by John Harris
His voice rose a little as he finished and Ponsettia’s words, when he next spoke, had lost the sharpness of sarcasm.
“All the same, it don’t do any of us any good for you to sit there worrying, bud. Cheer up.”
Watching the growing tension between them, Waltby began to realise just what it had meant when he had heard on the wireless the dry phrase, “One of our aircraft is missing.” He’d heard it often, but had never seen beyond it to the tensions it might hide, the furious anger, the impatience, the fears.
“How long is it since we ditched?” Mackay asked. He glanced at Harding for a moment, but the pilot’s eyes were closed, and he found himself appealing to Waltby. Rank, that intangible thing he had always despised, that cause of so many of his grouses, that right to make decisions and give orders, that right which was denied him now because there was someone superior in rank present – it was always cropping up, as indestructible as the Service itself. All his Air Force life Mackay had been kicking against rank, like a restless horse under an ill-fitting saddle, but now he instinctively turned towards it for advice and encouragement.
It came as a shock to Waltby to hear himself appealed to. Over the years, he had got out of the habit of making decisions and giving orders except where they affected his experiments and research. He had almost thought he had forgotten the trick. But with Mackay staring at him, a puzzled anger in his eyes, he suddenly sat more upright.
“Eight hours or so, I imagine,” he said.
“Could a Sunderland get down to us?”
“Perhaps, if they found us.”
Mackay had been staring round the sky almost from the first moment they had climbed into the dinghy but gradually, although his eyes were sharp still, a listlessness had crept over his movements – as it had over all of them. They had been baling, throwing the water out of the well of the dinghy with tired sweeps of their arms, but without Harding to goad them on they had slowed down and stopped, and Waltby, to his own surprise, found it was he who was thinking of their danger if they ceased baling or allowed the blood to stop circulating in their bodies to combat the iciness of the water round their legs.
Even as he considered it, Ponsettia put his thoughts into words. “If I could just move my foot about,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind so much. I’ve had pins and needles in my behind now for an hour or more and I can’t get rid of it. I can manage an inch or two but that isn’t kinda enough.”
He looked across at Waltby with sombre eyes, then down into the tangle of legs between them.
With every roll and bob of the dinghy the grey-yellow puddle in which they sat slopped from one side to the other, flooding round their thighs, carrying with it Mackay’s helmet and the empty tobacco tin Ponsettia had found in his pocket and used for baling. For the first time, Waltby saw in the icy puddle a potential danger that was as great as capsizing.
“Let’s work our arms,” he suggested, sitting up, alert and with new strength. “Let’s do exercises or something. It’s time we tried again.” And he began to flap his arms backwards and forwards round himself as well as he could within the confined limits allowed to him
Ponsettia looked up under his eyebrows without moving his head, listlessly and with a wealth of weariness. Then he seemed to gain interest from Waltby’s clumsy actions and he sat up himself.
“I’ll show you a better one,” he said. He leaned across the dinghy to grab hold of Waltby’s hands, and they began to work their arms backwards and forwards, vigorously, as though they were using a two-handed saw.
“Just the job to work up an appetite,” Ponsettia panted. “Boy, am I looking forward to my energy tablet!”
“You next, Mackay,” Waltby said and, as Ponsettia released his hands, he reached across to Mackay. The wireless operator stared at his outstretched arms sourly, almost disbelievingly, and kept his hands where they were.
“Don’t be a stupid clot, Mac,” Ponsettia said angrily.
“Give Syd a couple of laps round the side of the dinghy.”
“Oh, what’s the use? Waste of time!”
“Get hold of my hands,” Waltby snapped. “And stop arguing, for a change.”
Mackay glared at him for a moment, then unwillingly he joined hands and they worked their arms together until their muscles ached. They sat back, tired but warmer, then a wave slashed across the dinghy, drenching them again.
“Showers thrown in,” Ponsettia said. “All we want now is a lady masseur.”
“I told you it was a waste of time,” Mackay growled.
Ponsettia glanced at him, then turned to Waltby again. “How about a go at baling, Syd? Water’s rising again.”
Waltby took the flying helmet from him and they bent to work, laboriously emptying the dinghy, Ponsettia using the tobacco tin. Mackay threw water out with his good hand.
Waltby was watching the sail as he worked. “I think,” he said, “that instead of trying to sail somewhere we ought to try to tack a bit if we can. I mean, we’re miles from home, and we can’t do a lot of good trying to get there. With this wind, we’re only being carried further and further south – that is, nearer to Occupied Belgium or Holland. We can’t paddle because it’s too rough, so wouldn’t it be better if we used the sail to tack, and tried to stay as near the ditching position as we could? Then, if they have any idea at all where we are, at least we’ll be there when they come to find us.”
“The Skipper didn’t suggest that,” Mackay said immediately he’d finished.
“The Skipper probably didn’t know much about sailing,” Ponsettia pointed out.
“I reckon he’d have said if he wanted to tack,” Mackay insisted stubbornly.
“Aw, Jesus, man, he probably never even thought of it. Dry up and try to be helpful.”
Mackay thought for a second, obviously troubled by his loyalty to Harding, then “How do you tack?’ he asked quickly.
Recalling scraps of sailing lore from his youth, Waltby showed him how to use the lines attached to the sail and immediately, as he was told what to do, Mackay became eager to co-operate again, forgetting Waltby’s rank and his own hostility. As Waltby finished talking he saw Ponsettia staring at the sleeping form of Harding.
“What do you reckon we ought to do about the driver?” the Canadian asked.
“We’ve done all we can do.” Mackay, who had been toying with the guy ropes attached to the sail with an obvious pleasure at having a task to perform, turned and interrupted, brusquely, jealously.
“Think we ought to have a squint at his bread-basket?” Ponsettia went on, ignoring the wireless operator.
“I don’t think so,” Waltby said. “At least he’s as warm as he’s likely to be at the moment. Let’s leave him. If he’s sleeping he couldn’t be doing better for shock.”
Ponsettia nodded. “OK, Syd,” he said. “You’re the boss.” He seemed to have accepted Waltby as being in command of their frail craft now that Harding was asleep, and they sat silently for a while, Mackay occasionally adjusting the sail, Ponsettia grinding the handle of the squawk box.
Waltby watched them both with interest. Ponsettia was staring at the surface of the sea, his thoughts apparently far away. He seemed placid, easy-going, prepared to accept in the same mood whatever came, in direct contrast to Mackay’s over-anxious desire to get on with something, to help themselves despite their obvious inability to change their circumstances.
“How long do you reckon it’ll take ’em to find us?” – Mackay said, baling awkwardly with his uninjured hand. He had clearly been trying to work out their chances of rescue.
“Well, bud,” Ponsettia said cheerfully, staring over the sea still, “say we’re forty miles from Blighty and say that a wave covers two yards. That’s a bit on the small side, but let’s take that for example–”
“What the hell are you getting at?”
“I’m answering your question.” Ponsettia’s eyes opened wide and his face was innocent. “Let’s see, then. That’s eight hundred and eighty wav
es to every mile. That’s eight hundred and eighty times forty. That’s thirty-five thousand two hundred waves between us and the UK. Now every wave is, say, four yards up and four yards down. That’s eight yards. That’s” – he worked the number out in his head with his navigator’s swift arithmetic – “two hundred and eighty-one thousand, six hundred yards between us and England. Might be a yard out one way or the other. Say,” – his voice rose indignantly – “that means those jokers in the Air-Sea Rescue launches have got to go nearly two hundred miles to get here. Hell, that’s a long way, man!”
“You stupid clot!” Mackay spoke the words with hatred. “Those jokers have gotta go up and down every goddamned wave, haven’t they?” Ponsettia grinned. “I reckon I’ve made a conservative estimate. It’ll take ’em from now till Doomsday to get us, I guess.”
Waltby looked at Mackay’s angry face. “Shut up, Canada,” he said quickly, finding the Canadian’s light spirits as jading as Mackay’s heavy lack of humour. “Don’t make it any worse.”
They sat in silence again, listening to the slap and smack of the water under the dinghy and the soft hiss as it fell across their legs when they slid down into the troughs between the waves.
“Christ, I hate the bloody sea,” Mackay said suddenly. Waltby watched him, his mouth sour with the taste of his sickness, his lips cracked and painful with the brine on them. His eyelids were stiff with salt now and felt brittle as he blinked, and he was numb with cold. But with the responsibility of command on him again he had thrust away his weariness and felt far better than when they had first ditched.
Ponsettia was staring over the side of the dinghy as he slopped water steadily over the inflated walls with the old tobacco tin. He seemed to find some absorbing thought that protected him from the cold and from Mackay’s sullen resentment, and kept him cheerful in spite of the wretchedness of their position.
“They say the sea’s full of plankton,” he said suddenly. “Fishes live on it – even whales. They say that’s what makes the water phosporous at night.”
“Who the hell cares what it’s full of?” Mackay said furiously. “All I wish is that it was full of Air-Sea Rescue launches.” He stared round him. “Where the hell are they?” he demanded. “They’ve had time to get here. Plenty of time. The lazy bastards aren’t trying. That’s what.”
For a while Ponsettia watched him as he stared along the horizon and studied the sky, obviously itching to get on with something, bored by the inactivity.
“What do you normally do with your spare time, Mac?” he asked unexpectedly.
“What the hell’s that got to do with anything?”
“Just something running round my mind. What do you do with it?”
“I never have any.”
“Go on, don’t give me that. What do you do with your off-duty nights?”
“Pictures. Beer. Dance. Girls. That sort of thing, I suppose. Anything to pass the time till I’m demobbed.”
“Thought so.”
“What’s wrong with it, anyway?” Mackay was aggressive immediately.
“Nothing, brother. Nothing at all. Lots of people do. And I’ll bet every goddam one of ’em would behave like you’re doing now if they suddenly found they had to pass a long time without pictures, beer and girls. Give us a rest, bud.”
Mackay gave him a furious look.
“Just watch that gull there, Mac,” Ponsettia went on cheerfully. “See him? Floating. There, see him? Up he comes again.” He pointed across the water to where a solitary gull bobbed up on the crest of a wave and disappeared again. “He’s not getting all het up about nothing, is he?”
“That bastard can fly away. I can’t,” Mackay snapped. “He’s got nothing to get het up about.”
“One up to you there, Mac.”
While they were arguing Waltby had been listening to them with only half his attention on their words. The other part of his brain was focused on something just beyond the slap and splash of water.
“Listen!” he said suddenly. “Shut up, you two, and listen.”
The argument stopped short, cut off immediately as they cocked their heads. Faintly they could hear a light high-pitched drone.
“An aircraft!” Mackay shouted the word, half jumping up. “An aircraft! A Walrus, by the sound of it!”
“Take it easy, bud,” Ponsettia yelped, cranking the generator handle. “You can’t reach it from here and we don’t want capsizing. Where’s your dinghy drill?” His voice was cracked with excitement.
“The flare, the flare, where’s the flare?” Waltby was pawing round the dinghy frantically.
“Here, give it here. I know how it works.” Mackay snatched it from him and began to wrestle with the tape.
“Hold it a minute, Mac,” Ponsettia said quickly. “Let’s see the aircraft first.”
The excitement swelled, catching at them all as their desperate eyes swept the sky, stopping the breath in their throats as they tried to talk.
“There it is!” Mackay pointed, his arm flung out in a vigorous gesture. “Over there. Low down. See it? It’s a hell of a long way away!” He struggled with the flare for a while, his head down, his face twisted with fury. “This bloody flare! My fingers are too cold.”
Waltby could see the moving speck over the southern horizon.
“Over here, we’re over here!” Mackay lifted his head and began to yell over his shoulder in the direction of the aircraft, his eyes blazing with excitement, his fingers still struggling with the release tape of the flare. “Oh, Christ!” he yelped in an agony of disappointment. “I can’t get hold of it.”
“It’s a Walrus. They’re searching for us,” Ponsettia yelled, his surface calmness suddenly cracking and showing the frantic excitement beneath. “Get that son-of-a-bitch flare going, can’t you?”
“He’s about ten miles away,” Waltby said desperately, keeping his eye on the moving speck. “Hurry, for God’s sake, or he’ll miss us!”
“Oh, the bastard! The bastard!” Mackay was sobbing the words. “It won’t come. I can hardly feel the flaming thing, my fingers are so cold.” He thrust the flare at Ponsettia. “Here, Canada, you try!”
“He’s going now,” Waltby interrupted flatly. “We’re too late, I’m afraid.”
“He’s turning away.” Holding the useless flare in his hands, Ponsettia was staring after the Walrus, his eyes hard, his face dead and expressionless. “He’s heading south now.”
Mackay started to shout, the veins standing out on his neck with the effort, his voice cracking with the strain. “Here! Here! We’re here!”
“No good, Mac,” Ponsettia said heavily. “He can’t hear you, bud.”
Mackay choked to silence and stared at Ponsettia for a moment, then he grabbed the handle of the generator and started to crank desperately.
“No wonder he didn’t spot us,” he shouted.’ ‘Why weren’t you turning this thing? You Yanks are all alike.”
“I was turning the goddam thing till you passed me the flare.” Ponsettia’s eyes lit up with anger. “And don’t call me a Yank. The squawk box must be busted or the Walrus would have heard. She must have caught a bang when we ditched and a valve’s burnt out. You’re the wireless operator. You ought to know.”
“All right, cut it out, you two,” Waltby said sharply. “Quarrelling won’t help. It was nobody’s fault.”
“I said these things were no goddam good,” Ponsettia muttered.
“He was too far away,” Waltby said as calmly as his voice would allow. “He might never have seen us, anyway.”
Mackay stopped cranking and sat limply. “I’ll bet the careless swine wasn’t listening out,” he said with a cold fury, his eyes glistening with tears. “They’re all the same. They don’t care. They’re warm.”
They flopped back against the sides of the dinghy, dumb with misery, exhausted by their excitement and wretched at the anti-climax. The incident seemed to have happened so quickly that it took on a quality of unreality and Waltby found h
imself half-imagining there never had been an aircraft.
Then they realised that Harding was still motionless. During all the excitement he had not stirred.
Ponsettia was peering hard at him now, his face close to the pilot’s, listening to his breathing. Then he sat back and looked at the others.
“I guess the Skipper’s passed out,” he said.
Three
As the Walrus turned to the south, above the driving infinity of water and just too far away to see the small blob of the dinghy on the darkening seas, Boyle, the pilot, was whistling slowly between his teeth in a way that made Petty Officer Porter crouch lower over his wireless set, his ears stopped by his earphones. The thought of four men in a dinghy, half-frozen, perhaps afraid or injured, certainly anxious, had driven the songs from Boyle’s lips and he had conducted his part of the search largely in silence. But his nature being what it was, he was unable to be depressed for long and his light spirits eventually emerged unconsciously in the excruciating tooth-whistle that set Petty Officer Porter’s teeth on edge.
The Walrus chugged heavily along, helped by the tail wind until its speed reached a phenomenal figure. Boyle stopped whistling.
“One last leg south,” he said. “Then we turn home. Sort the course out, Ted.”
Petty Officer Porter, bent over the wireless set, turned clumsily. “I always feel a bit chokker when I’m just setting off for home,” he admitted with a weighty unhappiness. “When I think that in about an hour or so I shall have my feet up in front of the Mess stove with a pint of dark, I always remember there’ll still be some poor bloke sitting in a dinghy with a wet seat and feeling as much like death as he can get.”
“Might not have made the dinghy,” Boyle pointed out, ceasing his whistle.
“We’ve heard nothing,” Porter agreed. “And they’ve got squawk boxes in all those dinghies these days.”
“There’s not much more we can do now, anyway.” Boyle held the Walrus steady on its new course. “With this wind blowing they ought to be south of here, if anything. Tide’s setting south, too. In any case, it’ll be dark before we touch down, and we’ve reached our limit.”
