Read 2004 - Mimi and Toutou Go Forth for Free Online Page B

British were determined to take it from him.
    The Admiralty had ordered the Königsberg 's destruction—orders picked up by the Königsberg ’s radio operators on their own aerials. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say. Two shallow-draught British ships, the Severn and the Mersey —both originally intended for the Gallipoli landings—had arrived off the Tanganyikan coast on 3 June ready to hunt the German ship out of its river maze.
    This operation would eventually involve Spicer’s men in ways none of them could have anticipated as they boarded the Llanstephen Castle that bright June day in 1915. Their destination was nearly a thousand miles away from the Königsberg on the other side of German East Africa, closer to the copper mines of the Congo and the Mountains of the Moon than the crocodile-infested waters of the Rufiji.

THREE
    V ibrating at great volume—rocking and swelling, rumbling and gurgling—the Llanstephen Castle was making her own preparations. It was like something boiling in a saucepan. Down the side of the vessel, visible from her promenade deck, a foam of pumps disturbed the water. Fish gathered in the warmth, tumbling about in the exhausts, and young lads threw lines off the wharf, hoping to catch them. She threw up such a symphony of departure as was typical for ships of her class at that time. The siren sounded—a prolonged, ear-blasting note—and then a shout went up.
    ‘Any more for the shore? Any more?’ as the last non-passenger scrambled down the gangplank.
    Those familiar with the ship would have noticed two strange shapes cowled in tarpaulin on the foredeck: Mimi and Toutou , late of Twickenham and Dundee, denied to the Greek seaplane service by wartime necessity. They were lying in their special cradles, which the ship’s merchant seamen had lashed to the deck. These carriages were squares of timber ‘carcassing’ that created a shell round the boats, with criss-cross struts on either side for extra strength. Inside the cradles, the boats’ hulls sat on rubber tyres to protect them.
    Half an hour after the gangplank had been lifted, the liner left her moorings. Towed by a tug, she was pulled out into the main stream of the Thames. The men of the Naval Africa Expedition watched the spectators at the pier fade into the distance and soon the grey buildings of the Tilbury docks were shrinking too. Then the lines of tugs and barges and even the cranes that had towered over them were gone. Soon England itself would be just a memory. Perhaps it was already, as the men’s heads crowded with images of their destination: the dazzling seas, the orange suns, the acacia trees of Africa.
    The expedition might also have been conscious of the voice of history at Tilbury—for it was here that Queen Elizabeth had reviewed English troops when the Spanish Armada threatened. But as the ship sailed, the voice that echoed loudest in their ears was that of Spicer.
    He was telling Dr Hanschell not to worry about the expedition’s medical supplies, which had not arrived in time to be loaded.
    ‘We don’t need more than a little quinine, do we? I never had more than that on the Yangtze or in Gambia. We can buy some more in Cape Town. The bar’s open—come and have a drink!’
    The doctor obliged, though he was still very worried about the missing drugs. And so, the Naval Africa Expedition—commanded by a man who had yet to reveal his more eccentric qualities—was on its way at last.
    Suddenly it seemed terribly important to the Government. Maybe they had realised what Sir Henry had sensed: that control of Lake Tanganyika meant control of a vast swathe of Central Africa. Maybe they were beginning to see that unless Lee’s plan worked, a nightmare possibility could emerge. If victorious in Africa, the Kaiser could conscript hundreds of thousands of African troops—the askaris —to fight in the trenches of Europe. Many colonial troops already fought in the trenches, but complete strategic control of