by Nevil Shute
The lieutenant-commander slid back the cabin hatch and glanced below; he saw the two children in the waterway bunks. He turned to Corbett in surprise. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘how many of you are there on board?’
‘Myself, my wife, and three children. My name is Corbett. We’re from Southampton.’
The other said: ‘Mine’s Godfrey—Lieutenant-Commander.’ He paused awkwardly for a moment, and then he said: ‘I’m afraid we’re going to be a frightful nuisance to you. Where are you bound for?’
‘Plymouth.’
The other glanced at the binnacle. ‘You’re heading for Cape Barfleur now.’
‘We’ve been running before it since midnight.’
Joan said: ‘You can talk about that later. Let’s get him down below.’
Corbett stayed at the helm. Joan and Godfrey stripped the flying-suit from the all but helpless body of the pilot, removed his outer clothes, and got him down into the saloon. They started to undress him. The children watched with interest from their bunks. John asked: ‘Mummy, why are you putting that man to bed?’
Godfrey turned to him, and said: ‘He tumbled down and hurt himself.’
Joan said: ‘There’s a pair of pyjamas in the top drawer—there. Give them here. Lie down again, John—you’re not to get up. Oh, God, I’m going to be sick again.’
She vanished up the hatchway into the cockpit. Godfrey was left alone. He got the injured man out of his underclothes, rubbed him with a towel, put him into pyjamas. He laid him on the settee, propped up his head, and covered him with blankets. Then he, too, made a dash on deck and to the rail.
Presently he raised himself. ‘I say, I’m sorry,’ he said apologetically. ‘I haven’t been in anything this size for years.’
Joan said weakly: ‘That’s all right. You’re all square with us now. Have some barley-sugar and brandy.’
She passed him the flask and the screw-top bottle. Corbett explained: ‘We can keep those down if we don’t have to move about too much. Anything else comes up at once.’
Joan leaned in through the hatch and looked below. Phyllis was lying dozing in her bunk, clutching a Teddy Bear. John was lying on his back, playing with a bunch of coloured wools. In the saloon the sick man lay inert.
‘I suppose it must be concussion,’ she said doubtfully. ‘We must do something for him. Does anyone know what the treatment is?’
The men shook their heads. ‘All I know,’ said Godfrey, ‘is that you mustn’t give them alcohol.’
Joan nodded. ‘I’ve heard that. I believe he ought to have a hot-water bottle at his feet.’
Corbett said: ‘That’s a good idea. Take her, and I’ll go and put a Primus on.’
Joan shook her head. ‘I’ve got to go below and put one on for the baby’s feed. I’ll do it. I’ve just been sick, so I’m good for the next quarter of an hour.’
She went below again. Godfrey was shivering; on Corbett’s advice he went below and changed into a miscellaneous set of clothes, not dry but drier than his own, which were in the saloon. He came on deck again.
‘Let me take her,’ he said. ‘I can stand trick and trick with you now.’
Corbett gave him the helm. His hand was paining him a good deal; it was stiff and swollen where it had been pinched by the tail-plane. He asked the officer: ‘Do you know where we are?’
The other considered for a moment. ‘Must be about forty miles north-west of Barfleur. Is that about what you make it?’
‘I hoped it was sixty or seventy.’
‘I don’t think it’s as much as that. No, I’m sure it’s not.’
‘What’s the weather going to do?’
The other thought hard for a moment, memorising the barometric chart that he had seen at dawn that morning. ‘The depression was over northern France, moving north-east. It should get better presently.’
He turned to Corbett. ‘Tell me, how did you come to get out here?’
Corbett shrugged his shoulders. ‘It just happened.’ He paused, and then said: ‘We couldn’t stay in Southampton, where we live.’
‘Why not?’
‘We had to get out damn quick.’
‘Because of the bombing?’ The officer seemed genuinely surprised. ‘Was it as bad as that?’
Corbett eyed him for a minute. ‘Do you know what things are like on shore?’
The other shook his head. ‘We’ve none of us been near the beach since the war began. I know there have been raids.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you.’ In short, unembellished terms, he told the naval officer what had happened to them since the war began. The officer heard him to the end.
‘It’s amazing….’ he said. ‘We knew there had been raids on various towns, but we never dreamed that it was anything like that.’
He hesitated for a moment. ‘You didn’t happen to hear how things were going on at Alverstoke?’ he said.
Corbett shook his head. He knew Alverstoke, a little place near Portsmouth, on the Solent. ‘I don’t know anything about conditions there,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘I’ve got a flat there,’ the officer said simply. ‘My wife’s there now, with our boy.’
There was a silence. Corbett said at last: ‘I should think they’d be all right.’
The other nodded, but did not pursue the subject. Presently he said: ‘We knew there weren’t any newspapers. We couldn’t understand why.’
‘There’s been nobody to print them, or distribute them.’
The officer asked: ‘Why is that? They aren’t all in the army, yet?’
Corbett said: ‘It’s not that. But it’s been the same with everything. Nobody’s had time to do his job—whether it’s been printing a newspaper, or driving a milk lorry, or shunting coal-trucks. You see, for the first few days we were all digging trenches in our back gardens. That had to come before one’s job—otherwise one would just have been killed. And after that, in the evacuation period, no one worried much about his daily job. Everybody had his wife and kids to look after.’
The naval officer said quietly: ‘Excepting us.’
CHAPTER VII
JOAN came on deck, white and ill. She had been below for the greater part of an hour. She had given a bottle to the baby and she had put a hot-water bottle at the feet of the sick man. She had washed his face and dressed the wound upon his cheek; she had not been able to do more for him. He lay there breathing heavily, virtually unconscious and unable to take food.
She took the helm and immediately felt better. ‘Peter,’ she said. ‘We must get somewhere soon. That man below will die unless we get him into hospital.’
He nodded. ‘I know. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do.’ He looked round the horizon. ‘Blowing as hard as ever,’ he said. ‘She won’t stand any sail yet.’ He turned to Godfrey. ‘What do you think?’
The other shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I just don’t know. I’ve never been in anything smaller than a destroyer, and I don’t know much about sail. I should wait a bit.’
Peter showed his hand to Joan. It was much swollen, with a bluish look. She bent over it and examined it critically. ‘I don’t know what to do for that, Peter. Does it hurt much?’
‘It throbs a bit.’
‘I could put a bandage on it with some Pond’s extract. I’ll go below and get it.’
Godfrey moved to the hatch. ‘Tell me where it is—I’ll go.’
He went below and handed up the bottle and the bandages. Then he went over and examined the sick pilot. He was warm and apparently comfortable; there was nothing to be done. He went to the hatch and stood for a minute between the waterway bunks, watching Joan in the cockpit as she bandaged Peter’s hand.
From the bunk beside him John plucked at his sleeve. ‘Will you read this book to me?’
He turned. ‘What’s that, old man?’
Phyllis said from the other bunk: ‘He wants you to read his book. I can read by myself.’
‘Can you?’
She nodded vigorously.
He turned to John, took the little book from his hand, and settled down upon the engine casing. He glanced at the cover, and then opened it.
He read: ‘“This is a fierce bad Rabbit; look at his savage whiskers, and his claws, and his turned-up tail.”’
John leaned over. The lieutenant-commander showed him the picture. ‘There’s his turned-up tail—see?’
‘Which are his savage whiskers?’
‘There.’
‘Oh.’
‘“This is a nice gentle Rabbit. His mother has given him a carrot.”’
The little vessel reeled and lurched over a grey sea; the low grey clouds flew past hardly above the mast. The wind droned and whistled in the rigging; from time to time a wave-top was blown off and flew over the boat, stinging the faces of the people in the cockpit. At the helm Corbett sat steering with one hand; Joan was bandaging the other one for him. Before she had finished, the bandage was wet with spray. In the alley-way between the bunks the naval officer sat reading steadily, pausing now and then to show a picture to the children.
He finished that book. He was pressed to read another, but refused, and came up on deck. He said to Corbett: ‘Let me take her. You go below and get some rest.’
Corbett gave him the helm, stood up, and looked out over the grey rollers. ‘If we go on like this we’ll hit the coast of France some time to-night,’ he said. ‘In the dark. Are the lighthouses working?’
The officer shook his head. ‘No. This is a submarine area. I’ve been thinking about that, too. You’ve not got a sextant on board?’
‘No. I never learned to use one. You see, we don’t go outside the Solent very much, except in August. We go down the coast of Cornwall then, most years. But that’s only day sailing.’
Godfrey nodded. ‘Anyway, there’s no sun.’ He paused. ‘I think it should let up a bit this evening.’
Corbett went below; and Godfrey settled down with Joan at the helm. She asked him: ‘How did your accident happen?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘He just landed short. I thought we were for it properly—going to hit the end of the deck. He pulled up before hitting it, and stalled her down on the aft end. Then she dropped a wing, and we did a cart-wheel into the ditch. We never got to the wires at all.’
She pondered this for a moment, understanding only half of it. ‘Is he a good pilot?’
Godfrey smiled. ‘Not out of the top drawer. He’s very young, of course.’
‘Are you a pilot?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m the observer.’
‘Have you been in the Navy all your life?’
He nodded. ‘I was a snotty in the last war.’
He asked her what they were going to do, why they were making for Plymouth.
She said: ‘Peter thought that there’d be ships going to America from there. There aren’t any ships coming to Southampton now—at all.’ She paused, and then she said: ‘He wants me to take the children to his sister, in Toronto.’
He glanced at her curiously. ‘Do you want to go?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to go a bit. But he’s quite right. It’s the only safe thing for the kids.’
‘Is it as bad as that on shore?’
‘It was where we were. It might be better in other parts, but how can you say?’
He did not answer; for a moment he was preoccupied with his own concerns, with thoughts of his own family. If this was what civilians thought about things, somehow or other he must get to know how things were going on at home, must help his wife in this emergency. But presently he said:
‘Is Mr. Corbett going over with you?’
She shook her head sadly. ‘We haven’t talked about it, but I know he won’t come. He wants to do something in the war, enlist or something—as soon as he can get rid of us.’
He glanced at her; his eyes were very soft. ‘It’s a hard business, this.’
‘It’s hateful.’
He thought about it for a minute. ‘He’s doing the right thing,’ he said at last. ‘I suppose it would have been easy enough for him to go and enlist right away. But after what you’ve told me, I don’t see how he could have left you to fend for yourselves until he’d got you somewhere safe.’ He paused. ‘It’s different for us, of course, in the Navy. It’s one of the risks we take when we choose the Navy as a career—that in time of war our families must scratch for themselves. I must say, I never realised what kind of risk it was.’
He said: ‘You didn’t hear of any cholera or typhoid round about Alverstoke, did you?’
She shook her head. ‘Not a word. Botley was the nearest. That’s about fifteen miles away, isn’t it?’
‘I shouldn’t think it’s quite so far.’
There was a silence. Presently he said: ‘I don’t believe you’ll get a ship at Plymouth. That’s been bombed just like Southampton, I believe. You might get one at Falmouth. But most of the ships have been diverted to the west, you know. Places like Cardiff, Milford, and Liverpool.’
‘Is that because of the submarines?’
‘Partly. Partly because of the towns and docks being bombed. And also, to get them out of the way of things like last week’s show.’
‘What was that?’
‘Off the Thames, and round about the Goodwins. You heard about it, surely?’
She shook her head. ‘What was it—a battle?’
‘I suppose you’d call it that. I didn’t see anything of it—we were up in the Irish Sea and the west coast of Scotland, waiting for them there. But this thing—they were trying to force the Straits, you know. We put it across them properly. Do you mean to say you didn’t hear of it on shore?’
She shook her head. ‘We were out at Hamble. There weren’t any papers there—or nothing that had anything like that.’
‘Wasn’t it on the wireless?’
‘It may have been. But there’s been no electricity, you see—and so no wireless. Not many people have a battery set, these days. And anyway, you can’t get the batteries charged when there’s no current in the mains.’
He stared at her in wonder. ‘I never thought of that…. It was a big engagement, though—a very big one. As big as Jutland. We lost two capital ships, the Warspite and the Hood. They lost about ten.’
‘You mean that we won?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know what you can say that anyone wins anything, these days—not quite like that. It finished up with our fleet much superior to theirs in capital ships, anyway. It’s given them something to think about.’
Joan said: ‘You must tell Peter when he comes on deck. He’ll be awfully interested.’ She reached for the screw-top bottle. ‘Have a barley-sugar. They’re full of glucose.’
The afternoon wore on. Corbett came on deck presently and Joan went down; she busied herself in the reeling forecastle with cups of Bovril for the children and a bottle for the baby. It took her an hour. Then, sick, dizzy, and exhausted, she lay down on the settee and fell asleep at once.
Shortly before dusk the wind moderated and backed more into the west. The sea was running very high, but in long, even rollers that the vessel had time to rise and slide over. Corbett looked around. ‘She’d stand a bit of sail on her now, I think.’
Godfrey said: ‘It would be just as well. I don’t know where we are—not within twenty miles. We’d better head up north; we can’t be far from the French coast.’
Corbett nodded. ‘We don’t want to bump on that in the dark.’
They shipped the pump, and began to pump the vessel out before setting sail. The working and the straining that she had been through in the last twenty-four hours had not improved her; there was a good deal of of water in the bilge. They cleared her in twenty minutes’ pumping, then turned to the sails.
‘You’ll have to do most of it for me, I’m afraid,’ said Corbett. ‘This hand of mine isn’t much good to me.’
The naval officer said: ‘That’s all right. You tell me what you want done.’
In half an hour of shouted instructions and heavy work they got the mainsail set, a little close-reefed rag; they followed it with a small jib set up from the stem. With that sail the little yacht had all she wanted; she surged away to the north with the wind free, clambering up over the one side of the rollers and charging down the other side like a speed-boat. Immediately they felt relief from the incessant motion as she steadied to the pressure of her sails.
All square forward, Godfrey came aft to the cockpit. ‘That’s better,’ Corbett said, bracing himself against the tiller. ‘We’re getting somewhere now.’
In the gathering dusk the little ship went bustling on, making perhaps three knots in the rough sea. Their spirits rose; they had a drink of brandy. Then Corbett, greatly daring, went below and fetched a few dry biscuits. They ate them, and retained them.
Presently it was dark. They sailed on through the night, the wind moderating all the time. After a while Corbett said: ‘Should we be showing lights?’
Godfrey considered for a minute. ‘Well, nobody else will be that we meet. Still, I think I’d put them up. They might stop someone from popping off at us for luck.’
Corbett went below to get the port and starboard lanterns, and lit the cabin lamp to see to them. The light woke Joan; she stirred and rubbed her eyes, and followed him on deck when he took up the lights. He set them in the rigging, glowing brilliant in the night.
Joan said: ‘This is lovely, sailing along like this.’ She reached out for the brandy flask and took a little drink. ‘Where are we going to?’
Godfrey said: ‘Back the way we came, on the reverse bearing. I’m afraid I can’t say more than that.’
‘That probably means Portland,’ said Corbett.
The officer looked at him seriously. ‘If that’s all right by you, it would be a good place to put us off. Victorious is going there to fuel—or was when last I heard. We could get Matheson into the hospital on shore there, too.’
Corbett said: ‘That suits us. The sooner he gets into hospital the better, I should say.’
