The Steel Duichman

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20367, 26 July 1934, Page 20

The Steel Duichman

A GREAT STORY OF ADVENTURE ON LAND AND SEA

(Author of “Paradise Orchid,” “The Green Hat,” etc.>

Bv S

Vincent Cornier

CHAPTER XXXII. Van Klaus’ Last Fight. With the Hollandan Witch’s bold b attempt at ramming, the Fliegende s Scliainu was brought to a dangerous pass. b All the thick canvas which had been o draped along the white pirate to give s its hull the rusty and battered appear- £ ance of an old herring drifter, had been 1 torn away. Its weight was considerable, but much more considerable was c m the way in which it" hampered progress. 1 Trailing in the water, bellying to the J wind of the yacht’s passage —and to the ~ rising half-gale that was cutting up tlic *■ sea into an ugly sight —this camouflage was becoming a serious problem. j. Twice Van Klaus hove-to and set his j crew to work attacking the stuff. But < - they could not clear it all away. In the \ . castuarine waters of that Norwegian s salmon river where the canvas had been i shrouded over the white enamelled \ flanks of the ship, there had been leisure i and calm water. Here, in the open seas, 1 with the dread certainty that a score ( of vengeful battleships were pounding c their way along the self-same course they had taken, the pirates were handicapped by fear as well as by darkness, and pitchings and rollings in the work of the waves. The funnel had gone overboard and the papier mache dummies of steam winches and net-hauling gear had followed . . . but that canvas—that infernal and clinging canvas, could not be got adrift. In the end Van Klaus had to take to his heels with fully two tons of its tattered remains dragging along beneath his celluloid sheathed hull; an attrition worse than any barnacle growth or weed-massing could have made. It reduced his speed enormously apart from making the vessel sluggish to her helm. So by this fluke of Fate, the Fliegende Schaum was levelled to terms which made for the victory of the approaching armada. Van Klaus knew that if once they sighted him nothing could prevent them from blowing him out of the water. His saviour hitherto had been his amazing speed —his speed throttled down to not much more than that of a destroyer, “all out,” He stood a flimsy chance against the massed vengeance of the fleet. He roared and screamed and belaboured his crew like the semi-mad-man he was. Once a man stopped to question an impossible order; Van Klaus picked him up and flung him overboard without more ado. After that the others did their best to carry out his insensate demands . . . but in the end even he had to admit that all was done that could be. The two-ton drag was the dragging of a doom . . . The Fliegende Schaum zig-zagged like a mad thing through the gathering storm. Her wireless officers could hear the ether full of the warships neverceasing conversations. Even when messages were not being sent out, a steady stream of wave-emissions was kept up. Hearing of this Van Klaus snarled and cursed and fumed more than before. He was no fool —neither were the naval officers, pursuing him, fools. They had detected one thing; the faculty his vessel had of putting a stop to all wireless transmission from any other ship coming within a mile or so of her hull. This constant stream of wireless power was only to one end . . . the instant the warships found that it was “fading” they would know they were near their quarry. He thought things out. The marvellous motors that throbbed down in the Fliegende Schaum’s engine room could not be deprived of one ounce of their power, else disaster would approach the nearer. One less at work —one unit shut off to safeguard the vessel by reason of its not requiring such a supply of “juice” as it had at the moment—would mean the loss of another 10 or 15 knots. But that was preferable for the time being. It would result in the area of “fading” that surrounded the Fliegende Schaum being reduced to one of only a few hundred square yards. Speed would be sacrifloed to cunning. . . He decided to try it. Hence it came about that the Fliegende Schaum went on and on through the ever-rising sens; through the semi-gale force of head winds and through a murky night, with less speed, at the last, than the slowest of her relentless pursuers. And there came the final setting—exactly out of that; the dragging canvas and the shut-off motor, i The Last Fight. All that night long the pursuit of the ' Steel Dutchman continued. Not only were vessels of the British Navy seeking the Fliegende Schaum . . . ’ but Danish torpedo boats hissed off their grey coastline; preening French battle- ; cruisers came out of the Channel into waters they never otherwise entered and 1 were as far up in the North Sea as the Dogger. German “pocket-battleships” — ■ revealing in grimmest truth the hitherto 1 suspected potentialities of their speed—s roared along the Cattegat and explored t Skager and the Baltic entrances from : Kiel across to Christiansund. Two black Russians rolled in dingy ' majesty to the south-east of Spitz- ) bergen’s point . . . and a squadron or i British ships out of .Seapa were not so very far away from them. With the coming of light the airs were 1 alive with scouting ’planes and sullen, ’ hungry bombers. Aircraft carriers had - been rushed up with all available pilot? ' and machines at battle-stations. As with 2 the never resting destroyers of the waters, these ungainly vessels spilled 1 their destroyers of the air to that one 3 combined service—the destruction of . Mynheer Ryjer van Klaus, the Fliegende t! Schaum and all his piratical following. 2 But the North Sea, for all its small - seeming among the waters of the globe, is a vast desert-like place. A vessel off e the usual sea routes is a vessel lost in 2 it. The ships that pursued and the ship . that fled ware never within 100 miles of one another all through that night, into the forenoon and then the afternoon . . . Had it not been for the deadly drag of that camouflaging canvas, and the necessity for one of his motors to be throttled down. Van Klaus would have gained the' Orkneys and after them the northern Atlantic, with ease. Mid-day came and never so much as a glimpse of the pirate had been obtained • One o’clock—two—three —and then halfr past three . . . when at last a vessel of ‘ r the fleet caught a far-away vision of a 1 .rrinj white shape making a speedy s passage across the tumble of waters * <*way to the north.

Immediately it wirelessed its suspicions of the sighted prey—to have them almost as immediately confirmed by a sudden increase in the rate of the ship. Van Klaus had received the pursuer’s radiated message, and, as he had dona before, decoded it. Knowing that the game was almost up he dared to use the second motor and consequently added another 20 or more miles aiv hour to his speed. That was enough. After the first shock of surprise the little destroyer made in for the wake of the Fliegende Schaum. Heading into that self-same square of the sea-miles, a hundred other ships came thundering. And soon before four o’clock the Steel Dutchman knew himself to be caught iri a merciless trap. He was hemmed in at all points. Wherever, he looked he could see trails of forced - draught smoke . . . wherever he looked he could also see lean grey shells of steel moving to surround him. Aircraft began to sound and then the bigger vessels of the fleet came in their pinnacled state after the fussy little greyhounds which scurried about the everdiminishing arc of the Steel Dutchman's certain doom . . .

In the vanguard of these larger vessels was H.M.s. Peraclide —the twin and sister-ship of the sunken Heraclon. She glided out of the ruck like a terrible island of black metal. Never in all her existence had she attained the speeds she made just now. And the other ships lay back —here, in Peraclide, was the chosen destroyer of the Steel Dutchman’s vaunt to the sea-traffic of the world. Here, in mighty Peraclide, was justice. He had swept her sister to the bottom, and, in a sudden and terrible tolling, Peraclide’s first broadside hammered under the grey skies, knelling Heraclon with a score of tons of howling steel. So miraculously aimed was that phalanx of explosive, the Fliegende Schaum rose like a tossed cork upon the turmoil and spume the great shells made, just a hundred yards or so beyond her white skin. Surely, the watching circle thought, the second discharge would account for the pirate. It was going to be an easy job, after all. But-Fliegende Schaum had foxed. Shg had reserves of power they had not seen as yet. While the thunderous echoes were still beneath the heavens, she whipped about and darted straight at Peraclide—straight as an arrow — through the destroyer’s lines and through a great gap between two other cruisers. The astounding venture made the naval men hold their breaths. The Dutchman was a man in a million. Had he been born centuries previously, when his twitching pennant of broom might more valiantly have signified his intention to “sweep the seven seas,” he would have left a name for all men to wonder at. Here, in this one manoeuvre, he had done what a Nelson or a Rodney would have done in such out-weighted circumstances. But lie was a pirate; lie was outcast; no amount of admiration could submerge the abhorrence in which he was held and no sea-justice except annihilation could be dealt for him. Then it was seen that two skinny brown tubes were leaping ahead of the Fliegende Schaum. Fast as she travelled those torpedoes outsped her. And they had been aimed to take proud Peraclide —exactly wjtere they did take her—• beneath her towering bridge. ‘ She shook and she was shattered, but still she was a fighting unit. Where the four torpedoes had sealed the doom of Heraclon, by lofting about her blisters and bursting on her thinner armour platings, these failed. \et, for all their failure, Peraclide was not for the moment a formidable citadel of offence to the Dutchman. True, half a score of small calibre weapons chattered and banged at him—but again he went unscathed. The gunners were perfected in their training where ordinary seagoing speeds were to : be considered, but Fliegende Schaum’s sixty knots meant a mere wastage of shells. The Dutchman was through the ring. That amazing fact was disclosed a moment after the roaring torpedo bursts had sounded. After him, like a score of maddened black hounds, went the destroyers. And when he got a mile or so away on his new course, angry Peraclide stumbled out of her disgusted and affronted stupor and lumbered after him, all her A * destroyer came a little too near. Another of those uncannily accurate torpedoes shot out from Fliegende Seliaum —and that destroyer was burst like a rotten fruit as she made her iirst UvLl away' from the deadly thing.

Again Van Klaus had triumphed. Immediately as many vessels as could be spared—of those near to the sinking ship—were dispatched to the aid of the crew. Which meant cutting in half of the effective force opposing him. With this start he made another four or five miles. Only now to come beneath the cover of a bombing squadron of the air. The rattle and boom of his quickfirer was heaixl, and it was seen that his gunnery was good. Ho made the lumbers keep at a respectful distance from his twisting and madly-turning yacht. But they were not to he withstood for long. Already their escorting scouts were taking * toll of the Fliegende Scha urn’s men. They hailed her decks with machine gun lire until at last the automatic was silent — her crew dead beside her smoking muzzle. Then tlie bombers swo«p*<i and Van Klaus was hit. s (To be concluded.)