Assegai

For most of that night Eva lay awake, listening to Otto’s snores. Every once in a while he startled himself awake with their force and fury, but then he grunted and lapsed back into sleep. She was thankful for this last opportunity to consider what she had to do before they left on their journey. She must get one last message to Leon, confirming that Otto was bringing the Assegai to Africa, laden with arms and bullion for the Boer rebels, and that, almost certainly, he would fly down the Nile and through the Rift Valley on his way southwards. When she told him the date on which the

Assegai would come, Leon’s duty would be to prevent the airship getting through by any means, including, as a last resort, attacking it with lethal force. However, her immediate dilemma was whether or not she should warn him that she would be on board. If he knew she was, his concern for her safety might weaken his resolve. At the very least it would be deleterious to his performance of his duty. She decided not to tell him, and they would both have to take their chances when they met again in the high blue African skies.

The outbreak of the Great War had been signalled not by the stroke of a pen or a single fateful pronouncement. It had taken place like a train smash in which coach after coach had run without braking into a huge pile of wreckage. Driven by the impetus of their treaties of mutual aid, Austria had declared war on Serbia, Germany had declared war on Russia and France, and finally, on 4 August 1914, Britain had declared war on Germany. The fire and smoke that Lusima had foreseen had spread out to envelop the world.

Once more the population of the newly united South Africa was divided. Louis Botha was the former commander of the old Boer Army and his comrade in arms, General Jannie Smuts, had fought at his side against the combined forces of the British Empire. Most of the other Boer leaders hated the British and were strongly in favour of joining the conflict on the side of the Kaiser’s Germany. It was only by the narrowest margin that Louis Botha carried Parliament with him and was able to send a cable to London informing the British Government that they were free to release all the imperial forces in southern Africa because he and his army would take over the defence of the southern half of the continent against Germany. Gratefully, London accepted his offer, then asked if Botha and his army could invade the neighbouring German South-west Africa and silence the radio stations at Luderitzbucht and Swakop-mund, which were sending a steady stream of vital information to Berlin, detailing all movements of the Royal Navy in the southern Atlantic. Botha agreed immediately, but in the meantime bloody revolt was brewing among his men.

Botha was only one of three former Boer leaders and heroes known as the Triumvirate. The other two were Christiaan de Wet and Herculaas ‘Koos’ de la Rey. De Wet had already declared for Germany, and all his men went with him. They were holed up in their fortified encampment on the edge of the Kalahari desert, and Botha had not yet sent a force to bring them in. Once he did, rebellion would break out in full force and the ravening beasts of civil war would burst raging from their cage.

Although de la Rey had not come out openly against Botha and Britain, nobody doubted that it was only a matter of time before he did so. They did not suspect that he was awaiting news from Germany on the flight of the Assegai

from Wieskirche to his succour. This news would be sent from Berlin through the powerful radio installation at Swakopmund in German South-west Africa, just over the border from South Africa.

In Wieskirche the Assegai was taking on her final cargo. Graf Otto von Meerbach and Commodore Alfred Lutz struggled all night with the loading manifest. Much of the calculation was a matter of guesswork and instinct: no man alive had experienced flight in an airship over the Sahara desert during the summer months when air temperatures could range from fifty-five degrees centigrade at noon to zero at midnight.

The Assegai’s total gas volume was 2.5 million cubic feet of hydrogen, but daily she would be obliged to valve off large volumes of this to compensate for the weight of fuel she was burning. Otherwise she would become so light that she would go into an uncontrolled rush to upper space, where her crew would perish from cold and lack of oxygen. The main tanks were filled to the brim with 549,850 pounds of fuel, 4680 pounds of oil and 25,000 pounds of water ballast. Her crew, of twenty-two men and one woman, and their severely restricted personal luggage weighed 3885 pounds. Theoretically, this allowed a useful cargo of 35,800 pounds to be taken on board. But in the end Graf Otto decided to abandon 7000 pounds of mortar bombs to make way for additional gold bullion. That would be the weight to swing the arms of the scale in their favour.