George Washington's Ghost

Ted punched his friend’s arm playfully, knowing Abe had killed many, many more Dominican sailors and marines on Little Inagua with a long rifle, and when he had run out of ammunition, with a bayonet, or the hatchet he had retrieved from the wreck of the Sea Fox.

“It’s a damned good thing the Spanish haven’t got boats like this one,” Ted Forest observed, trying to sound cheerful.

Abe shook his head.

“Until a couple of weeks’ ago, I had no idea we were capable of building a thing like this!” He retorted, waving his arms about him.

Ted Forest shifted a little uncomfortably.

Abe frowned concern.

“My bloody leg is itching,” his friend complained. “Can’t bloody scratch it with the bally cast on it!”

In a way this was an apt metaphor for their present situation: they were aboard a top secret vessel that was not supposed to exist, would both much rather have been ashore and yet their lives, and their careers were on hold until… well, they did not know that either, and there was nothing they could do about it. It had also occurred to each man, separately, that given the Surprise and the project which had created her was so secret, and that – like it or not – they both now knew so much about it that, whatever their heroics and adventures, that they might actually be something of an embarrassment to the Empire.

In fact, it might be more convenient for everybody if they simply disappeared, either temporarily, or… for good.

How hard would that be to arrange?

After all, everybody back home already thought that they were dead…

Abe shook his head.

The Empire did not do that sort of thing!

“I think that knock on the head I took back on Little Inagua is still playing tricks with my thinking,” he admitted, sheepishly.

“Yes, well, I definitely need my head examining if I ever go flying with you again!” Ted Forest chided him.

“Oh, yeah of so little faith. Let me tell you that that last landing turned out a lot better than I thought it was going to five seconds before we hit the ground!”

Ted was encouraged by the fact his friend had not completely lost his sense of humour. He well understood that Abe must be going through a mental wringer knowing that Kate had to think he was dead. It was bad enough for Ted himself; he might not be married but he had made a goodly number of friends since he arrived in New England, and they would, presumably, been a lot cheerier had they discovered that news of his death was premature. What made it worse, and guiltily nagged at their souls, was that nobody would tell them how many of their crew mates had gone down with the Achilles, or what else was going on in the world. Not that the average crew member on board was any better informed.

The Spanish have torpedoed a couple of our ships. There are half-a-dozen enemy submersibles at large in the Gulf of Spain and the Atlantic…

But which ships had been torpedoed?

Like the majority of the Surprise’s crew the two fliers had no idea where the ship was, or had been, at any time after she submerged off the north coast of Little Inagua.

Abe and Ted were prisoners, albeit captives in a gilded technological cage which in other circumstances would have been like an Aladdin’s Cave.

Abe went back to his reading.

Ted Forest tried to make himself more comfortable and to have a nap.

A few minutes later their wristbands tingled.

“Mister Lincoln and Mister Forest report to the Captain’s cabin at your earliest convenience!”

Chapter 14

Saturday 29th April

Imperial Concession, Guaynabo, San Juan, Santo Domingo

Hans von Schaffhausen stepped onto the deck of the SMS Weser and clambered up to the bridge. The wreckage had been cleared away, and the blood hosed off the planking since his first visit to the ship but the constant clanking of the pumps told their own, sad story.

Commander Peter Cowdrey-Singh, RN, had greeted the German Minister informally at the head of the gangway; Leutnant zur see Kemper, the boyish captain of the crippled merchant raider crisply saluted von Schaffhausen.

The three men stepped to the bridge wing to view the big cruiser cautiously edging into the poorly marked deep-water channel of San Juan Bay, fighting the tide to turn to starboard, so as to safely pass inshore of the San Miguel, the ancient Dominican ironclad still pointing her guns at the Weser.