George Washington's Ghost

Then, a little before mid-day, Angela von Schaffhausen had walked into the camp and asked to speak to the Achilles’s former Executive Officer. The German Minister’s wife was well-liked by the Royal Navy contingent who knew that she worked tirelessly in the hospital and had been extremely solicitous about their wounded friends’ wellbeing and their own living conditions. She was also chatty, maternal, with a wicked laugh no matelot could resist.

‘Might I speak with you, Commander?’ She had inquired.

Outside the barracks she had got straight to the point.

‘Claude Wallendorf is being a perfect idiot. He refuses to discuss re-claiming the Emden. He says his honour has been impugned.’

‘I speak as I find, Frau von Schaffhausen.’

‘That’s all very well, Commander. You are right, and Claude is wrong. I know that, you know that and secretly, so does my dear husband. The problem is that unless we do something to save ourselves, we’ll all get roasted over an open fire or crucified sometime in the next few days because of two otherwise highly intelligent and able officers’ stupid pride!’

Put that way Peter Cowdrey-Singh had blown hot and cold for some seconds; and asked the obvious question.

‘Okay… So, you honestly think that’s all that’s standing in our way?’

‘I don’t know. My husband suspects that Claude is still deeply affected by the death of Kapitan Weitzman, who was his commanding officer some years ago, I believe. And of course, he has just had to hand his ship – the love of his life – over to those… barbarians!’

Peter Cowdrey-Singh had experienced a moment of burning, irreconcilable loss as he thought of Captain Jackson, the finest man he had ever served with, who had gone down with his ship in the Windward Passage.

‘I’ll speak with Kapitan-sur-Zee Wallendorf.’

He had not beaten about the bush.

‘Forgive me, sir,’ he had begun, without ado. ‘Earlier, my language to you was intemperate. I confess I am still not myself; one cannot be after losing so many of one’s shipmates and friends so recently. I apologise unreservedly to you and hope that you will do me the honour of shaking my hand.’

To his own surprise the Royal Navy man had meant it, and after a short delay, the former commanding officer of the Emden had nodded curtly, and taken his hand.

Now, as the tropical dusk closed in over the bay with a rush, the two naval officers studied the activity on the dock and the cruiser’s deck from the German Minister’s balcony.

In truth, they and their spies on the dockside had observed very little ‘activity’ that could reasonably be described as ‘purposeful’, that afternoon.

The Dominicans had succeeded in getting at least one boiler lit, a plume of grey smoke – sometimes clear, and at others far too dark for any self-respecting engineer in either the Royal Navy or the Kaiserliche Marine, or his commanding officer, to tolerate – spewed from the cruiser’s funnel.

Much of the time the two gangways, at bow and stern, were unattended and there was still a large amount of equipment, and boxes of all sizes, haphazardly strewn along the quay. Ahead of the cruiser, the Weser seemed to be listing slightly to port, away from the dock; but nobody on board seemed to care. Meanwhile, out in San Juan Bay the ironclad cruiser San Miguel had dragged her forward anchor and nobody had bothered to do anything about it. This meant that presently, the ancient ship’s bow was at an angle of about forty degrees to the Weser and because of the movement, at the nearest point, only some fifty yards distant from her stern.

It was all very sloppy, more than a little offensive to both men’s professional pride. As darkness fell a large number of men streamed off the Emden and began to wander, in gangs to the south and the nearest exit from the Concession, possibly, decamping to return to their barracks or homes ashore for the night.

“There can’t be more than a hundred or so men left on board her?” Peter Cowdrey-Singh suggested to Claude Wallendorf.

“Maybe less,” the German agreed thoughtfully. “Although, my people tell me that several dozen civilians crept onto the ship last night…”

Nobody seemed to be in command on deck although there were lights on in the bridge and shining through several of the bow and stern portholes.

Pumps still thumped below decks on the Weser but apart from a man coming topside for a smoke from time to time, otherwise, she might have been an abandoned hulk.

Leutnant Kemper who had been watching yesterday, and throughout the day joined the older men and speculated that there might still be as many as one-hundred-and-thirty men still on the Emden. If yesterday was anything to go by, the rest of the crew would not start to come back to the ship until after eight o’clock tomorrow morning.

The first prostitutes began to slink aboard once it was fully dark; whores, pimps, drug dealers and the normal scum of the earth who had been excluded from the Concession until recent weeks, driving decent people indoors at night.