Chapter XIII The German Admiral
In the admiral’s state-room, Max quickly won his uncle’s favour by producing his collection of special maps and charts—the same collection which Mark Redisham had discovered in the pigeon-loft at Sunnydene.
On the charts of the North Sea were clearly shown not only the depths in fathoms and the positions of newly-placed buoys and lightships for the guidance of pilots, but also the areas which the British Admiralty had sown with defensive mines.
Admiral von Hilliger examined them with keen scrutiny, stroking his long, fair beard with satisfaction as he observed particular features which were new to him.
“Ja,” he nodded, making a mark with his pencil. “We shall use this channel when we go to bombard their fortified coast towns. It is just here that our invading troops can make a landing. You have two and a quarter fathoms of water close up to the beach at low tide—a lonely piece of exposed coast, within easy reach of a railway junction, and three cathedral cities. There are no fortifications to oppose us; and the little English Army is already in France! But first, my dear Max, we shall annihilate their miserable North Sea Fleet. Once we have got rid of their boasted Dreadnoughts and secured command of the seas, the rest will be as simple as eating your breakfast.”
“If there is going to be a sea battle, uncle,” Max ventured boldly, “I should not like to miss seeing it, and perhaps taking a small part in it.”
The admiral shrugged his decorated shoulders and took up the chart of Alderwick Knoll.
“As a holiday entertainment it would be interesting,” he responded. “And certainly there are ways in which your knowledge of the enemy may be useful.”
“Also my knowledge of submarines,” Max added.
“So?” returned his uncle, studying the chart. “And you have the wish to fight under the sea, eh? Well, my dear child, that is perhaps possible! We have many under-sea boats in commission, and many more building, for which we shall require crews. I will arrange it. In the meantime, you will be provided with a midshipman’s uniform and remain on board the Schiller. But what is this so carefully prepared chart?”
“It is a reef off the English coast, sir,” Max explained, “a place convenient for our submarines to lie safely hidden, to pounce out upon enemy ships and sink them. Also, there is a secret store of petrol buried in the sand dunes quite near. My father has not been idle.”
“Good!” said the admiral. “Yes, we shall sink their ships—merchant ships as well as vessels of war. We shall blockade their coasts, and so, stopping their food supplies, starve the contemptible English. But that will be when we have destroyed their battle fleets, as we shall do as soon as they choose to come out from their fortified harbours, where at present they remain in close hiding.”
Max Hilliger very well knew that Sir John Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet was not in hiding; but he did not wish just now to contradict his uncle. He simply said:
“Some of their cruiser squadrons are nevertheless venturing nearer to our mine-fields than is good for them, sir. To-day, for example, we passed a squadron hardly a score of miles from the south-west of Heligoland.”
“Ha!” cried the admiral, growing excited. “So near? Why did you not inform me at once, instead of wasting my time and our opportunity? Already we might have sent out a flotilla of our faithful submarines to torpedo them! A squadron, you say? Of what strength?”
Max produced the notes that he had taken.
“Thunder and lightning!” exclaimed his uncle, at sight of the precise details. And, gathering the charts and the notes, he got into his oilskins and hurried out of the cabin to hold a council of war with several of his fellow admirals and captains on board the cruiser Klopstock.
Max saw no more of him that night; but by the bustle and excitement and incessant noise that kept him from sleeping, he knew that the ship was being prepared for action.
Early in the morning he was awakened by the chunking of the engines and the noisy working of the ammunition hoists. He got up and dressed in his midshipman’s uniform and went out to the upper deck. The rain had ceased, but there was a thick mist over the sea, through which he could only dimly make out the cliffs of Heligoland with their concrete battlements and bristling guns.
As the cruiser drew nearer, he could see the forts more clearly, with the naval harbour, from which a large flotilla of destroyers and submarines had just come out. Here the Schiller came to a stop beside other cruisers—the Klopstock with her four tall funnels, the Goethe, the Ariadne, the Coblentz, and the great Derfflinger, with her five pairs of 12-inch guns—while twenty destroyers, accompanied by six submarines, disappeared in the mist on their way out to sea.
On board the Schiller all was cleared for action, everything inflammable was left behind, and the decks were flooded in case of fire, the guns were loaded and the men at their stations all ready for fighting, waiting only for a wireless message to come back from the advance scouts to say that the enemy had been found.
Instead of a Marconi message, there came the distant booming of British 4-inch guns, mingling with the sound of the drums as the bands on the German cruisers played “Der Wacht am Rhein.”
“Ha!” cried Admiral von Hilliger, rubbing his hands together as he paced his quarter-deck. “Now we have them!”
A signal was sent out to two of the cruisers, the Klopstock and the Coblentz, which immediately steamed off, to be followed a little later by the Schiller herself and the Ariadne, which took a slightly different direction, in order, as was intended, to take the enemy on the opposite flank and so envelop them.
In the open sea, outside Heligoland, and beyond the area of the German mines, British destroyers and submarines, supported by light cruisers and battle cruisers had for a week past been busily reconnoitring, showing themselves boldly, and inviting the Kaiser’s ships to come out. But until this morning the invitation had been ignored.
Now, however, as the flotilla of German torpedo boats sallied forth to give chase to what they supposed was a mere patrol of light craft which they might easily deal with, a strong, picked force of our destroyers, headed by the new light cruiser Athene, dashed out from the mist to cut off the German boats from home and engage them at leisure in the open sea.
The action was begun by the Levity and the Lupin in a running fight, and so well were their 4-inch guns served that one of the enemy destroyers was crippled in trying to escape, and shortly afterwards a second was seen to sink. The Athene manoeuvred to get clear of Hermann Körner’s submarine, which was within torpedo range.
Then the German destroyers scattered, drawing back to the mine-field, and to the support of the Klopstock and the Coblentz, which were now coming out.
The Athene, leading the line of destroyers, met the heavy gunfire of the Klopstock, and engaged her at a range of about three thousand yards.
For half an hour the two cruisers fought, the Athene holding her own against a ship more than double her size. She sustained some damage and a few casualties, and the situation was becoming critical when a second British light cruiser, the Sarpedon, steamed up to her support. Three destroyers joined in the attack with their torpedoes, whereupon the German turned tail and disappeared in the mist.
The Athene and the Sarpedon, followed by the destroyers Levity and Lupin, now gave chase to the German Coblentz, and drove her, seriously injured, to the protection of the mine-field. Ten minutes later the armoured cruiser Schiller came out, with Admiral von Hilliger in command, and his nephew, Max, on board.
She at once opened her guns on the Athene and the Sarpedon. Salvo after salvo was directed towards the two British cruisers, but every shell fell short, while many of the Athene’s 6-inch shells battered her sides. A division of our destroyers joined in the fray with their deck-guns, and the Levity in particular annoyed the Germans by the accuracy of her aim.
Max Hilliger watched her through a pair of powerful binoculars, and once, when the air was momentarily clear of smoke, he caught sight of Rodney Redisham in a prominent position on her high bridge.
He went up to the admiral.
“Turn your guns on that destroyer, sir,” he implored. “Sink her! Sink her!”