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The beginning of the war found Charybdis at Singapore. There was a buzz of joy throughout the lower deck; even among the ratings of the Navy the opinion had grown stronger and stronger that Germany’s huge naval effort could only end in war between England and Germany, and for years now the English sailor had forgotten the centuries-old blood feud with France and had awaited with joyous expectation the North Sea clash, in anticipation of which he had been steadily withdrawn from the Mediterranean and the Pacific by the foresight of his supreme controllers, so that at the very time when England’s Navy was stronger than ever it had been there was a smaller English force than ever before in Eastern waters. And that summer night when the First Fleet, happily mobilized, went speeding northwards to its gloomy war station at Scapa, the “preparative” flashed by wireless and cable to the few scattered units which flew the White Ensign in the Pacific.
For there was cause for some anxiety there. Von Spee was lost in the vast expanse of the ocean; he had cannily cleared from Tsing-tao before ever the war clouds had grown over-ominous, and no one knew where he might appear or where he might strike. His armoured cruisers, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, held the big gun records of the German fleet, and what that meant was all too clear to the minds of those who had gained an insight into the achievements of German naval gunnery. There were light cruisers with him too; whether others had joined him since his departure from Tsing-tao was not known for certain—Muller with the Emden and von Lutz with the Ziethen were free to attach themselves to him if they wished—but it was obvious enough that he had a fast-moving, hard-hitting squadron which any English fleet without battleships might without shame be chary of encountering. No one knew where he might appear; he could strike at the South American nitrate trade, at the Indian shipping, at the South African coast where were Boer rebels and German armies to welcome him; on the high seas there were fleets bearing Australian troops, New Zealand troops, Indian troops, English troops. If one such fleet were left unconvoyed he might encounter it and deal one of the most terrible blows given in war. At every point of danger there had to be stationed against him a squadron of strength superior to his own, and England was, as ever at the outbreak of war, woefully short of cruisers. The naval might of England had definitely asserted its superiority—the German merchant flag had vanished from the seas with the outbreak of war, and the German battle fleet had withdrawn in sullen impotence to the protection of its minefields—but here in the Pacific there was this one rebel, hopeless and desperate, who might yet strike a fierce blow or two before Fate overtook him.
That in the end Fate would overtake him there was no doubt whatever. With the Japanese declaration of war and siege of Tsing-tao he had no harbour left him. Coal could only be obtained with difficulty through German agents established here and there before the war. The myriad spare parts he would need would be unobtainable; the myriad small defects which would develop would be irremediable. His ships’ bottoms would grow foul, and there was no graving dock open to him. Sooner or later, whether or not he encountered an enemy, he would have to call the game lost and seek internment in some neutral port. But were he not hunted down and destroyed the material damage he might do would be enormous, and the damage to British prestige would be more serious still. Small wonder that the air was electric with messages flying back and forth summoning all the scattered Pacific units of the British fleet into rallying groups converging on the million square miles wherein he lay concealed.
The lower deck ratings of the Charybdis thought nothing of the task. They put a happy trust in their officers, who would bring a superior force against von Spee; and if they were not in superior force, then English grit and English gunnery would take no heed of odds and would carry the matter through just as at Trafalgar or the Nile. No man aboard Charybdis but would cheerfully and eagerly have accepted the chance to fight in that obsolescent cruiser against Scharnhorst or Gneisenau with their deadly 8-inch guns. They eagerly anticipated victory; it is only giving them their due to say further that they would have gone as willingly to certain defeat for the Navy’s sake. For the terrible superiority of the 5.9 over the almost obsolete Mark IV 4.7 they cared nothing. The lower-deck buzz was cheerful and vigorous, and the knowledge that the warheads were being set in the torpedoes was sufficient compensation for the hateful fatigue of hurried coaling.
Leading Seaman Albert Brown (he had been Leading Seaman now for a fortnight after a bare year as Ordinary Seaman, and another as A.B.) had a more intimate knowledge of the facts and probabilities. He knew, as did the others, of the imminent hunt for von Spee, but he had a clearer appreciation of the difficulties. The Charybdis could not hope to fight successfully any one of the majority of von Spee’s squadron, and she had hardly speed sufficient to escape danger. Scharnhorst or Gneisenau, those big armoured cruisers, would blow her out of the water instantly. Ziethen, an earlier and smaller armoured cruiser, would have hardly more difficulty. Brown even foresaw serious danger in an encounter with a light cruiser, with Emden or Dresden, with their smaller but more modern and dangerous guns. But Brown had the better kind of courage; he could foresee danger and not flinch, not even inwardly. If death came to him—well, he died, and that was the end of speculation. If not—wartime and an expanding Navy meant promotion. He was Leading Seaman now, though barely twenty. The commission he hardly dared to think about seemed at last a faint possibility instead of an incredible possibility. Brown knew that it was the first step in promotion which was the hardest to come by.
So Charybdis left Singapore hurriedly and drove eastward, obedient to the flickering wireless, into the widespread deserts of the Pacific. This was the very earliest beginning of the war, before Japan had turned against Germany and sent her army to Kiao-chau, and her navy in a wide sweep southeastwards after von Spee. Charybdis took her course across the China Sea; she nosed her way through the Carolines, exploring that straggling group of flat, miserable islands, and from the Carolines she threaded her way through dangerous seas on to the Marshalls. On the opposite side of the world an anxious Admiralty awaited her reports, for the Carolines and Marshalls were German possessions, and there, if anywhere, would von Spee be found. But a thousand miles of sea leaves much room in which a small squadron can be lost, and Charybdis missed contact with von Spee by the barest margin of twenty-four hours. Charybdis’ negative reports, relayed round the world, came in to puzzle the naval staff more than ever. They were at a loss to think where von Spee could have hidden himself. The Australian navy was on its guard to the southward; the Japanese fleet was sweeping down from the north; a concentration was gradually taking shape at the Falklands. There was a loosely-knit combination forming against von Spee, but there was room enough for him to slip through if he cared to. Reports were instantly to hand that Muller, in Emden, had indeed slipped through; she was at large in the Indian Ocean, ravaging the rich merchant shipping, capturing and sinking and destroying. She had stolen in disguise within range of Madras, and had shelled the invaluable oil tanks there. But her movements were no indication of von Spee’s whereabouts, for he had clearly detached her and moved in some new direction himself—perhaps right across the Pacific. Contact with him must be made. He might even pass the Panama Canal and appear in the West Indies, and break across the Atlantic in a desperate effort to reach home. The wireless orders summoned Charybdis farther yet across the Pacific, south again to the Line to a secret coaling station and onwards towards Panama, with every nerve strained awaiting the lookout’s report that von Spee was in sight—a signal to set the wireless transmission crackling, proclaiming his presence to all the world, the while the helm brought the ship round in desperate flight from those deadly 8-inch guns.
Blind chance—the chance that had ordained von Spee should evade Charybdis in the Marshalls, and which sent him to his death at the Falklands—directed that here, in the most desolate waters of the world, cruiser should meet cruiser. Von Spee, striking across to the South American coast, had detached Ziethen (Captain von Lutz) with orders to steer for Australasian waters. Ziethen, with her large displacement, her ten 6-inch guns and thick armour, would be a match for any of the British light cruisers; against her the British would have to scatter broadcast armoured cruisers, and that implied an absence of defence against the blow he meditated against the Falklands. Ziethen, being in no way homogeneous with his own squadron, could be well spared. So Ziethen was detached, and a thousand miles from land she encountered Charybdis.
Charybdis saw a smudge of smoke on the horizon. Charybdis steered towards it. Soon Ziethen’s three tall funnels could be descried. The Captain of Charybdis peered anxiously through his glasses. He ran through his memory to pick out which remembered silhouette was hers.
“That’s Ziethen,” said Captain Holt. “Now where are the others?”
For a few minutes both ships held on slightly divergent courses, each anxious to ascertain whether the other was in the company of others. But no other smoke clouds showed upon the horizon. They were alone upon a waste of water.
“Fight or run?” said the Captain to himself, knowing the answer as he said it.
Run? He must not run. It was his duty to shadow Ziethen if he could not fight her, keep her under observation by virtue of his half-knot superiority in speed until someone came up who could fight her. But shadow a ship of superior force over two thousand miles of dangerous sea with only such a tiny additional speed? The odds would be a hundred to one that he would lose her—and his professional reputation along with her. Leading Seaman Albert Brown, gunlayer of No. 2 4.7 gun, at his action station, paralleled his Captain’s thoughts as they occurred. He must fight then—old 4.7’s against new 5.9’s, four thousand tons against eight thousand. Luck might aid him; a sea fight is always a chancy business. At the worst he might do Ziethen some serious damage before Charybdis sank, and the Ziethen seriously damaged meant the Ziethen rendered useless, for she had no place where she might effect repairs.
“Action stations” had gone long ago; steam was being raised in all boilers; the propellers were beating a faster rhythm as both ships tried to work up to full speed, swinging round each other in the momentary sparring before rushing in to grapple. The Captain put the glasses to his eyes again, and while he did so, casually, as befitted an Englishman at a mighty crisis, he spoke to the man at the wheel. Round went the wheel, and Charybdis heeled as she swung round sharply under maximum helm at high speed. The Captain was making the most of his chances, closing the range as rapidly as possible to avoid as much as he could being hit without being able to hit back. Even as Charybdis came round the wireless signalman was sending out, over and over again, the message telling of the encounter, giving latitude and longitude, trying to inform the expectant British fleet where Ziethen was to be found. And while he did so Ziethen’s operator was “jamming” hard. No message could hope to get through that tangled confusion, especially over a distance of thousands of miles, in the unkindly ether of the Pacific.
But Ziethen was ready for Charybdis’ manoeuvre. Well did Captain Lutz appreciate the superiority of the 6-inch over the 4.7. He put his helm over too, and Ziethen came round until the courses of the two ships were almost parallel, and, as Charybdis turned further, he continued his turn until it almost seemed as if he were running away. It was a pretty sight, those two great ships wheeling round each other on the blue, blue Pacific with a blue sky over them and peace all about them. Only the spread smudges from the heavily smoking funnels marred the picture.
“Out of range still, curse them!” groaned the Gunnery Lieutenant, hearkening to the monotonous chant of the range-taking petty officer.
A sudden little haze became apparent round Ziethen, and almost simultaneously a group of tall pillars of water shot up suddenly from the surface of the sea two hundred yards from Charybdis’ bow. The Gunnery Lieutenant started in surprise. Practice as good as this was more than he expected. Charybdis heeled again under pressure of helm in her effort to close. The tall fountains of water shot up again, this time only a hundred yards from the quarter; some of the water splashed on to Charybdis’ deck. The thunder of Ziethen’s guns did not reach her until half a dozen seconds later.
“Bracketed, by God!” said the Gunnery Lieutenant, and then, in surprised admiration of a worthy opponent, “Good shooting! Dam’ good shooting!”
Charybdis turned sharply to disconcert the German range-takers, but the next salvo pitched close alongside, flooding the decks with water. Down below, below the level of the water, under the protective deck, the stokers were labouring like lunatics to supply the steam which was being demanded so insistently; but Ziethen’s stokers were labouring too, and proof of their efforts was displayed in the huge volumes of smoke pouring from her funnels. Victory might well incline to the ship which first reached her maximum speed; speed would enable Charybdis to close, or enable Ziethen to keep away and continue to blast her enemy with salvoes to which no reply was possible. Once only did the Gunnery Lieutenant see his beloved guns in action; once only. They fired at extreme range, on the upward roll, but it was a vain hope. The Gunnery Lieutenant groaned his bitter disappointment—the more bitter because the hope had been so frail—when he saw the tall columns of water leap half a mile on the hither side of the enemy. But the anguish of the Gunnery Lieutenant’s soul ended with his groan, for Ziethen’s next salvo, flickering down from the blue, came crashing fair and deadly upon the Charybdis’ deck; five 6-inch shells falling together. They blew the Gunnery Lieutenant into bloody and unrecognizable rags; they dashed to pieces the range-taking petty officer and his instrument; they wiped out the crew of No. 4 gun; they left the superstructure riddled and the funnels tottering; they started a blaze of fire here, there and everywhere, so that the Executive Officer and his hose-party, choking in the smoke, could not cope with one-half of the work before them. Nor was that one salvo all. Salvo followed salvo, with barely half a minute between them. The pitiless shells rained down upon the wretched ship, smashing and rending and destroying. The Ziethen’s gunners were toiling with the disciplined rapidity resulting from years of gun drill, heaving up the heavy hundred-pound shells and thrusting them home with a trained convulsive effort, training, firing, reloading, not even, thanks to their solid discipline, sparing a moment to view the ruin they were causing. Charybdis reeled beneath the blows; smoke poured from her in increasing volume, but her vitals, her motive power, were down below her protective deck, and she could still grind through the water with undiminished speed. The Captain was down and dying, torn open by a splinter, and it was the Commander who gave the orders now; dead men lay round the guns, and the stewards were bearing many wounded down below to where the Surgeon laboured in semidarkness; but scratch crews manned the guns, which flamed and thundered at hopelessly long range. Yet fierce resolution, half a knot more speed and a slightly converging course all did their work. The high-tossed pillars of water crept nearer to Ziethen, and soon a shrill cheer from a gunlayer, cutting through the insane din, greeted Charybdis’ first hit. There were dead Germans now upon Ziethen’s deck.
But Charybdis was a dying ship, even though the thrust of her screws still drove her madly through the water. Her side was torn open; she would have been wrapped in flame were it not that the shells pitching close alongside sometimes threw tons of water on board and extinguished some of the fire. The merciless shells had riven and wrenched her frail upper works until the dead there outnumbered the living. Her guns still spoke spasmodically through the smoke; the White Ensign still flew overhead, challenging the interloping Black Cross on a white ground which flaunted itself from Ziethen. When the oldest navy met the newest, pride left no room for surrender; barbaric victory or barbaric death were the only chances open to the iron men in their iron ships. Feebly spoke Charybdis’ guns, and for every single shell which was flung at Ziethen a full salvo came winging back, five shells at a time, directed by an uninjured central control, with the range known to a yard. Even as Charybdis made her last hit her death was in the air. It smote her hard upon her injured side; it reached and detonated the starboard magazine so that a crashing explosion tore the ship across. The hungry sea boiled in; the stokers and the artificers and the engineers whom the explosion had not killed died in their scores as the water trapped them below decks. Even as the boilers exploded, even as the ship drove madly below the surface, Ziethen’s last salvo smote her and burst amid the chaos caused by its predecessors. In thirty seconds Charybdis had passed from a living thing to a dead, from a fighting ship to a twisted tangle of iron falling through the sunlit upper waters of the Pacific down into the freezing darkness of the unfathomed bottom. Above her the circling whirlpools lived their scanty minute amid the vast bubbles which came boiling up to the surface; a smear of oil and coal dust marred the azure beauty of the Pacific, and at its centre floated a little gathering of wreckage, human and inhuman, living and dead—nearly all dead.