Thirty-four

 

Edward climbed aboard the steamer, Trent, heading with sick and wounded for the field hospital on the Mbuni River. The monitors were preparing for another engagement, and as Trent reached the open sea, Edward heard the dull thudding of guns. A little while later, there was a tremendous explosion. A huge column of yellow smoke rose over the distant trees. At lunchtime the signals officer confirmed it was the Königsberg.

‘Thank God for that,’ Edward said. ‘I hope the next job’s a bit easier.’

When they landed under the shadow of Table Mountain, Edward was hurried to the base at Simonstown where the job was outlined by a pink-faced captain.

‘Lake Tanganyika,’ he was told. ‘Thirteen thousand square miles of water and one of the longest lakes in the world. German East on one shore, Belgian Congo on the other, a bit of Northern Rhodesia in the south. The Germans have two gunboats on the lake based at Kigoma. We, as usual, have nothing. By attacking unarmed craft, the Germans control the lake. The tribes on the Belgian shore, having been treated like slaves by the stupid bloody Belgians, favour the enemy.’

Edward waited patiently for his role to be explained.

‘We’ve discovered that a large motor boat can be carried from England to Cape Town and transported 1800 miles by rail to Elizabethville and Jadotville in the Belgian Congo. It can then be dragged by oxen and traction engines through the bush to Sankisia where it can again be loaded on a train to the Lualaba River on the Upper Congo. It can be floated down to Kabalo and from there go by rail again via Lukuga to Albertville on the shore of the lake.’

‘Seems a hell of a long way round to fetch me all this way south and then send me back north again!’

The captain smiled bleakly. ‘Unfortunately, we couldn’t see any simple way of getting you across German East Africa to rendezvous with the boats. We’re not sending one boat, but two. They’ve assigned an officer to command the expedition, and qualified petty officers and technical ratings will accompany them. The boats are already on their way. We want you to catch them up. I presume you’ve been vaccinated and inoculated against smallpox and typhoid.’

 

The Lerouxs were still in Cape Town. They had just returned from Johannesburg where they had been attending the funeral at Vereeniging of their son-in-law. He had been an early casualty in the defeat of the rebel Boers.

Krissie insisted on picking Edward up in her father’s car and taking him to Sea Point for dinner.

‘I didn’t love him,’ she confessed. ‘He was only interested in beer and cricket. Marrying him was Pa’s idea. His family had money. They were in shipping. It all linked up with the business.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Edward couldn’t think of anything else to say.

‘Next time it’ll be my choice.’

She put a hand on his thigh and Edward turned towards her. He was fully aware by this time that he had married Augusta on the rebound from her more worldly elder sister. Attractive and loving as she was, she didn’t manage to ring bells. There could never be the deep-seated passion he had felt for Rafaela and – he had to admit it – continued to feel.

He kissed Krissie gently on the cheek. ‘I think we’d better go,’ he said.

 

Next morning Edward started the long journey north.

It wasn’t full summer, but enough dust drifted through the slatted shutters of the railway coach to veil every surface. He caught up with the expedition at Elizabethville. Morale wasn’t exactly high.

One of the officers, a slight but energetic man called Dudley, had seen service in the Boer War. He had qualified as a second mate in the merchant service and had ridden 200 miles on a bicycle along roads and native paths to join the expedition. He took to Edward at once.

‘The commanding officer’s a bloody lunatic,’ he said bluntly. ‘The last decent job he had was commanding the Downs Boarding Flotillas and he managed to have one of his gunboats torpedoed in broad daylight while he was ashore showing off to a bunch of women. Ended up in command of a desk at the Admiralty.’

Edward met Spicer-Simpson at dinner that evening. He was a large man with a beard, close-cropped hair and a twangy drawl. He wore a uniform he had designed himself for the expedition. It included a tunic like an army staff officer but with blue tabs in place of the usual red ones, a grey-blue flannel shirt, a navy blue tie, a naval cap badge and buttons, but army rank insignia. He studied Edward’s medals with undisguised curiosity.

‘I see you’ve had a bit of experience,’ he said. ‘But I don’t recognise this one. What is it?’

‘The Italian Order of the Crown, sir.’

‘What did you get that for?’

‘For sinking the Huda in Arina harbour in 1911, sir.’

Edward was aware of a few sidelong glances around him.

‘I think you’d better show Bourdillon the boats,’ Spicer-Simpson said to Dudley.

 

‘Forty foot,’ Edward said when he saw the Thorneycroft launches. ‘Eight foot beam, three-eighths mahogany. Two hundred-horse Z6 engines, twin screws, nineteen knots.’

‘Okay. I’m impressed,’ Dudley confessed.

‘Bourdillons built a few under contract.’

Called Mimi and Toutou, the boats were on cradles. With them, parked alongside the railway, were two huge trailers with solid rubber tyres.

‘They’d better be good and strong,’ Dudley said. ‘We’ve got a long way to go.’

The trail had already been surveyed, and hundreds of Africans had cleared and levelled the track. Boulders had been removed, trees felled, and firewood stacked for the traction engines.

The two traction engines arrived soon afterwards, tall vehicles with huge steel-spoked driving wheels, high smokestacks, whirring flywheels and canopies to shelter the driver. They each came with a ten-ton trailer that had been constructed to carry the wood the machines would burn.

Two days later they set off. There were a 150 bridges in front of them, all old and rickety. It took twelve hours to cross the first stream they came to. The following day one of the traction engines, manoeuvring near a drainage ditch, was pitched sideways as the ditch crumbled. It took an age to get it upright. By the end of the month they found the specially constructed cradles for the boats were collapsing. Thirty miles from the place where they could join the railway again they foundered completely.

‘We’ll have to send back to the coast for help,’ Spicer-Simpson said.

‘Why not adapt the wood trailers?’ Edward suggested.

‘Do you know anything about it?’ he was asked icily.

‘Enough.’

‘So what are we waiting for?’

It took several days to do the work, since not only had the trailer to be rebuilt but rudimentary A-frames rigged with block and tackle had to be constructed from local timber to lift the boats. Dudley was growing increasingly anxious. ‘The rainy season’s almost on us,’ he said. ‘If we don’t get a move on we’ll sink out of sight in the mud.’

But after the oxen arrived, the expedition managed to travel six miles during the day. Tsetse fly and disease-carrying ticks pursued them all the way to the Mitumba Mountains. The loads were hauled uphill by the traction engines, the oxen and by the sheer muscle power of hundreds of Africans. The descent was even more treacherous. The launches threatened constantly to run away and wreck everything. But thanks to the inventiveness of a grizzled petty officer, a series of blocks, tackles and ropes made it possible to lower the boats inch by inch to the valley below.

The constant worry was water, both for drinking and for the boilers of the traction engines. When search parties failed to produce enough, Edward and Dudley recruited a party of 150 African women from the local villages and, having found a tiny stream, led them back in a straggling column, each woman carrying a clay water pot filled to the brim on her head.

Sankisia, a wretched, fly-blown village, was the terminus for the narrow gauge railway to Bukama. The expedition was sweaty, dusty and exhausted, but there was a sense of mounting optimism. It took only two hours to cover the fifteen miles to Bukama on the banks of the River Lulaba. However, the steamer that was to carry them down-river was not there because the river hadn’t been as low for six years.

‘Why not float the boats down?’ Edward suggested. ‘We build ’em to float after all.’

‘Too deep a draught,’ Spicer-Simpson decided solemnly.

They went ahead nevertheless. Towed by barges rowed or poled by Africans, they set off downstream, with a fleet of dug-out canoes following with supplies. The heat was appalling. The air was heavy with the dank, decaying smell of the river and the mud that was stirred up as the African labourers worked chest-deep in water, hoisting the launches shoulder high in the shallows to move them to deeper water.

A river steamer waited at Musanga. The launches were lifted aboard by dint of great effort and in constant peril of swinging out of control, and the steamer trudged off with traders, chickens, goats, elephant tusks, provisions, crates, boxes and bags, every spare inch of space stacked with wood for the steamer’s fireboxes.

Reaching Kabalo, they transferred again to the railway which would take them via Lukuga to Albertville on Lake Tanganyika. The rains were still holding off. Nobody had succumbed to sunstroke or any of the abundant tropical diseases. And miraculously they reached the lakeside in working order.

‘It was nothing,’ Spicer-Simpson said, absorbing the praise like a sponge. ‘Only required a little thought and effort.’

By this time, he was flying a vice-admiral’s flag and, against the heat, had taken to wearing a skirt which was a cross between a sarong and a kilt. Edward was amazed to see his legs were covered in tattoos.

With the rains late, the tropical storms started. At first there was nothing more than a breath of wind that lifted little whorls of dust. This was followed by rumbles of thunder in the distance. Then the sky changed from grey to yellow to purple, and the storm burst in a hurricane of wind, thunder and slashing lightning. Enormous breakers rose on the placid lake, to crash ashore uprooting trees and demolishing native huts. They couldn’t leave the boats unprotected and more long columns of Africans were engaged to haul tons of rock to the water’s edge to construct a breakwater.

As they worked, the German gunboat, Kingani, steamed past on patrol. She looked like an out-of-date tug, but she did carry a six-pounder gun and tried a few speculative shots. But she was way out of range.

‘Hadn’t we better start arming our boats?’ Edward asked.

‘My thoughts entirely,’ Spicer-Simpson said. ‘Get the machine-guns out.’

‘You’ll not stop anything with machine-guns. Why not three-pounders?’

‘The boats won’t take three-pounders.’

‘They did at Arina.’

Spicer-Simpson frowned but agreed.

During the first weeks of December the storms continued to lash the coast but Toutou was slipped into the water just before Christmas. The engines were tested and the first trial run was made.

Spicer-Simpson seemed to be permanently in a bad temper and an attempt to put up Christmas paper decorations was forbidden. But on Boxing Day, with boats now floating, everyone paraded for an inspection and church service in best naval style. Spicer-Simpson was reading aloud from the Prayer Book when a message arrived for him. Stuffing it in his pocket, he went on reading as if nothing had happened. Beyond him everyone could guess what it was about. The Kingani, on another circuit of the lake, was just rounding the point.

Spicer-Simpson didn’t move until the service was over and the ship well past, then he ordered the chief petty officer to dismiss the parade and man the launches. It was a clear bright day with a rising wind, and thousands of Africans lined the shore of the lake to watch the coming battle.

As the two boats roared out of the recently built harbour Edward was ahead in a private Belgian motor boat called La Belle Duchesse, which they had borrowed, a slow vessel that was to be used as a decoy. She carried nothing but an old French Hotchkiss mounted on the bow and a crew of three. She flew the Belgian flag in the hope that such a defiant gesture would encourage the Germans to turn on her.

The Kingani moved slowly along the coast. She had passed that way often enough for her captain to be full of confidence. It came as quite a surprise to find La Belle Duchesse crossing his bows. The Kingani swung round and fired a shot that landed only 30 yards away.

‘Steer towards the shot,’ Edward yelled at the coxswain. ‘They won’t drop the next one in the same place.’

As the boat’s bow turned towards the circle of disturbed water, a second shell landed in the spot she had just left.

‘Follow the shot.’ Edward looked about him for Spicer-Simpson. ‘Come on, you clot,’ he muttered. ‘We’re not just a bloody target.’

Another shell plunged into the water. Then they saw the two Thorneycrofts sliding into view to take up positions between the Kingani and her base. Spicer-Simpson in Mimi manoeuvred to starboard while Toutou, commanded by Dudley, swept round to port.

The German captain was still watching the Belle Duchesse through binoculars when he suddenly spotted the other two boats roaring towards him, white ensigns fluttering. He made no effort to change course, intent on finishing off the irritating Belgian challenge first.

The wind was making the lake choppy and all four vessels were rolling heavily. As the Kingani increased speed, a dark column of smoke billowed from her funnel. Another shot came dangerously close to the Belle Duchesse then, over the rattle of the engine, they heard the thump of the Thorneycroft’s three-pounders, and the Kingani’s gun swung away to counter the new attack.

‘About bloody time,’ Edward said.

Blinded by the spray, he searched for their target. ‘Where the hell is she?’ he yelled.

‘Starboard quarter, sir,’ the engineer yelled back.

‘Come on then. She can only fire forward. We might as well join the fun.’

Kingani was already in trouble. As she began to swing, trying to bring her gun to bear, the Belle Duchesse darted in, the Hotchkiss clacking away. A man on the deck fell, and, as the German vessel turned back again towards the slow Belgian launch like a deer harried by hunting dogs, the other two boats darted forward from opposite sides. A shell struck her near the 6-pounder and, as the Kingani swung away again, they saw her foredeck suddenly erupt in flames. A man on the stern began to wave what looked like a white tablecloth.

‘Christ,’ the engineer said. ‘That was quick.’

The speedy end to the fight took them all by surprise and Spicer-Simpson, ever anxious to show off, took Mimi in with a flourish.

‘Oh, Lor’,’ the petty officer coxswain said gleefully. ‘He’s rammed her, sir.’

The commanding officer and his crew were sent sprawling on the deck and, with her bow badly damaged, Mimi was backing off. As she ran for the shore to be beached before she sank, Spicer-Simpson was waving his arms frantically in an attempt to pass orders by semaphore. Neither Dudley nor Edward took any notice.

As Toutou removed the two survivors from the gunboat, it was Edward, as officer commanding the prize crew – one man from La Belle Duchesse and one from Dudley’s boat – who hoisted the white ensign above the German colours.