by John Harris
“Besides” – he flipped a piece of paper, a slip from Porter’s message pad – “there’s this bad weather report. They don’t send these things for fun. It’s addressed to us personally and to the launch boys, not to all units at sea, so there must be something nasty coming this way. If we don’t turn for home very soon we’ll be down in the drink ourselves.”
In the east, where the land lay, the night was rising like a grey fog from the surface of the Channel, creeping slowly upwards until it would eventually envelop the whole of the sky and slide down again towards the west. The sea below them was more turbulent than before as they reached the broken water of the Narrow Seas. The clouds were edging closer to them and the wind was strong enough to buffet the aeroplane.
“Compass course 270, turning in five minutes exact,” Porter said. “I’ll give you the word when to bring her on to it.”
“Roger-dodger!” Boyle began to hum quietly and it was perhaps symbolic that his song was Irish and sad. Inevitably, he kept thinking of the men for whom they had been searching. Boyle was a happy soul but, like most Irishmen, he was easily moved to anger or sadness.
He stared out of the starboard window of the Walrus, feeling more than ever, in the square little cabin, like a taxi-driver looking for a fare. In front of him the stub float-nose of the machine quivered in the vibration of the engine and the hammering of the wind. Inside, the shadows were deeper and more opaque, and the light in the windows had taken on a bluish tinge. Porter had switched on the little orange light over his chart table. Once, for a second or two, drops of rain beat against the Walrus, to be driven into rivulets along the flat top of the hull up against the Perspex wind-screen. On the glass itself the rain divided, as though it were parted hair, some going to port and some to starboard.
Although what he was seeing registered sharply enough on Boyle’s brain his thoughts were far away. He was thinking, oddly enough, of his home at that moment, and not about the grey surface of the sea, curiously flattened by their height; nor the lines of shadow made by the waves; nor the flecks of white which were the crests; nor even about the black blob which swam unexpectedly into his field of vision…
“Ted,” he said abruptly, sitting bolt upright out of his comfortable crouch. “Something down there. Could be a dinghy. I’m going down.”
They were both leaning forward now and craning to see out of the window as Boyle dropped his starboard wing and came round and down in a sharp spiral.
“It is a dinghy! By God, it is! It’s a dinghy!”
The Walrus flew low over the yellow rubber raft and they saw an arm wave back at them, frantically. Then Porter spoke in a flat, disappointed voice.
“Only one man in it,” he said. “I thought there were supposed to be four.”
“This is only a one-man dinghy!” Boyle stared out of the window in bewilderment. “This is a fighter boy. This isn’t who we’re looking for.”
“One of the Thunderbolts must have ditched.”
Boyle grinned. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think a Walrus isn’t a bad kite to be flying, after all. Let’s go and fish him out and gloat over him.”
“He might have seen something of the Hudson crew.” Porter reached for the Morse key instinctively, still staring through the window.
“Might have,” Boyle agreed. “Better let ’em know at base.”
“It’s going to be too dark soon for anyone to do any good,” Porter growled. “Whoever comes, they’ll get here too late to spot him.”
Boyle was peering hard through the Perspex glass now, down at the small grey-yellow dot below them on which a man lay, waving stiffly with one hand. The heave of the sea was rolling him wretchedly.
“Ted,” Boyle said, “this bod’s been winged. He’s injured or something.”
“Think we’d better go down and pick him up?”
“I think we better had. At least we can help the poor blighter.”
“Think we’ll get off again?” Porter looked anxiously at Boyle, unhappily aware that the warm fire he’d been thinking of was now in sudden danger of not materialising.
“Should think so.” Boyle started to whistle again and his tune now was not so sad.
“How about petrol?”
“Just do it, I reckon. In any case, we can’t leave the poor bastard there with something bust. We’d better try. Even if we stick, at least it’ll be warmer in here than on the dinghy. With that sea running and a busted wing, he might be over the side before he can be picked up. Besides, it’s almost dark and he might be suffering from shock. It’s hardly the weather to spend a night in a dinghy.”
“Right! I’ll let ’em know at base,” Porter said gloomily, beginning to pound the Morse key. “Just in case we can’t get unstuck again.”
The Walrus hit the water with a sheeting, gushing splash that sent the spray whirling across the Perspex, temporarily blinding them, then she leapt to the next wave with a bounce that set all their equipment rattling and caused Porter to bang his head against his wireless set, before she finally settled safely, like some great gull floating on the surface of the water.
“Done it,” Boyle said breathlessly. “Thought the wings were coming off for a minute, though. Rougher than I thought.” He glanced round. “Where’s the dinghy?”
“Ahead, slightly to starboard.”
Boyle revved the engine and as the propeller bit into the air, pushing them forward, the Walrus slid up a wave, lurched over the top and skidded sideways down the following slope.
“Dead on target,” Boyle said. “Hold tight, Ted. Do you ever get seasick?”
“If I’d thought I’d been in danger of going to sea I’d have joined the Air Force.” Porter, big and clumsy as he struggled to the forward hatch along the fuselage of the plane, which seemed to be standing first on its nose and then on its tail in the towering seas, halted and looked round at Boyle. “Seems to be blowing a hell of a lot harder down here, Pat. These waves are big.”
The dinghy ahead of them came into view again as they were lifted on the crest of a wave. Porter, with his head out of the forward hatch in the nose of the Walrus, heard the faint cry that came down-wind to them.
“Hilfe! Hilfe, bitte!”
“Christ,” he yelled. “It’s a Jerry!”
“I’d have let the swine drown if I’d known,” Boyle growled with an unconvincing show of disgust. “Can you get a line to him?”
“I’ll have a go.”
Its rudder swinging port and starboard as Boyle tried to head into wind towards the bobbing dinghy, its motor screaming a high-pitched note, the Walrus beat clumsily up the waves as they approached, so that Porter, with the wind drumming in the wires of the wings over his head, was drenched by the water sheeting over the bows every time they plunged into the valleys of the sea.
As they swept up to the dinghy he threw a line to its occupant, who managed to catch it awkwardly with his left hand, then the dinghy had swept behind them and underneath the wing so that the folded amphibious wheels caught the German a crack on the head.
“Hold it, for God’s sake!” Porter yelled.
The German had managed to wrap the line round his wrist with a quick twist of his arm, but the jerk as he reached the limit of the line almost yanked him overboard. He sprawled awkwardly half over the side until he managed also with the same hand to grasp a rope on the dinghy and wriggle back to safety.
Porter began to haul on the rope and the dinghy came nearer to the bow of the aircraft, but with his one sound arm the German could not manoeuvre it beneath the low wing of the machine, and the heaving sea kept swinging him up against the underside of the wheel in sickening jolts.
“Ich kann es nicht aushalten!” he yelled despairingly.
“Pat,” Porter shouted, “I can’t get to him here. I’ll have to yank him through the after-hatch.”
He began to pay out the line again so that the dinghy drifted astern from underneath the wing until it bumped against the flat hull of the Walrus alongside the
hatch aft of the main plane. The German, seeing them move ahead of him again and obviously under the impression they were about to cast him adrift once more, began to call out in an agony of fear.
“All right, all right, you sausage-eating bastard,” Porter panted furiously. “No bloody panico. I’m coming.”
He made the line fast round the bollard and struggled back inside the plane, saturated from the spray, and pushed past Boyle to the after-hatch.
The German’s face was a mixture of apprehension and surprise as Porter appeared beside him.
“Serve you right if I left you where you are,” Porter snarled as the water slashed across him.
The German was shouting in a high-pitched, excited voice, making taut, vague gestures with the hand that held the ropes. Boyle, to hold his machine into wind and to avoid being swung broadside on to the waves, kept his engine running and the Walrus was still making headway through the water, up and over waves that seemed enormous now they were down to sea-level. And every time they lurched over the crest the dinghy was bounced up against the fuselage so that the German, in danger of being thrown out, screamed a rigmarole of words they couldn’t understand.
“Tell him to turn off the tap, for God’s sake,” Boyle begged from inside the cabin.
“Oh, come here, you ugly swine.” Porter leaned over the side, grabbed the German by the collar as the dinghy swung alongside, and heaved with all his strength. As the dinghy bounced away again the German was yanked across the fuselage and he gave a sudden scream, partly with pain as he banged his injured arm and partly with fear as he thought he was about to fall into the sea. Then he and Porter were sprawled inside the machine, panting in a spreading pool of water.
The German was still holding on to the line which Porter had thrown and which now went through the hatch and along the outside of the machine to the forward bollard. One end of it was wrapped tightly round his wrist with the line attached to his dinghy, which was also dangling outside, holding his arm rigidly up into the open hatch.
“For God’s sake” – Boyle’s frantic voice brought Porter hurriedly to a sitting position – “tell the silly fool to let go that line. The dinghy’s standing on its end. It’ll jam up under the elevators soon. It’ll get wrapped round something in a minute.”
For a second or two Porter pawed over the German, trying to make out which of the two lines he was holding belonged to the dinghy, then he wrenched them both from his hand with a savage, imperious gesture that had urgency in it rather than cruelty. It brought a new yelp of pain from the German, then they both flopped back again on the deck, and the dinghy bobbed clear and vanished quickly astern.
While Porter was still getting his breath back the German sat up, lifting himself with one arm.
“Danke! Danke! Gott sei Dank.”
“Oh, heil bloody Hitler!” Porter snarled the only words of German he knew. “Now dry up.”
Boyle turned in his seat. “I wonder if this merchant saw anything of the other dinghy?” he said. “Let’s ask him. If he did, we’ll chance a last look and then go home.”
The two of them glowered at the German in the dim interior of the Walrus, while the light outside grew steadily less and the vicious sea changed from grey to black. The German sat staring at them, his eyes wide and fearful, young, small and pathetic – like a damp, half-drowned puppy, so that they felt neither hatred nor anger.
“Achtung, you bastard,” Boyle said without emotion. “You see any other dinghy, no?”
The German shook his head. “No English,” he said “No speak English.”
“Dinghy. Comme – oh hell, what’s German for ‘like yours’? Wie – wo ist die Dinghy?”
The German pointed aft and started to gabble excitedly.
“He thinks you’re talking about his dinghy,” Porter said disgustedly.
Boyle pointed hard at the German, stuck out his fore-fingers like guns and made a mime of firing. Then he raised his eyebrows and said: “Wer? Who did it? Who got you?”
“Bomber. Hudson.” The German was lying back, his face pale and strained.
“Hudson?” Porter grinned, still sitting on the floor. “Hear that? That’s the one we’re looking for, Pat. Where was it?”
“Hudson?” Boyle shaped his hand into an aeroplane flying. “Wo? Wo ist die Hudson?”
The German patted his chest, shrugged his shoulders expressively, then flourished a hand to describe an aircraft diving into the sea. “Kaputt,” he said. “Verschwunden. Im Wasser.” He pointed. “Nördlich. Gegen Norden.”
“This is the johnny who shot ’em down, I’ll bet,” Boyle said. “They must have got in a poop at him, too, and sent him down.”
“What’s his name?”
Boyle pointed to the German. “Wie?” he asked.
“Hax. Rudolf Hax.”
“Well, that was easy. Let’s ask him which direction the Hudson took. It might help.”
This was more difficult than they had imagined, however and after a tiring five minutes Boyle sat back.
“I think he’s half-baked,” he said peevishly to Porter.
“Bitte?” The German’s eyebrows rose.
“Not you. I’m not talking to you.”
The German smiled. “Ja. Yes. Yes.” He grinned and Boyle glared at him furiously.
“Better fix him as best we can,” he said to Porter. “Shove his flipper in his jacket or something for now. Then we’ll get off. You can fix it properly when we’re airborne. We’ll go back northwards and we might spot something.”
He waited until Porter sat the German upright and tucked the broken arm into his jacket.
“OK?” he called out. “Right! We’re off. Let’s not waste time. We haven’t all that much petrol. Sort him out after we’re unstuck.”
Porter nodded and Boyle opened the throttle as the machine poised on top of a wave. The Walrus slid at speed down into the valley, then screamed up the next wave as though it were a living thing clawing up the solid side of the sea. Then she was airborne, poised for a moment as though hovering, before the engine spluttered.
The sudden lack of power caused the aeroplane to drop sharply. She bounced awkwardly and lop-sidedly on the crest of the next wave, and the engine spluttered again.
“Hold tight, Ted!” Boyle yelled.
Ahead of him a huge wave reared, dark and green and menacing, its crest curling over already. Then the Walrus dug its nose into it and water poured madly over the bow and across the Perspex. Boyle was flung forward and Porter and the German slid along the deck until they crashed in a yelling tangle of arms and legs behind Boyle’s seat The engine spluttered once more, then died completely, and they heard in the silence the water dripping off the wings on to the fuselage in swift little hammer-taps.
“God blast the man who invented these thrice-damned tripe-machines to everlasting awful bloody Hell.”
Boyle tore out the oaths painfully, slowly. Then he sat back and stared at Porter and the yelling German sprawling on the deck behind him.
“That’s flaming well torn it,” he said to Porter. “Better get busy on your buzzer, Ted, and get our position away. The launches aren’t far away. It’s still not too dark for them to pick us up.”
As Porter crouched at the wireless set Boyle tried the starter, but the engine was as dead as if it had never been warm above their heads. Boyle glared at it, all the hatred he had in him for the slow-flying old machine welling up inside him. Then the German, lying behind his seat, hauled himself upright one-handedly.
“Bitte, bitte,” he said, indicating his injured arm.
“You shut your row,” Boyle said in a fury. “Sure, but for you we’d have been half-way home now. You keep out of the way for a moment until we get our breath back.”
The German didn’t understand him but he could see the threat in Boyle’s bright blue eyes and he sank back.
“Are you through, Ted?” Boyle asked, and Porter, his head low over the transmitter, nodded. The crackle of Morse filled the ca
bin, then Porter finished off with a flourish and sat up, staring at his message pad.
“A launch’ll be directed towards us immediately,” he said.
“We last saw ’em about ten miles west of here,” Boyle said. “With this sea they’ll be here in about an hour. Just in time before it’s too dark. Oh, well” – his good humour reasserted itself – “at least we can tell ’em where the Hudson ditched. And that’s more about it than they’ll have heard all day.”
Four
Across the width of the bridge from where Flight Sergeant Slingsby stood at the wheel, his mind revolving bitterly round Skinner and the engines of HSL 7525, beyond the spot where Tebbitt and Westover huddled and where the mast drummed under the roaring wind, the wireless cabin lay – stuffy, lurching like the rest of the boat, and noisy with the sound of Morse. In there, Leading-aircraftman Knox and Aircraftman Botterill, their headsets over their ears, sat huddled over the receiver, waiting for any instructions that might advance the search. About them were pads of paper and message forms clipped to the side of the cabin in bundles, signal pads and pencils, novelettes and – fastened to the bulkheads with strips of sticking plaster from the first-aid kits – the inevitable nudes.
Knox, with the two-handed split mind of the wireless operator, was twiddling the dial of the receiver with one hand while he thumbed through the pages of a novelette with the other.
“7526 is still around,” he announced. “How about getting a spot on him, Botty, with the direction-finder?”
Botterill silently reached up with his right hand to the handle of the direction finder and began to turn it slowly, his eyes on the calibrated ring, watching the duel between the two boats with the aid of wireless.
“South-east of us now,” he said after a while. “And close. It’s a toss-up which of us finds ’em first.”
“7526 for a bet,” Knox said gloomily. “The only thing 7525 could ever pick up would be a cold in the head–”
