Black August

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘Three knots, sir, that ‘ud be good for scratch crews like this.’ The Petty Officer stroked his chin and looked at the General thoughtfully.

  ‘Three knots, eh?’ Sallust repeated. He was reckoning up quickly their probable distance from the coast. Over twenty-five miles meant an eight-hour pull at least. They had started with the break through of the sun at two and it was just on six o’clock, so they might have covered half the distance. Daylight should last till about nine, just long enough for them to pick up the coast line before the sun went down, and another hour to pull. But that was only providing that they had not increased their distance from the land by rowing in the wrong direction for three hours or more in the early morning. If they had, darkness would close down again before they picked up the coast, then it was probable that they would row round in circles again all through the night—a grim prospect. Yet there was nothing he could do about it so he sat there in the stern massaging the muscles of his leg and puffing away interminably at Rudd’s looted cigarettes.

  Gradually the sun sank towards the horizon, its slanting beams lighting up the tired faces of the men. For more than twelve hours now, apart from the forenoon interval, they had been rowing turn and turn about. Their mouths were dry and parched, their palms hot and aching, their backs weary with the strain, but wherever they turned their eyes there still remained the unaltered prospect of the gently heaving sea. Long banks of cloud were gathering in the west and for a little time those in the stern were entertained by the glory of a magnificent sunset, but Gregory and Sims who were whispering anxiously together again knew that it was the last glimpse of their friendly smile. In a great ball of fire the sun sank into the restless tossing waters beyond the bow.

  ‘Think we’ll be able to keep our course?’ asked Gregory.

  ‘I doubt it, sir.’ The Petty Officer shook his head. ‘But if it’s a clear night there’ll be a moon and stars. They’ll help us to get back on it.’

  Unfortunately as the twilight deepened, great masses of cloud seemed to be piling up from the west, obscuring what little light still remained in the sky, and half an hour after sundown black night had come upon them.

  The double crews stuck uncomplainingly to the toil, relieving each other at set times, but there was no longer any strength or elasticity in their stroke. They did little more than pat the water with their oars despite Kenyon’s and Silas’s encouragement. The night of fighting and the long day in the boat had exhausted them utterly.

  At eleven o’clock Gregory ordered a further issue of rations. More of those evil biscuits, another wedge of cheese and a swig of water. It had turned chilly again and Veronica and Ann huddled together once more under their tarpaulin. Sallust refused to lie down, but sat, poker-faced and silent, in the stern.

  Rudd started another sing-song, but jolly choruses and marching songs were conspicuous by their absence. Sad, lilting tunes followed one another with unbroken regularity. Annie Laurie, A little Grey Home in the West and Mother Macree took the place of Tipperary and Three Men Went to Mow. In an attempt to raise their spirits Rudd called for individual talent, starting off himself with a raucous rendering of Do we love our Sergeant-Major? sung to the travesty of an ancient and popular hymn. Veronica, who had no voice at all, surprised them by a gallant attempt at Sur le Pont D’Avignon, but although she could not sing herself she adored music, and she was rewarded for her pains by the discovery that one of the Greyshirts was an ex-opera singer, so after a little persuasion she had the strange pleasure of hearing a first-class baritone pouring forth the clear notes of the Toreador Song from Carmen into the echoing silence of a desolate sea. No one had the temerity to follow so excellent a performance and by midnight the whole party were sleeping, or silently endeavouring to still the cravings of their empty stomachs.

  Sims was nodding in his seat when Gregory roused him. ‘Isn’t that a light off the starboard bow?’

  The Petty Officer started up. ‘Why, yes, sir.’

  ‘Is it a lighthouse or a vessel, do you think?’

  ‘That I wouldn’t like to say, sir, but we’d best pull towards it.’

  Orders were given to the weary crew, and the boat headed again in a new direction. The man at the bow, now worn out with his exertions, occasionally caught a semi-crab and, topping the wavelets, sent a sheet of spray into the stern. Gregory cursed him mildly but knew that the man’s blunders were unintentional. Kenyon was bandaging his blistered palms with the tail of his shirt which he had torn away. Veronica was feeling sick but feared to rouse Ann who had dropped off to sleep.

  ‘I got a feeling that’s Orford Ness Light, sir,’ said Sims after another half-hour had slipped by. ‘We’ll make the coast quicker if we put her over to port a bit, for we should be south of that.’

  ‘Very good,’ agreed Gregory. ‘Do as you think best.’

  ‘If I’m right, sir, we’ve been drifting down the coast for some little time.’

  The new direction taken with the light on the starboard bow, the duty crew, unutterably weary now, tugged at their oars. No sound broke the stillness but the gentle swish of the waters and the rhythmic rattle of the oar looms in the crutches.

  After a time Kenyon stood up to take over again, he had ceased by this time to count the number of spells that he had done, but looking forward he saw a line of whiteness in the gloom and at the same moment a cry came from the bow.

  ‘Something ahead, sir.’

  All but the sleepers peered into the darkness. It was the surf breaking upon a shallow beach, and as the boat slid forward, the exhausted crew leaning on their oars, a black mass became visible.

  ‘All together,’ sang out Gregory, and with a sudden access of energy the Greyshirts began to pull again.

  Sims hastened forward and was the first to jump ashore. Several others followed, plunging knee-deep into the water as the boat grounded on a shelving beach of shingle. The remainder stretched their cramped limbs and climbed out one by one.

  ‘Pull her ashore,’ Gregory ordered, ‘we may want to use her again later,’ and after two or three heaves the men succeeded in running the whaler up out of the water.

  In groups of three or four they stumbled up the beach, the loose pebbles slipping and slithering beneath their feet. When they reached the top the faint starlight from one quarter of the heavens gave a little help as they looked about them. The shore seemed to curve away on either side without any sign of habitation.

  ‘We’ll try to the right,’ said Gregory, ‘must strike something sooner or later, but first let’s get clear of this shingle.’

  The pebbly foreshore seemed to stretch interminably inland, hummocks and dips of slippery stones alternating like the waves of a solidified sea, but at last they became firmer and interspersed with small tussocks of coarse grass. The party turned right and trooped wearily along the last embankment beyond which it seemed that the sea never penetrated.

  Ann was almost dropping with fatigue but Kenyon had his hand under her arm and was leading her forward into the darkness. Silas was helping Veronica, and Gregory, limping painfully now, was at the head of the party, leaning hard on the shoulder of the faithful Rudd, but suppressing a groan at every step. With bowed shoulders the non-commissioned officers and men brought up the rear.

  Suddenly a dark blotch loomed up before them. ‘Martello Tower,’ Kenyon and Ann heard Gregory mutter, and a moment later the whole party were standing in a group beneath it.

  They had not got a torch between them but the lance-corporal produced a box of matches; they found the doorway and Gregory followed him inside. In the faint light the walls were hardly perceptible, but the floor seemed reasonably clean and even.

  ‘All right,’ he said to Rudd, ‘we’ll doss down here for the night. Fetch ’em in.’

  Everybody was too completely exhausted to grumble at the lack of bedding. In the light of the remaining matches they sorted themselves out and scattered round the walls. The two girls sat down on the hard floor; they had never felt so u
nutterably tired in their lives before. Kenyon was near them and he glanced at his wrist-watch as a match flickered on the far side of the tower.

  ‘It’s a quarter past two,’ he said.

  ‘When? What day are we now?’ asked Veronica.

  ‘Let’s see, we left London on Friday, didn’t we? Well, it’s Monday then.’

  ‘Gosh!’ she exclaimed rolling over on her side, ‘never, ever, at any time, have I been away for such a ghastly weekend.’

  Gregory’s cigarette glowed faintly in the darkness. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly, unaware that the whole of his audience were now sound asleep, ‘but the trouble is that we have failed to make our getaway. We’re back in England—after all.’

  17

  Strange Sanctuary

  Dawn came and found the whole party still sunk in heavy slumber. The pale light filtering through the narrow door did little more than lessen the musty darkness in one segment of the tower, and their many hours of exertion, anxiety, and distress had utterly exhausted every one of the survivors. It was well after eight o’clock before the first stirrings among the men showed signs of returning consciousness.

  When they awoke it was with no sense of tired limbs refreshed after healthy sleep. They were stiff and sore from a night spent upon the hard concrete without bedding or blankets, chilled through by the damp atmosphere into which the sun never penetrated, and gripped instantly by the sharp pangs of unsatisfied hunger.

  Silas looked round the great, circular, vault-like chamber. His eyebrows, which Veronica had likened the day before to circonflexe accents, rose, giving a comically Robeyish expression to his large pink face, as he turned to Kenyon.

  ‘Where in the world have we got to now?’

  ‘This is a Martello Tower,’ Kenyon replied. He was hopefully but quite uselessly trying to comb back the rebellious auburn curls with his fingers.

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘An old fort. There are dozens of them dotted along the East Coast of England, and the South Coast too. They were built when Napoleon threatened to invade England with the army of Boulogne in 1802.’ Kenyon rose stiffly to his feet and followed Gregory who was limping towards the door.

  Silas smoothed back his thin, rather fine hair over the bald spot at the back of his head and, following them out into the morning sunshine, looked up at the old tower with interest. It stood solitary and grey upon the edge of the shingle, windowless and severe, its sides sloping inwards towards the top; rather like a vast sand castle that some enormous child had deposited upside down out of a gargantuan bucket; the strange relic of military activities in a former age.

  Gregory was studying the landscape. Half a mile of rolling shingle separated them from the sea, and to the south the long curving beach swept uninterrupted to the horizon. Behind them spread a mile or more of low, desolate marshland, intersected by watery dykes, then further inland rose gently sloping wooded hills.

  They walked round to the north of the tower and Kenyon gave a quick exclamation of delight. The same curving beach of shingle stretched away to infinity before them, and the same low marshlands, but some three hundred yards on a little eminence between the two stood a single row of fishermen’s cottages. ‘Breakfast,’ he added briefly.

  ‘We’ll hope so,’ Gregory agreed.

  ‘Where would you think we are, General?’ Silas inquired.

  ‘God knows, but we’ll soon find out.’ He settled his impressive cap at a rakish angle over one eye.

  Ann came towards them from the tower, pale, dishevelled, but smiling. ‘This is Shingle Street,’ she cried. ‘I’ve often picnicked here.’

  ‘Have you, my dear,’ Gregory turned to her quickly. ‘And where does Shingle Street happen to be?’

  ‘Suffolk; it’s only about five miles from my old home at Orford.’

  ‘I see. Sims was right about that light then. At all events we’re a healthy distance from Harwich.’

  ‘Oh, miles and miles,’ Ann agreed. “The nearest town of any size is Ipswich.’

  ‘How far is that?’

  ‘About fifteen miles as the crow flies, but you’d have to cross the river Deben and there isn’t any bridge unless you go round by road and then it must be twenty or more.’

  ‘Good! We’re not likely to have any trouble from that quarter then. Fane, will you take half a dozen men and reconnoitre the hamlet; see what they can do to help us with supplies.’

  ‘With the greatest possible pleasure.’

  All the men had come out of the tower now and were stretching their cramped limbs in the sunshine. Kenyon picked half a dozen likely lads and set off with them along the foreshore, but evidently their presence had already been noticed by the locals, for as they advanced a small crowd came out to meet them. Several fishermen in dark blue jerseys, an anaemic-looking youth in plus fours and a little tubby man with an ancient boater set at a jaunty angle on his round head. The latter seemed to be the spokesman of the party.

  Kenyon explained briefly how they had fetched up the night before and were in urgent need of food. The tubby man gave him a whimsical look.

  ‘So’s lots of people or my name’s not Solly Andrews.’

  ‘Well,’ said Kenyon persuasively, ‘there are only about twenty of us and we had practically nothing to eat all day yesterday so we should be awfully grateful if you could help us out.’

  ‘What do you say, Jan?’ Mr. Andrews looked at a tall fisher-man with bright blue eyes and a face tanned coffee brown by constant explosure to wind and sun.

  ‘There’s no lack of fresh fish and plenty more where they come from.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ said Mr. Andrews; ‘fish if you want it and water to wash it down, but nothing else mind.’

  ‘That will suit us splendidly.’

  ‘Right, best bring your party down to the hotel, and I’ll tell my girl to put on some whiting and a few herrings.’

  ‘Hotel?’ repeated Kenyon in mild surprise, glancing quickly at the single line of twenty or thirty low houses.

  ‘Yes, the Anchor; that’s my house and has been these twenty years. I’ll be setting the tables up in the garden.’

  Thanks, Mr. Andrews, it’s very good of you.’ With a smile Kenyon turned away and a few moments later he was reporting the good news to Gregory.

  The remnant of the small force was paraded and marched down to the inn, Ann and Veronica following fifty yards behind since the latter declared that she would allow no one to see her until she had had a bath.

  ‘I feel completely leprous, darling,’ she announced to Ann. ‘Somebody ought to give me a bell so that I can warn them of my coming.’

  ‘What nonsense,’ Ann protested, shaking back her short, dark, tangled curls. ‘We may be a little untidy, but look at those awful stubbly beards on the faces of the men.’

  ‘Sign of virility, love, and you’d be all right in your birthday suit; everybody would simply adore you, but I become a perfect hag without the amenities. My face must be like the Gorgon’s head at the moment, and every male would be frozen in his tracks at the very sight of me.’

  ‘What’ll that thing be?’ Silas asked Gregory on the way to the hotel, nodding at a low, round, flat-roofed concrete structure perched on a slight ridge of rising ground half-way across the marsh. A narrow slit like the elongated mouth of a pillar-box gave it the appearance of a stumpy, grinning head peering towards the sea.

  ‘Oh, just an old machine-gun emplacement.’

  ‘Really! But who’d put a thing like that in this god-forsaken spot?’

  ‘The army,’ Gregory laughed. ‘The whole country round here is peppered with those pill-boxes; you’ll find them even miles inland. They were put up in the German invasion scare of 1916.’

  ‘Is that so? Well it certainly brings home to a stranger like me how near you really are to the Continent of Europe. We’re apt to overlook that in the States.’

  ‘It’s a darn good job nobody wants to invade us now,’ said Gregory thoughtfully. ‘We sh
ould be caught properly on the hop.’

  When they arrived at the Anchor they found two buxom fresh-faced girls and a busy lad laying up long trestle tables on a square fenced-in lawn behind the inn. It was a jolly little place; two broad bow windows set low in the house and painted, like a porch, a brilliant green, suggested the quiet homely comfort of long winter evenings with good fires burning, and big tankards of Mr. Tollemache’s best beer. The proprietor bustled out, a pleasant smile on his face.

  ‘Well I never! To think I should live to see a real live General as a guest of my house,’ he cried as he caught sight of Gregory’s hat, ‘but it’s strange times we’re living in.’

  Gregory limped up to him. ‘It’s very good of you to give us a meal at all with things as they are, but you must let us pay you whatever’s right.’

  ‘Keep the money, sir.’ Mr. Andrews gave a short laugh. ‘What good is it now? There wasn’t a tin of biscuits to be bought in Ipswich Saturday; no, not for a five-pound note.’

  ‘Things are as bad as that, eh?’

  ‘Worse, friend, worse, and the people spreading over the countryside like a flight of locusts. We’re in luck’s way being off the map like this or they’d eat us out of house and home.’

  Gregory led the little man on to talk of his last visit to the town, and listened with sombre interest to the account. Andrews, it seemed, was the only man in the community who owned a car, and he had gone to Ipswich in the hope of obtaining groceries. He found the shops all shut, while police and Greyshirts patrolled the main streets of the town, and long queues of people waited patiently before the Government depots for their rations, the delivery of which had been delayed owing to the breakdown of the railway services. There had been riots on Friday night, and the poorer suburbs were in a ferment. In fact, when he was trying to leave the town again, bricks, bottles and stones had been hurled at his car, smashing the windows and the windscreen, and only by driving recklessly through the demonstrators had he escaped. The road towards Woodbridge had been thick with hungry people seeking shelter and food in the outlying villages, and as Andrews described the long procession of vehicles, vans, carts, cars, and even perambulators, piled high with furniture, bedding and the more precious household goods, it reminded Gregory with terrible vividness of the refugees retreating westward along the poplar-lined roads after a big German advance in France.