The Sea Shall Not Have Them

by John Harris

  “There they go again!” Robb nodded and they saw the arcs of tracer, and heard the faint sound of guns above the noise of the sea.

  “And again. They’re testing guns, all right.”

  “If they come this way,” Slingsby said slowly, “let me have one blast at ’em with the Oerlikon, Skipper. Just one at the swine.”

  “I’d rather they didn’t see us,” Treherne replied. “It’d be hard lines on us if they did. How do you scuttle these damn things, Flight?”

  “Lift the floorboards and get Tebbitt to stamp twice – hard – in the bilges,” Robb offered and they all laughed, breaking the tension,

  They glanced round and saw a row of heads against the sick bay roof where Westover, Tebbitt and one of the wireless operators stared in the direction of the firing.

  “All right, you bunch of heroes!” Slingsby roared in his harsh nasal deck voice, and Milliken felt godlike to stand beside it and hear it directed at someone other than himself. “Get back into your holes. They’ve not found us yet!”

  Six

  “Firing!” Mackay sat up sharply in the dinghy and reached with his injured hand for the flare. “They’ll not miss us this time.”

  “Hold it, Mac, you fool.” Ponsettia leaned quickly over and grabbed his arm. “Let’s have a look first. They might be Jerries. We’re pretty close in.”

  Waltby stared over his right shoulder in the direction of the red tracer bullets that curved in a low trajectory across the dark sky not far away, and suddenly they could hear the sound of engines. They had all three been dozing fitfully, their heads nodding, Mackay holding Harding upright with his arm round him, when the sudden chatter of machine-guns had broken into their sleep.

  “How do you know they’re Jerries?” Mackay hissed.

  “Who the hell else would it be just here, man?” Ponsettia snorted his words coming in a hoarse whisper because it suddenly seemed that for their own safety they must all lower their voices. “We must have drifted south faster than we thought. We must be somewhere off the mouth of the Scheldt.”

  “There they go again!” Waltby flung out his right arm, his left arm still resting on the brief case between his legs. The firing was further in front of him now and he noticed he didn’t have to crane his head round so far. Either the boat that carried the guns was moving fast or the dinghy was spinning slowly. The beat of engines came in swelling crescendos, as though the waves interposed a barrier of water between them and the sound from time to time.

  “Pretty, ain’t they?” Ponsettia said grimly. “They’re testing guns. They’ll be E-boats.”

  “You sure?” Mackay, still unconvinced, sat with his hand clutching the flare.

  “Haven’t we been trying to drop heavies on their pens for months? Our boys wouldn’t be firing little bursts like that round here. And if our boys were firing at all here somebody would be firing back at them, you bet your sweet life. They’re E-boats going for a dab at the cross-Channel supplies – the sea’s lousy with cargo ships just now.”

  They sat silent for a while, peering over the water, their heads rolling wearily on their shoulders as the dinghy slewed and slid away off the crests of the waves. Then they saw the curves of red tracer again, further away from them this time, and heard the faint rattle of guns once more.

  “Hell!” Ponsettia stared in the direction of the firing for a moment, and they waited for him to speak again. “See where they are? They’re west of us. West, man! If this goddam wind’s still blowing from the north as it has been all the time, they’re west of us. Give us that compass, Mac!”

  They fished in Harding’s pocket and crouched over the minute sliver of luminous metal “That’s right,” Ponsettia said. “Over here’s north. They’re west of us.”

  The other two stared at him for a moment, wondering what he was getting at.

  “Don’t you see?” he went on emphatically, as though trying to hammer his thoughts into their brains. “They’re heading south. That means they must be on their way out – of course they must at this time of the night.”

  “Go on, man,” Mackay barked impatiently. “What the hell are you getting at?”

  “Listen, those sons-of-bitches are outside of us. We’re nearer the Belgian coast than they are. Unless the wind or the tide or whatever it is that’s propelling us changes, by daylight we’ll have been blown right inshore. Just ready to be picked up by the bastards when they sneak home.”

  “Right where the shore batteries can see us.”

  “That’ll put paid to any rescue. Hell, what stinking luck!”

  The thought of capture as the end to their ordeal damped their spirits and they all huddled against the sides of the dinghy in silence, baling slowly and instinctively with their hands, the flying helmet, anything they could find. Mackay worked still holding on to Harding, throwing water over the others more often than out of the dinghy.

  The waves broke across them now in freezing spits that sloshed, phosphorescent and oddly ghostly, in the bottom of the dinghy, numbing in their iciness so that their cramped legs no longer had feeling in them. Around them, the slow pagan roll of the sea seemed endless and ageless and supremely indifferent to their misery. They had lost all sense of time and, occasionally, as though it were caught by a smack from the gusty wind, the dinghy skidded and whirled round in a sickening movement that destroyed all notion of direction.

  Once, as it lurched violently over a steep crest, Waltby was certain it was about to capsize and a yelp of fear escaped him. “Holy Jesus,” Ponsettia muttered, while Mackay sat still, clinging to Harding, solid, immovable, unutterably resentful about the whole thing. They regained their places uneasily from the heap into which they had been slung, all of them troubled by thoughts of capsizing, and used the heaving-line to tie themselves to each other so that in the darkness no one could fall or be thrown overboard without the others being aware of it. But Waltby knew very well that if such a thing happened now, no one would ever be able to summon sufficient strength to pull a man back.

  They were exhausted with the effort of keeping upright through the violent movements that constantly threatened to throw them out, and Waltby felt dazed with hunger and cold, stupefied by the ice in the wind which seemed to cut his cheeks into raw strips like the blade of a knife.

  The rhythmic surge of the sea caused his unhappiness to swell round him in suffocating folds that stifled the hope in him. His lips were swollen and cracked where the water slicing across them had dried to brine on his face, and he found it painful to speak. His throat was raw with salt and his stomach was still painfully tremulous after the water he had swallowed when the aircraft ditched. All he felt he wanted just then was a long drink of ginger beer, the pop of his childhood days.

  The dinghy still seemed round and firm and solid, and the darkness, a threat in itself had paradoxically taken away some of the savagery from the sea. The waves were only shadows which they sensed from the rocking of the dinghy and from the sloshing thump as a crest broke close by, sending a cascade of water across their legs and chests. Above them the sky was an intolerable blackness.

  Only once, during an incredible momentary break in the driven cloud, they saw the flare of a narrow cold moon, sharp and frosty and clear, swinging gracefully above their heads, lighting the sea. But it served only to accentuate their loneliness and smallness as for a brief second it touched the wave-tips with silver points before it disappeared.

  The wind seemed stronger as well as colder, and the wet smell of the sea more powerful, a travesty of the smell that Waltby had experienced on cool evenings spent on the coast with his wife. He thought of her with an anguished longing for a moment. He had given her too little time. Often he had thought his was a selfish life and had said so, but she had reassured him he was wrong.

  She would be on the train still, he suspected, probably even preparing to descend at that moment, expecting him to meet her at the station with her sister and Taudevin. He wondered how she would receive the news that he
was missing. Never in the whole course of the war had she had cause for worry and he wondered how she would take it now. With an agonising desire to protect her, he hoped she wouldn’t find out.

  The dinghy gave a twist and the splash of water in his lap startled him out of his thoughts.

  “Are we all awake?” he enquired.

  “I am, Syd,” Ponsettia answered immediately.

  “Harding’s still unconscious,” Mackay said, almost as though he held Waltby responsible.

  “I think we’d better give him some more of the brandy,” Waltby said. “Is he warm?”

  “He feels all right,” Mackay said unwillingly. “I don’t know.”

  Unfastening the brief case with deliberate care in the darkness, Waltby took out the flask and they forced a little of the brandy between Harding’s lips. He moaned softly and moved his head so that some of the liquor ran down his chin.

  “Rub his hands and feet, Mac,” Waltby said, putting away the flask, and Mackay bent to the task immediately.

  Waltby felt at the brief case for a moment. “There’s one thing I’d better settle now,” he said, “before it’s too late. None of us knows what’s going to happen to us. It’s cold and this sea’s rising. Whatever happens to me, this brief case must go over the side if any enemy vessel attempts to pick us up. Shove anything you can into it to make it sink more quickly. Anything.”

  He felt them looking at him.

  “All right?”

  “All right, Syd.”

  “All right, Mac?”

  “Why not shove it over now?” Mackay growled. “After all, but for that damned thing we shouldn’t have been flying the Hudson and we shouldn’t be here and the Skipper wouldn’t be unconscious.”

  Waltby knew he was staring in the direction of the unseen brief case, which lay where it had been all the time, between Waltby’s legs. It seemed to symbolise all the distrust Mackay clearly felt for the non-combatant members of the Air Force. Briefcases and trouser-seats shiny from sitting on smooth chairs – Waltby knew just how Mackay’s mind was working. His own had once worked that way on a visit to New Delhi from the North-West Frontier when he was still a sergeant. Pink gins in the Mess. Spotless uniforms and smooth hair unruffled by flying helmets, and hands untouched by grease. Middle-class types, he had thought. Manufacturers’ sons. Temporary gentlemen.

  “Sling it in the drink,” Mackay said again.

  “Dry up, Mac,” Ponsettia said harshly.

  “If we should be picked up by our own people” – Waltby affected not to hear the resentment in Mackay’s tones – “it must be passed over to them at once without fail. And make it clear that it’s important and urgent.”

  “Don’t know why we can’t sling it in the drink instead,” Mackay said again. “It’s brought nothing but bloody bad luck. The war’s almost over. What the hell do we want Jerry’s documents for?”

  “Listen to me, Mac.” Waltby kept his anger under control with difficulty. He was feeling in no mood to be patient with the intractable Mackay. “I’ve not reminded you up to now that I’m an air commodore. Now I’m giving you an order about this brief case. All right?”

  “All right – sir!” Mackay’s tone was defiant and sneering but Waltby knew he would do as he was told.

  “Right! Now let’s shut up about the brief case. It’s time we had some exercises.”

  For a while they sawed their arms backwards and forwards, working life into frozen limbs, or rubbing and slapping Harding. Then, when they had finished, they sat back again and slumped against the dinghy walls.

  “How about a sing-song?” Waltby suggested.

  “Christ!” The voice was Mackay’s and it was full of derision. Waltby took no notice.

  “Come on, let’s sing,” he said. “What do you say, Canada?”

  “OK by me, Syd. What’ll we have?”

  “How about ‘God save The King’ for a start?”

  “OK, get busy.”

  They sang in the darkness, their voices puny in the wilderness and reedy against the bluster of the wind.

  “Funny,” Ponsettia said after a while. “It does cheer you up, I guess. Strikes me we ought to sing sea shanties or ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’.”

  They sang “Shenandoah” and “Blow the Man Down”, but they found that their voices stuck in their throats and died slowly to nothing as they became aware of Mackay sitting there opposite them, in disapproving, despising silence. Ponsettia had a pleasant light voice and he obviously enjoyed singing, but even he faded away to muteness. Mackay was oddly more of an influence as he sat brooding unseen in the darkness than he had been all day when they could see his sullenness and the chip on his shoulder.

  They sat without speaking for a while, then Ponsettia stirred.

  “You guys know what?” he said.

  “What?” Waltby lifted his head wearily.

  “I guess I’d like to do a little praying. The singing didn’t go so well so I’d kinda like to pray. I was always a lousy choir boy when I was a kid.” He was speaking quickly as though he were a little embarrassed. “My mom used to lay into me because I wouldn’t go to practice but just now I sorta guess a prayer wouldn’t come amiss. ’Specially as it’s Sunday by this time. Mind?”

  “Not at all. Good idea,” Waltby said. Mackay sat in silence.

  “Thanks. Well, here goes. I guess I’m not much of a hand at this.”

  Waltby had expected Ponsettia’s prayer to strike an odd note, particularly as he himself wasn’t a churchgoing man. But there was so much obvious sincerity in the little Canadian’s words and they seemed so much at variance with his light-hearted character that Waltby couldn’t help but be impressed.

  “I guess this goes for the lot of us,” Ponsettia said in the darkness. “Almighty God, we have no hope here but in Thee. We are four men alone and in need of Thy help. We put our trust in Thee that, in Thy great mercy, Thou wilt not forget us and wilt give us strength to endure till Thou shalt bring us safe back to land.” He paused. “I guess that’s all, fellers.”

  “Amen,” Waltby said, and he heard Mackay’s unexpected, mumbled “Amen” alongside him.

  He felt vaguely reassured and better as they settled into silence again, and he started to think that he ought to go to church when he got back – to give thanks for rescue or something of the sort. He was still thinking about it, yet knowing all the time he never would, when he drifted off into sleep.

  Waltby awoke with a start, suddenly horrified that they might have been found by an enemy vessel before the precious brief case could be thrown overboard and, for a moment, he was caught in a feeling of panic once more. Then, as he became aware of where he was, he lay blinking slowly in the darkness, the icy drowsiness over him gradually dispersing and being replaced by a sharp determination not to sleep again.

  As he recovered his wits completely he began to feel that something was wrong. The long sweeping motion of the dinghy seemed to have changed and he could feel a shorter rhythmic movement with it, too, that puzzled him at first. Then he realised it was Mackay rubbing Harding’s hands. Waltby listened for a while as he continued to work, slowly and steadily chafing away at the pilot’s hands, stopping every now and then to bale with the binocular case. Ponsettia was fitfully asleep, his hand still on the crank handle of the squawk box.

  There was a method about Mackay’s movements, a routine to his actions that suggested he had never rested from the time the others had fallen asleep after Ponsettia’s prayer.

  After a while, however, he stopped the rubbing and sat motionless for a minute or two, then Waltby realised he was moving his right arm slowly from where he’d put it round Harding after dark and had begun to wriggle carefully out of his fur-lined flying jacket. Gradually, in spite of the cut hand which was clumsy to use, he got the jacket off and began to ease it round Harding’s shoulders, trying to lift the younger man in an attempt to slide the warm folds between him and the side of the dinghy. But Harding appeared to be heavier than
he had imagined and he slowly eased his legs up, apparently to get a better purchase on the other’s body.

  Quietly, so unexpectedly that it made Mackay jump, Waltby leaned forward and spoke. “Let me help you.”

  Mackay whipped round in a quick, guilty movement, but Waltby reached across him, got his arm under Harding’s shoulders and lifted him gently, and Mackay was able to slip the flying jacket down behind him and fold it across his chest.

  “Better fasten it if you can,” Waltby said gently and purposefully, with an air of authority of which Mackay had imagined him incapable.

  Mackay fastened the jacket and lay back exhausted. The thanks he felt would not come to his stubborn tongue.

  For a while he lay among the tangled bodies in the dinghy. With each lurch Harding rolled gently against him, and at the pressure of the slack body he felt an anxiety that made him forget the throbbing pain in his hand.

  For himself, he felt no fear – only the desire to get out of the dinghy and on with the job of finishing the war and going home to the demands of his own plans. In his rough youth in the back streets he had never had room for fear. There had been so much to conquer, and violence and ugliness were so much a part of the struggle, that he felt no awe at the nearness of death, which came not infrequently among his friends or their families. For coal mining took its toll every year and every month in injuries and death and disease.

  But for Harding, the only person he had ever contrived to love, he felt a very real terror.

  “Think he’ll die?” he blurted out to Waltby, his voice still vaguely accusing.

  “I don’t know, son,” the older man said, his voice steady and unemotional.

  “Think he’ll be all right?”

  “I hope so.”

  A wave of anger swept over Mackay that Waltby, with his rank and the brass on his hat, could be so indifferent to it all. Then it occurred to him that at least Waltby was sharing the same chances as the rest of them.