We were transferred off the main rail line from Bremen to the line that runs along the coast, which was used to disperse us among the fishing villages and small harbours that line the coast. Travelling companions, briefly acquainted, said briefer goodbyes. Once I was off the train myself I breathed in air laden with salt and a reek of seaweed, but at least it was fresh after the train.
Then, somewhat bewildered, I was led with Gray and a dozen others to the groyne of a minuscule harbour, where the crew of a small fishing smack made ready to take us. The morning was already bright, the sky empty and clear, the sun lifting over the horizon. I looked up and down the coast; lights twinkled, not yet doused from the night. It was going to be a fine spring day once a thin mist burned off.
And out to sea, out beyond the sand bars that glistened like the backs of sleeping whales in the lapping water, I could see a veritable fleet of small craft. There were lighters, tugs, fishing smacks, steamers, and pleasure boats; and further out I could see larger vessels, like grey shapes in the light mist: colliers, freighters, ferries, tankers. Flags fluttered, no doubt celebrating many nations, but all too remote for me to make out.
At last our crew, who spoke only a rough, heavily accented German that I could not make out, gestured to us to come aboard the smack. Ben Gray tried to offer me a hand aboard; I disdained him, and in the end it was I who helped him. I was, however, the only woman aboard.
The smack stank of its regular cargo of fish even more than had the harbour. The crew wore sweaters, heavy leather coats, and shapeless hats; to a man they had thick beards. Clutching packs and bags and rolled-up blankets, with our overcoats and greatcoats tucked close around us, we passengers sat on equipment boxes, upturned baskets, even on the greasy, damp deck. We fitted in wherever we could; if we got in the way the snarls of the crew told us about it quick enough. One young private found himself sitting on a peculiar piece of wood, large, shaped, stained, and he made to throw it out of the boat. More snarls from the skipper put him right. There was a small cabin, fitted out with a couple of bunks and a tiny galley, I saw, and a couple of fellows crowded in there to leave room on the deck. I heard a crackle of static; the cabin was fitted with radio gear, of a robust military-looking type.
Once we were aboard, we cast off from the harbour and gingerly made our way out through the sand banks, propelled by oars and, after a time, with sail.
‘It’s going to be like navigating a maze,’ I said to Gray. ‘Indeed. And a maze whose plan can change with every shift of the tide, every storm. Takes an expert to know it, and not to ground the boat – at least, not to ground without meaning to . . . Don’t be offended by the Captain having a go at you about that bit of wood, Collins, by the way. That, you see, is a sort of detachable keel. The boat is all but flat-bottomed here as we slide over the sand banks; when we get out deeper we’ll fix the keel – how I don’t know, perhaps it’s driven through a slot in the floor – and then we’ll ride steady.’
‘Yes, sir. What was it he called me, sir?’
‘Best not to know, lad. Best not to know.’
Now I began to see more small boats like our own heading out to meet the impromptu fleet that waited to collect us, craft crowded with passengers squeezed in and silhouetted in the morning light, emerging all along the coast. ‘Reminds me of the First War,’ I murmured. ‘The evacuation from Essex.’
‘Yes, we’ve all been briefed on that,’ Gray said. ‘At least this is planned.’
‘How reassuring,’ I said. ‘And is there a reason why I’m in a small boat, instead of a berth on a passenger liner sailing out of Hamburg?’
He laughed. ‘There is a logic, actually. It’s a sort of extrapolation from what we’re learning in England. The Martians treat humans as a farmer might treat ants. When a nest gets big enough he’ll kick it, stamp it, flood it, poison it. But even so an individual ant, scuttling off, might get away with it. Do you see?’
I did and I remembered Walter’s similar parallels of humans with ants and their colonies.
‘Well, on land we’ve learned how to move about the country without alarming the Martians too much. They watch on a big scale, not the small.’
‘And so at sea as on land.’
‘That’s it. A thousand little fishing smacks might come and go without attracting the attention of the Martians, even if one of ’em had Churchill himself on board, whereas if the Lusitania sailed from Hamburg with just you on board, Collins -’
The private grinned. ‘With a few society beauties. Might be worth it, sir!’
An older man grunted. ‘Careful what you wish for, laddie. But speaking of being spotted by the Martians -’ He peered up into a morning sky of blue perfection. ‘I haven’t seen a flyingmachine yet. But you couldn’t give them a better day for spotting us if they sent one up. I mean, the North Sea’s not known for its glorious sunshine, is it, Lieutenant? Typical!’ His accent was northern, I thought, perhaps Liverpudlian. The man had stripes on his uniform arm, and a burn scar on his cheek, not unlike Walter’s injuries, though lesser. Now I considered him more closely I was unsure of his age – younger than at first glance, perhaps in his thirties.
Gray said, ‘I don’t know you, Sergeant.’
‘Lane, sir. RE.’
‘You’ve seen action but not agin the Martians, I’m guessing.’
‘Russian front, sir.’
I admit I stared at the man after that frank admission, and so did others in the fishing boat. This Sergeant Lane, the blunt scarred reality of him, was like a rumour congealed into fact. So British troops really were, even now, serving alongside the Germans in the depths of the Siberian war.
Lane said now, ‘Plenty of spotting out there, sir, by Zepps and planes, though the Russkies do their best to shoot ’em down. But a spotter on a Zepp can’t see through cloud and mist.’
‘But that’s where the Martians are different, Lane. They can see through cloud layers, through mist, even in the pitch dark. I say “see”; it might not be seeing as we know it with our baby blues. The boffins have no clear idea how this is done, but there are guesses. You shine in the dark, you know, Lane: the body heat you give off is a kind of radiation, like light, invisible to our eyes, but there to be measured. Perhaps the Martians can track that. And a Marconi wireless transmission will pass through mist as if it ain’t there. Anyhow, if we do move out in the mist or in the pitch black, we’re not discommoding the Martians at all – only ourselves. So we may as well move in bright summer daylight, like this, when – if they can see us – at least we can see them.’
Lane grunted. ‘Goes against human nature, sir.’
‘Yes, Sergeant, it does. But these Martian lads aren’t human, are they?’
We inched our way out through the sand banks, and then to open sea, where at last the crew were able to fit their removable keel. After that the bilge swam with water that leaked through the keel’s attaching seam, and the men complained of wet feet and backsides.
The shore receded behind us, flat and all but featureless, turning to a dark line on the horizon. I watched it go with some trepidation; Germany was a foreign land and could never be home, and nor indeed could France, but they were a much more secure resting place than where I was going now.
We were transferred to our larger transports without significant incident. Out in deep water, somewhat to my relief, the passengers from my vessel were taken on board a kind of small river cruiser. She was called the Lady Vain. She was expensive-looking, but her smooth white paintwork had been splashed over by Navy grey, and the polished planking of her decks was scarred by the soldiers’ boots and littered with their gear. I could have done far worse, given that the fleet included herring-boats and coal-carriers!
Gray and I were admitted to a forward lounge, under the small bridge, fitted with padded seats and benches, and lined with portholes out of which we would get a good panorama of the North Sea as we sailed steadily west. Even crowded with soldiers who sat or lay sleeping on every square inch of fl
oor space, the lounge was relatively comfortable. There was even a steward, who, after we were all boarded, came around with trays of water and fruit juice. He greeted my companion: ‘Morning, Mr Gray.’
‘I’m afraid it’s Lieutenant pro tem, Perkins.’
When he’d moved on, I said, ‘So, Lieutenant pro tem. The steward knows you, does he?’
‘Through the chap who owns the boat – has one of those big riverside villas at Marlow, you know the sort, and he’s a friend of my father. Used to go up for Henley and to play tennis.’
‘I’m sure you did.’
He winked at me, and raised a glass of fruit punch (without alcohol). ‘We’ll see enough discomfort in England. I thought I’d pull one of the few strings within my reach to make our journey a little more pleasant.’
I touched his glass with mine. ‘Right now I’m glad you did – and will be more so in ten or twelve hours, I dare say.’
For that was how long our passage was predicted to take: across the North Sea from the east Frisians, passing not far south of Dogger Bank, until we reached the Wash, where we would be transferred to another flotilla of small boats for the final step to the shore. If all went well, I might be in England, without getting my feet wet, before sun down.
But it was about lunch time when we heard the rumours that Martians had been seen.
Soon after that a sound like thunder was heard. I recognised the consternation on the faces of Gray and others, and understood its cause. For we, part of a great convoy of ships, were still in the open sea, suspended between Germany and the British Isles. And the gunfire was coming not from the west – not from the English coast, where we might have expected to encounter Martians - it came from the north, the open ocean. It was disconcerting for me to discover that none of my companions, no matter how experienced and battle-hardened, had any idea what was happening.
6
THE BATTLE OF THE NORTH SEA
On the Invincible Major Eric Eden had been fast asleep. Showered, fed, dressed in a clean uniform, he napped on a heap of blankets on the carpeted floor of an officer’s cabin, which, he told me later, even in the middle of an interplanetary war, had leather armchairs and pictures of Nelson on the wall. It was about noon, but he was exhausted after a mere half shift of feeding the maw of the boilers below. He would tell me he had even slept through the bells that summoned the men to the chaplain’s services, for the day was a Sunday.
That was when action stations were sounded, with the tinny note of a bugle.
Eden woke immediately. He had never heard the call before, but understood its portent immediately – and would have moved even if the officers around him, Navy and Army alike, had not been even quicker. Eden had no specific station. He considered going down to the coal bunkers once more; perhaps he could lend a hand. But he could not resist trying to discover what was going on. So he pushed his way out to the open deck.
He got to the rail in time to see the White Ensign being hoisted overhead. All around him was apparent chaos as the crew ran to their positions, and the big guns swivelled on their mounts, and black smoke from the funnels streaked across the sky. He spared a thought for the men of the boiler crews, toiling down below as they never had before.
Looking out to sea he saw that the Invincible was one of a neat line of ships playing follow-my-leader bow to stern, the ensigns fluttering and the black coal-smoke pouring from their funnels. Some of them were dreadnoughts, their profiles shallow in the water, with the two huge chimney stacks and the four vast gun placements fore and aft. To Eden it was a tremendous sight, the scale surprising, inspiring.
And he perceived that this great rank of ships was turning, following a huge arc scrawled across the grey sea. The sun was high in a featureless blue sky. He was suddenly disoriented. The battle group was changing course, but which way? And, more to the point, why?
Then the guns started to bark, from the ships ahead of the Invincible. He thought he saw the streak of shells, but he saw as yet no target on the horizon.
‘This’ll be fun,’ said a man at the rail next to him. He was a Navy man, a rating, but not of this crew; his cap proclaimed him as a man of the Minotaur. His accent was northern, perhaps Northumbrian.
Eden, bewildered, asked, ‘What do you mean?’
The rating looked at him for the first time. ‘You’re the Martian chap. Heard you speak.’
‘The Martian chap.’ Eden laughed softly. ‘I suppose you could say that. But I’m as bewildered here as I was in that blessed cylinder.’ He glanced at the sun. ‘What time is it?’
‘Not long after midday.’
Eden tried to remember the schedule. ‘Then we’re stuck somewhere in the middle of the ocean. We’re not expecting to run into Martians until we hit the coast . . . Are we? And which way are we turning? The sun’s too high; I can’t even be sure which way’s south.’
The rating pointed to his right. ‘South’s that way, where we came from. We sailed out of Brest – you remember that much -’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘We made north through the Channel. We would have rendezvoused with units of the Grand Fleet, coming down from Scapa Flow, and then escorted the passenger fleet in to the English coast.’
‘But we’re nowhere near the coast. And we’re turning – what, east? Not west, towards England.’
‘Because the Martians are out there, sir. Out of our sight still – but they’re there, to the north. I can only tell you the scuttlebutt, mind. A Zepp spotted them, a cluster of fighting machines, out in the middle of the North Sea. Where they had no right to be. Zepp himself was unlucky to be there, he was on his way home after scouting the big Martian nest in England – or lucky for us he happened to spot them. Zepp managed to get off a message before he was shot down -’
‘By the Heat-Ray?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Martians can’t swim, damn it. It makes no sense. And they brought no ships. They can’t be out in the ocean.’
‘But even a man who can’t swim,’ the rating said calmly, ‘may stand in the shallows, and wield a sword.’
Then Eden saw it. ‘Dogger Bank. Of course.’
The rating nodded grimly. ‘Only a hundred feet or so deep at the shallowest, and many miles from land. Not a bad platform from which to fight, eh? If you’re in a fighting-machine a hundred feet tall, and we know they can extend those legs of theirs even higher than that . . .’
The two of them speculated for a while, about how the Martians could know of the existence of the Bank. It was a parallel of my own overheard conversation on the fishing boat. If the Martians could ‘see’ through mist and fog, and in the dead of night, why not ‘see’ through a hundred feet or so of water? Perhaps those flying-machines of theirs had mapped the sea beds as efficiently as they must map the dry land. And as to how the fighting-machines could have reached the Bank – ‘They have no boats,’ Eden mused. ‘But, as you say, they could simply walk there. Under the water. It must seem quite unnatural to creatures of a world of shallow seas . . .’
‘Makes sense for the Germans to give us a hand, anyhow. Even the Channel’s not so deep. If the Martians can just walk to Europe . . .’
‘But what of today? What are the tactics? What are we trying to do, do you think?’
The rating, clearly an intelligent man and experienced, if of low rank, seemed pleased to be lecturing an officer. ‘I’ll tell you what I would do, if Admiral Jellicoe asked.’ He used a forefinger to sketch an invisible map on the palm of his hand. ‘Here’s Dogger, and your Martians. Here’s the passenger fleet that’s going to pass within easy striking range of the Heat-Ray. Well, I’d put a call out to divert the convoy south – while we, instead of steaming north-west to England, are sweeping starboard like so, to head east.’
‘Ah. Passing between the Martians on the Bank and the passenger fleet.’
‘That’s it. Give those Martians something to think about. Meanwhile the Grand Fleet coming from the north will divert east also, p
assing to the north of the Bank.’
Eden frowned. ‘All in a line? Instead of steaming straight at the Martians?’
‘That’s the tactics. You keep your ships together in a group, so they protect each other, and you show your flank so you can bring your guns to bear. Now, we’ll have been firing our big guns as soon as the Martians were in range, even if they’re over the horizon and too far to spot, for it’s always worth the chance of a lucky strike. After all, we’ve got a longer reach than the Martians; that Heat-Ray of theirs is strictly line of sight, while we can lob a shell miles over the horizon.’
‘Hmm. But they have the ability to strike our shells out of the sky -’
‘That’s why you have to overwhelm them; you can’t shoot down every hailstone in a storm, can you?’
‘That you can’t.’
‘Anyhow, we have to try. Can’t have ’em blockading England.’
Eden could not argue with that sentiment.
Then the Invincible’s own guns opened up.
For Eden it was as if he had suddenly been dropped into a battle zone. The ship had four twelve-inch guns and sixteen four-inch; when they all started to blaze the ship shuddered, the noise was deafening, and the cordite added to the black coal smoke from the engine stacks to wreath the ship in a choking haze. Yet still Eden clung to his place at the rail, with the rating alongside him. And Eden could see the gunfire erupting from all the ships of the group, strung out in their line to west and east.
Now the rating stood on a rail and yelled, pointing. ‘There! I can see the shells come down! We must be close to the Bank!’
Eden, peering, saw plumes of water rising up, columns that he thought might be two hundred feet high or more, rising and feathering in the air.
The Massacre of Mankind Page 18
