by John Harris
Immediately Tebbitt’s head emerged beside Milliken at the sick bay door and Knox, just re-entering the wireless cabin, turned at the shout and struggled up between them to watch.
At first they saw it only as a blur through the rain that came blowing across the bow, blotting out the surface of the sea, taking the jagged tips off the wave-crests and ruffling the hollows. Only for a second Milliken saw the glow, crimson and hazy through the rain, and then the boat had slid into the trough again, and the waves towered on either side of him, blotting it out once more. When they came up on the next wave he saw the glow again and this time the vague shape of what he knew must be a dinghy. In spite of his fear and his weariness he felt something bursting out of him, a joyous sensation of excitement that welled up and made him want to shout – that the dinghy they had been searching for, that elusive thing that had caused him so much wretchedness and had come to be nothing but a figment of Slingsby’s fertile imagination, should be so incredibly real after all.
“It’s the dinghy!” Robb was shouting on the bridge and everybody started to shout with him. “It’s the dinghy!”
And Milliken found himself shouting and laughing, too. “Send them a Verey light to let them know we’ve seen them, Robby.” Treherne’s voice came thinly to Milliken before the wind whipped it away. “Come round, Flight. Round to starboard. Steady as she goes. Keep your eyes skinned, everybody. The shore’s only just over there. There might be patrol craft about when this rain clears.”
The red Verey light popped as he finished speaking and went hissing away into the gloomy sky to hang like a crimson sun.
“All right, Flight,” Treherne said. “Shut down for a moment and come up here till we have a look round and see what’s doing.”
By the time the noise of the engines had died away and Slingsby had arrived on the bridge the sea seemed to have lightened as the wind blew a gap in the curtains of rain, and for the first time they saw the dinghy properly with its load of waving men. They could hear the screech of whistles and could distinctly see arms that moved like reeds.
“Four of them,” Treherne said, staring through binoculars. “All there, thank God.”
“And nearly on the beach,” Slingsby added, peering grim-faced over the side of the bridge. “A bit further and they’d have been shrimping.” He glanced round the empty sky. “Bags of air cover, as usual,” he observed.
As the rain receded further the shore stood out startlingly clear, with white houses under red roofs and the green of trees beyond the dunes.
Treherne studied it There was no sign of life there but they all knew what the humped mounds along the fringe of the beach were – and that there were men in them probably already squinting at the launch through gun-sights.
Treherne gestured towards the broken water that stretched parallel to the shore between them and the dinghy.
“There’s your sand-bank, Flight,” he said.
Slingsby glared at it as though about to raise his iron voice to it. “Tide’s falling,” he announced. “Nice to be grounded on that with the water dropping.” He peered at the dinghy again, assessing distances. “They’re right inside,” he went on. “Nice long run out again after we’ve been spotted.”
“What do you think, flight? They’re damned close in and there might be a hell of a lot of guns in there.”
“Bound to be.” Slingsby spoke thoughtfully. “But we’ve come a long way for these boys and we can’t wait for anything bigger to be brought up. It’d be too late then and Jerry would have ’em if the sea didn’t.” He brightened a little. “There’s one thing – we’re too close in for the big stuff to bear on us.”
“Right!” Treherne made up his mind immediately. “We’ll go in up-tide round the south end of the bank and out at the other end. It’ll slow us down but it’ll make it more certain of being a first-time job. We can’t afford to have to manoeuvre when we reach ’em. Give the bank a wide berth. Robby, tell Knox to get off our position. You know what it is. And state there are survivors. He can make out the message. I’m going to be busy. We’ll send ’em another when we know a bit more about what’s going to happen. That’ll do for them at home to fix their position in case we don’t pull it off.”
As Robb disappeared Treherne turned to Slingsby.
“Ready, Flight?”
Slingsby grinned. “Aye, aye, sir. You can leave the deck to Robby. He can look after it.”
Robb came down the catwalk alongside the sick bay, holding hard to the handrail on the lurching deck. “All right, doc!” he shouted as the engines fired again. “Now’s your chance. This is what you’re here for. Get your stuff handy. You know where the medical stores are. But for God’s sake leave everything where it is till you want it or you’ll lose it and you’ll need to be smart off the mark if anybody’s hurt. Tebby, get that kettle boiling whatever happens, then give a hand with the blankets and the survivors’ clothing. We’re going to need hot-water bottles. These poor devils will be cold.”
Milliken felt a thrill of excitement as he and Tebbitt jumped below, a tenseness that overcame in the swiftness of movement his nausea and fear at the closeness of the enemy. He had forgotten his hatred of high-speed launches and his queasiness at the ghastly motion as he lurched busily about the sick bay, wedging his pack with its bandages and splints into a corner of the bunk. He was so engrossed, in fact, that he never even noticed the breath-taking roll as she started to turn on top of a wave, until she hung for a hideous moment or two on her beam-ends, and he was caught off balance and sent staggering one-legged to the bunk opposite.
Robb had progressed by this time to the engine-room and was bawling into the ear of Corporal Skinner. “Waste oil on deck, Skinner. Stand by to heave it over.”
Skinner grinned. “All that fuss all night, and then we make the pick-up after all. Give Slingo my compliments and tell the little bastard that if it hadn’t been for my engines conking we’d never have got them.”
“We haven’t yet.”
Robb was back on deck by the time he had finished speaking, the wind beating on his face again, doubly cold after the heat of the engine-room.
In the wireless cabin, Botterill, his shoulders hunched, was pounding the Morse key and Knox was wrapping his lanky form with the Mae West he normally disdained to wear.
“Let’s have one of you on deck,” Robb called out. “We might need you.”
“As soon as Botty’s got the position away,” Knox said, “I’ll be up.” His eyes were alight now with the same atmosphere of excitement that pervaded the whole ship.
Robb touched Milliken as he passed. “Stand by on deck as soon as you’re finished, doc,” he said. “We might need every hand we’ve got, in this weather. It’ll be your job to get ’em in here once they’re aboard. These boys are going to be too cold to help themselves much. Only for God’s sake don’t fall in the water.”
By the time Milliken staggered on deck Skinner and Dray were hefting oil up through the engine-room hatch, the bounce of the boat slopping it in black splashes over Skinner, who was below.
“Hang on to that,” Skinner said to him as Dray jammed an oil drum against the sick bay bulkhead. “And don’t let go of it or it’ll be in the drink.”
Milliken nodded speechlessly. Robb and Westover had already loosened the ropes on the crash nets, he saw, and prepared them for immediate release. And the dinghy was still there ahead of them, distinctly there, blurred through the rain but definitely there, yellow now in spite of the poor light, rising slowly on top of a wave so that Milliken could see the men in it.
The launch crew were struggling on the swaying deck as the boat gained speed, working, on their knees and drenched by the spray that was flung upwards at them, to attach a metal ladder over the port side of the hull.
A moment later Robb swung himself through the bridge door and lurched up against the Skipper. “All ready, Skipper,” he announced.
Treherne smiled faintly. “Good!” he said. “At least we can say we
were sunk with everything ready.”
Robb left the bridge again and took his place on the afterdeck with Tebbitt and Westover and Milliken and Knox. Skinner had his head out of the engine-room hatch behind them, watching the shore where the guns were.
“Right, Botterill!” Treherne turned to speak into the wireless-cabin hatch. “Send off that second message I gave you. Everything’s still quiet. We’re going in now.”
Nobody spoke as the launch manoeuvred slowly round the end of the sandbank, placing the broken water on its port side, between itself and safety. Once inside, there could be no fast run for the open sea if they were fired on. They would have to go all the way inside the sand-bank, parallel with the shore, or chance the danger of running aground.
“Here we go,” Robb murmured alongside Milliken. “For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful.”
Milliken’s eyes switched quickly to Robb’s ruddy, cheerful face and, without being aware of what he was doing, he began to cower a little behind the sick bay cabin. Graven fear flooded over him suddenly, making his stomach cringe. His mouth was dry and he could feel a cold sweat on his forehead. His eyes straining for the first sight of the guns, he ran his tongue slowly over his lips. All his earlier desire to make contact with the enemy had drained away and he felt he was going to be seasick again.
The bow of the launch rose and fell with tremendous heaves, cutting into the waves like a knife-edged hammer so that the black-grey water sped backwards, hissing along the hull until it was drawn into the wake. Ahead of him, through the rain that beat into his face, Milliken could see the shape of the dinghy, the spray slashing across it and its occupants. To seawards he could see the broken waves over the sandbank, ugly and treacherous, throwing up gouts of water that smashed explosively into mist. It was as though there was something below the sea there trying to burst out and escape and, to Milliken’s fascinated eyes, the bank seemed to draw them nearer with every yard they sped along its fringe.
“Port side to, Robby!” Treherne shouted. “Have the nets ready.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper!”
As Robb answered with a wave Milliken, his weight against the oil drum, saw his eyes turn again to the shore and those ominously silent houses with their gaping windows. His head low behind the sick bay cabin, he felt every gun ashore moving slowly round to bear on them until he could almost hear the order to fire, and he bobbed sharply further down.
“Thank God the weather’s thick,” Knox said. He spoke as though his lips were stiff, his eyes never moving from the shore. Milliken, wide-eyed, hung on to his drum, his fear-addled brain knowing only one thing other than that eyes were watching them from behind parapets ashore – Skinner’s instructions to him to see that the oil didn’t go over the side.
Ahead of him, he saw the dingy heave slowly out of the sea again, like a submarine surfacing.
The engines were increasing revolutions and the thumping motion of the boat as it advanced in leaps across the waves became more violent. Treherne was obviously going all the way as fast as he dared.
As 7525 crashed into the next wave a shower of spray was lifted high into the air by the wind, in two vast plumes which sped faster and faster in a flattening arc along the length of the boat, slashing into Milliken’s eyes and beyond him to rattle against the gun-shield of the Oerlikon on the stern.
“He’ll break her back!” Skinner’s head popped up like a jack-in-a-box through the engine-room hatch and he shouted before disappearing again: “The engines will be off their bearers in a minute!”
He made the announcement not in protest but as if the excitement had become too much for him.
Milliken wanted to shout, too – to do anything as he crouched behind the sick bay cabin with the oil drum. The nervous fears inside him wanted to burst out in sound, and words – any words – incoherent words – welled up. He felt he was looking down ten thousand barrels of ten thousand guns all trained upon him personally, and he wanted to screech his keyed-up apprehension into the wind.
“It’s quiet,” Robb said almost conversationally as they lurched against each other, bulky in their Mae Wests, and his voice had a steadying quality that calmed Milliken.
“This rain,” Knox explained. “Can’t see us.’
“Sunday morning lie-in, more like.”
Milliken noticed they spoke in short syllables now. He could see the houses moving backwards on the starboard side, incredibly close, and the pill-boxes and the empty windows which might contain guns. He even saw a curtain flapping out of one gaunt casement, abandoned-looking and dejected.
“All asleep,” Robb said.
“Bastards,” Knox added by way of an amen.
Then Robb turned and caught sight of Milliken cowering behind the sick bay.
“Chin up, kid,” he said with an unexpected grin. “The panic’s not even started yet.”
Milliken blushed and straightened up.
“Plywood won’t keep out cannon shells,” Robb pointed out.
His words oddly enough gave Milliken courage, and while he still stared down those ten thousand gun-barrels he found he was able to do so with his head up.
Then suddenly he saw red and green lights curving towards him and disappearing overhead with a whining noise. Even as he realised with a shock that they were tracer bullets he heard the rattle of a gun ashore.
“Here it comes,” Robb said quietly. “They’re rotten shots.”
To Milliken, the coloured tracer seemed to have no malevolent design. It was just a string of coloured lights that gave no indication of danger, for the violent seas swallowed the splashes as the bullets fell. Then he saw another string appear from another point on the coast – and another – until the whole shore-line appeared to be shooting at him and he was amazed he wasn’t hit and that he could be so detached and calm. Then he saw a string of larger tracer that whistled oddly as it passed them. These were not so close together as the others and he saw the flashes as they curved down and hit the water.
“Cannon shells,” Robb said.
“Flak. Let’s hope they’ve nothing bigger.”
Then, with a suddenness that gave Milliken a sensation of annoyance that he was not ready for it and consequently did not see it properly, there was a flash at the base of the mast and the crack of an explosion. They all ducked together, Milliken banging his head heavily on the edge of the oil drum he was holding. Through the red flare of pain and the whirl of dizziness he heard a tearing, splintering crash above the noise of the boat smashing through the water and the roar of the engines. When he straightened up he saw Treherne had disappeared from the bridge, and caught the splash of the masthead hitting the water alongside, carrying the ensign below the surface. Instantly the roar of the engines ceased and the boat pulled up short as though it had struck something, and the little wave that the trailing masthead threw up died abruptly.
Slingsby was on the bridge before the boat stopped and Robb had emerged from the sick bay with the axe. Milliken had not even seen him disappear. The coloured balls of tracer were still passing over the boat.
“Get that lot clear, Robby!” Slingsby was shouting. “Come on, you set of bloody idlers there, bear a hand! There’s nothing wrong with the engines. We’re not done yet.”
In a confusion of impressions Milliken saw Knox running forward, careless of the lurch of the boat, with a pair of wire-cutters in his hands, and Robb swinging with the axe at the deck.
Skinner’s head appeared through the engine-room hatch by his feet. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Milliken panted with complete honesty, struggling with the coils of aerial wire that were looped round his shoulders. There was blood on his face, he realised, warm and sticky, and he thought he must have been wounded. But, since he felt all right, his only emotion was one of bewildered excitement and the desire to be free of that clinging wire before the boat sank and he was trapped.
Then Skinner saw the mast trailing in the water
and the aerial strewn from one end of the boat to the other, and he started to climb on deck.
“Let’s get out of here!” he shouted.
“You get below and shut your trap!” Robb bawled at him, swinging with the axe at the wire as it lay on the deck, so that Milliken saw the strands part as the blade bit into the planking. “The engines are all right, aren’t they?”
Milliken caught Skinner’s quick glance at Robb as he disappeared again, then Robb was shouting at him.
“Come on, you fool!” he yelled. “Don’t stand there like a clot! Get this wire cut and get the mast free. We don’t want it round the screws. Get it free of the Oerlikon.”
Milliken was flung into nervous panic as two sets of orders clashed.
“This oil drum,” he bleated. “I was told to hold it here. It’ll go over the side.”
“To hell with the oil!”
Milliken stared, patted the drum nervously, and left it with one final glance backwards to make sure it was safe, as he started to disentangle the aerial wire with Tebbitt. He had quite forgotten the shore guns in his excitement.
As he cut his hand on the taut wire he started upright at the pain, his hand to his mouth, and he was surprised to realise that the shooting had stopped. By the time they had freed the last of the aerial and the mast slid away, helped by a wild kick from Slingsby, Milliken saw Treherne had reappeared on the bridge, one arm stuffed into his battle-dress jacket, his hat gone, his face pale and twisted with pain, staggering blindly with the roll of the boat. 7525 was wallowing horribly by this time and swinging beam-on to the sea again and into those ghastly hanging lurches that almost swept Milliken’s unresponsive legs away from under him and shot him into the sea.
“I’m all right, Flight,” he heard Treherne say. “Something’s broken, I think. That’s all. The mast hit me as it went. I can manage here. Everybody all right?”
“Mast’s free, Skipper!” Slingsby shouted, indicating the grey-painted spar that was drifting astern. “Engines are OK and the wire’s well clear of the screws.”
