait, what was this? In a well-strawed stall two nervous and immaculate racehorses thudded their hooves on the planking. Lauterbach considered them in horror and confusion. Never had he seen creatures of such impractical beauty, pared and delicate, uncompromisingly aristocratic. Compared to their sinuous lines and rippling flanks, the boxy Rolls Royces were merely cheap tin toys. He looked into those great liquid eyes and could not bear to think of their terror at an invading wall of cold, hard water surging towards them. If they had been women he would have mounted them, ridden them hard, forced and whipped them over the fences of his pleasure and they would have loved him for it.
    â€œLieutenant Schall, shoot the horses.”
    He went about his business on the upper decks, evacuating the crew, checking the contents of the captain’s safe, pocketing up any useful dollars, trying to block out from his thoughts the inevitable shots that his ears were straining for and it was not until they were embarking in the boats, the explosive charges already set to blow the ship apart, that he asked again whether it had been done.
    â€œSorry, Juli-bumm. I just couldn’t.”
    He climbed back aboard, padded quietly to their stall and shot them down with a single bullet each to the brain, as he kissed their hot foreheads with pure, sad love. They shuddered and died at his