by Nevil Shute
At about one forty-five they saw a light ahead, and slightly to the north, low down upon the water. Then there were several lights, and presently a number, scattered rather widely in their course.
WEST COAST OF FRANCE
USHANT TO THE GLENAN ISLES
Simon and Colvin bent together over the chart. “They’re all around the end of the land,” said Colvin quietly. “I reckon that the flood is bringing the fish up through this bit they call the Raz de Sein....”
They were all on their toes as they approached the fleet. Coming from the direction of Douarnenez their approach was natural enough, if it was ever natural for a vessel to come out from harbour in the middle of the night to join the fleet. They moved on towards the swaying lights, and saw no sign of a patrol vessel. Then it occurred to them that the Raumboote would be to seaward of the fishing fleet, while they were approaching from the land.
Presently they could see the hulls of the vessels. All had their bows towards the south and their engines ticking over as they stemmed the flood-tide, keeping their station with the coast, trailing their gossamer nets in a wide, gentle bag not far below the surface. All of the vessels wore a light upon the mast; about thirty per cent of these were orange lights, and the remainder white.
They took station with the fleet, extinguishing their red and green sidelights, leaving their white light burning on the mast. With bows towards the south they rode for a time at the tail of the fleet. The nearest boat, burning a white light, was within fifty yards of them; they avoided the neighbourhood of the orange-shaded lights, the boats that held the German petty officers. They rode like that for half an hour, tense and waiting developments. But nothing happened at all. It would have been very easily possible for them to go alongside one of the boats wearing the white light, to exchange messages or to land an agent. The first object of the reconnaissance was proved.
The officers discussed the position in low tones. Simon said: “Now we should slide away, and make for England again. Next time we come, it will be with a purpose.”
Boden said: “We’re not going home without having a crack at a Raumboote, sir, are we?”
Rhodes was still at the flame-gun, growing a little tired, with the thought of Ernest brooding darkly in the back of his mind. Colvin said:
“This sliding away. Do we put the light out here, where everyone can see us put it out, and then slide? Or do we slide away with our light on? Seems to me we get the Raumboote on us either way.”
Simon thought for a minute. “We will slide away with the light on,” he said definitely. “I think you are quite right. In either case the Raumboote will come to us, but if we drift away towards the north with the light on we shall be some distance from the other ships, and what we hope to do may then look like an accident.”
He turned to Colvin. “Drop backwards very slowly with the tide,” he said. “Let it seem that we lost position accidentally, keeping the bows to the south.”
“Okay,” said Colvin. “Now for the fun.”
The slow beat of the engine dropped still lower, and the boats near them began to draw ahead. In the dark night, misty and wet with a light rain, they waited, peering over the water. Boden, in charge of the six Thompson gunners, couched down behind the low bulwarks on the wet deck, tense and listening. An alarm gong, sounded from the little wheel-house, would bring them into action; till then they were to remain concealed.
Colvin was at the wheel himself, the engine controls at his hand. By his side was Simon, with a speaking-tube to Rhodes at the flame-gun.
Nothing happened for a quarter of an hour.
They dropped further and further back from the fleet; by the end of that time they must have been over a mile from the nearest of the fishing-boats. Five minutes more went by, in unendurable tension.
“Don’t believe there’s any Raumboote here at all to-night,” grumbled Colvin.
Simon said: “Well, you are wrong. She comes now, over there.”
He pointed at a white light over to the west, and the faint glimmer of a green light. A vessel was coming northwards under power, heading towards them. A faint buzz of whispers ran around the decks.
Simon asked, whispering: “How large is she?”
Colvin measured the height of the lights from the water with his eye. “She’s only a tiddler,” he said. “Not much bigger’n we are.” In fact, she was nearly twice their size; he meant that she was not a destroyer.
She passed a quarter of a mile away from them; the green light broadened and a red appeared; then white and red alone were visible. “Coming up along our starboard side,” said Colvin. “I’ll give her a sheer in a minute, so as we get right up to her.”
Simon bent to the speaking-tube. “She comes up now upon the starboard side,” he said. “You see her clearly?”
Rhodes said: “I see her.”
In a minute Simon said again: “Rhodes, listen to me. There is nobody on deck in front of the bridge. If there is a gun there, it is not manned. Fire first at the bridge, and then to the aft gun, if she has one.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Fire first at the bridge.”
The tension was unbearable. The Raumboote came up on their quarter about fifty yards away; they heard the clang of her engine-room gongs as she slowed. Her bow came level with their stern....
Colvin stooped and jerked the throttle half open, and gave the wheel a twist to starboard, to close the gap between the ships. “Fire when you like now, Bo’,” he said laconically.
Simon shouted down the speaking-tube: “Rhodes — fire!”
A jet of blazing oil leapt out from the camouflaging nets, setting them well alight. It lit up the Raumboote coming up alongside them, dark grey in colour and now only thirty yards away. Appalling, fascinating, the jet seemed to travel slowly to its target. It was a horrible, yellowish-red writhing spear; it carried at its point to strike the enemy a dark blade of unburnt oil, ever consumed and ever sailing nearer to the bridge. Its light went on before it, and in that light they saw a bearded officer in an oilskin, leaning over the rail towards them, megaphone in hand. In an instant that stayed etched in Colvin’s memory they saw him staring at this frightful thing sailing through the air at him, horrified and immobile.
Then it hit him, and all sign of the bridge vanished in a terrible furnace of bright flame. For three or four seconds the flame played upon the bridge with a hoarse, windy noise, then it trained aft to the petrified gun crew at the stern. It came very swiftly on them. They hesitated; there were three of them. Then they broke and left the gun. One of them dived for a hatch and may have got below; the others went down in a violent belch of fire.
Colvin, watching intently, saw the Raumboote start to fall astern. He spun the wheel and sheered away from her; she dropped further astern, and Rhodes could no longer bring his fire to bear upon the gun. He traversed up her decks again as she fell further back. Then he cut off his fire, and black darkness fell on them, lit only by the burning camouflage nets on Geneviève and the blazing oil fires on the Raumboote.
Simon roared out to the Breton crew, speaking in French, to get the net fire out and to take down the mast-head light. Then he looked astern. There were men upon the foredeck of the Raumboote; there was another gun there.
“Turn quickly,” he said to Colvin. “Or they will shoot us up.” And down the speaking-tube he said: “Fire at the forward gun, upon the foredeck, when you can. There are men there now.”
The gun was evidently stowed and unloaded; a long immunity had made the Germans casual. The fire burst upon them as they were fixing a drum to the breech, and they were hidden from sight in the violence of the flame. In a few seconds Rhodes trained back on to the bridge.
The Raumboote now was stopped. Colvin continued with his turn across her bows, slowed, and drifted down her starboard side as she lay burning.
Simon said down the speaking-tube: “Rhodes, give her oil now.” The flame died away; there was a moment’s pause, and a great hosing jet of black oil burst fro
m the gun. Where it fell upon a flame it blazed up and fire ran along the deck; in other parts it made great dripping, smearing pools.
“Now the fire.”
The flame blazed out again and trained the full length of the ship; she became a furnace from end to end.
The fire from the gun ceased, and they lay rocking by the burning ship, watching what they had done. “Time we were out of this,” said Colvin tersely. “What say, we get going now?”
There was no sign of life now on the Raumboote: nothing but a great sea of flame. She was alight down to the water’s edge. She lay between them and the fishing fleet; they were well placed to get away towards the north. Moreover, it was time. Other ships must be making for the burning Raumboote at full speed; it could only be a matter of a few minutes before they were discovered in the light of the blazing ship.
They put on power and began to draw away. Almost immediately one of the Bretons shouted from the bows; there was a body in the water ahead of them. Simon spoke to Colvin and shouted a command to André. They reversed engines to check way upon the ship beside the man, now seen clearly floating in the water by the topsides. In urgent haste they made a bowline on a rope and lowered one of the Bretons down into the sea; he made a rope fast round the body and it was unceremoniously hauled aboard. They put on speed again at once and drew away towards the north; they were barely a quarter of a mile distant when they saw other vessels coming up behind the burning ship.
Colvin said: “Let’s hold on this way for a couple o’ minutes more. Then, what say we jink a bit?”
They went on for half a mile or three-quarters, doing their full twelve knots. Then they turned sharply to the west, and in a few minutes turned again and made for the south-west. Several vessels were around the burning ship, and amongst them was at least one other Raumboote. They went on, tense, expecting every moment to be picked up by a searchlight. But no light came, and presently they altered course again towards the west. They saw the blaze upon the water till they were distant about five miles from it; then it was blotted from their sight by a rain squall. The glow on the horizon lasted for half an hour.
After a time they turned to the north-west.
Boden came up to the wheel-house presently. “That German that we picked out of the water died,” he said.
Simon said: “Died? Was he alive at all?” He had risked waiting by the burning ship to pick the body up because he wanted to bring home a trophy of some sort, something to show for certain that they had engaged the enemy.
“He was alive, within the meaning of the act,” said Boden. “Caspar gave him a shot of morphia with the hypodermic.” Caspar was one of the Danes who had been a chemist in his previous existence. The morphia he gave was a full lethal dose, and presently the body on the deck found peace.
“Where had we better put him?” asked Boden. “I suppose you want to take him home with us.”
“Sure we do,” said Colvin. “What do you think we stopped to pick the mugger up for? Sure we take him home.”
“What’ll we do with him?”
They were well clear now of the burning ship, which showed as a faint, distant glow on the horizon. Colvin called André to the wheel and handed over to him. He went forward with Boden, and surveyed the body on the deck.
“Two of you get him down the aft hatch and lay him between the fuel-tanks,” he said. One of the Danes translated into French. “Then get a blanket to put over him, the way that we won’t keep on seeing him.”
So they brought him back to England. I do not think that anybody in the ship was much affected by the sight of him, unless perhaps Colvin himself. Bitterness had warped most of the rest of them; if they had any feeling in the matter it was satisfaction.
Certainly Boden displayed no regret. He squatted on the steering-cable case in the lee of the wheel-house with Colvin, just before the dawn. They had been ten miles off Ushant by their reckoning at 04.30 and had set a course for the Lizard, planning to get as far as possible from the French coast before day betrayed them. In the east a greyness was beginning. They had empty mugs, which had contained hot cocoa, on the deck beside them. It had stopped raining, but the decks were wet and their oilskins hung in stiff, clammy folds. It was rather cold; there was the strong saltiness of a small ship at sea.
Colvin said: “You’d better go down and turn in for a spell. I’ll call you in a while.”
“I’d rather stay on deck. I don’t want to turn in.”
“Not sick, are you?” There was some motion on the vessel, but though Colvin had watched for it he had never yet seen the R.N.V.R. officer seasick. His time in trawlers had hardened him.
“I’m not sick, sir. But I shouldn’t sleep if I went down. I’d rather stay up here. You go on down; I’ll call you if we see an aircraft.”
“Why wouldn’t you sleep? You’re not thinking about that dead Jerry, are you? You don’t want to think of that.”
Boden said: “Just what I do want to think about.”
“What’s that you said?” The older man was puzzled.
Boden turned to him. “I don’t mind looking at that Jerry. I wouldn’t mind a hundred or so like him, all stretched out in rows and stinking.” He paused, and then he said: “I was married, you know.”
Colvin glanced at him in wonder. “I never knew that.”
“I don’t tell people, much.” He hesitated. “She got burned to death in one of the first London blitzes. She had to go to London because we were going to have a kid. And the Jerries got her....”
He stared out over the dim sea. An early gull rose from the water at the bow, wheeled crying above their heads, and soared away into the murk.
Colvin said: “Say, I’m sorry. It’s tough when a thing like that has to happen. I never knew a thing about it.”
Boden said: “I sort of keep it under my hat.”
Presently Colvin asked: “How long ago did that happen, lad?”
“Just a year — almost exactly.” He turned to the other. “I’d rather that you didn’t tell the others,” he said. “I sort of like to keep it to myself. I wouldn’t have told you but for something that you said.”
“I’ll not say anything.” From the depths of his experience the older man sought for something that was comforting. “Was you married long?”
“Nearly two years.”
“How old was you then, when you got married?”
“Twenty-two. She was nineteen.”
Just a pair of kids, the merchant sailor thought. It was plenty tough. “Had you known each other long?”
“We’d known each other all our lives. Her father and my father are partners in the firm, you see.” He turned to Colvin; for the first time in a year he was speaking freely. “We very nearly didn’t get married at all, because of that. We’d always done things together, all our lives, and it seemed so — so unadventurous to go and marry somebody that you’d known all your life as soon as you were old enough. As if we might miss something. And then we thought we might miss something bigger if we didn’t....”
Colvin said: “I guess you had all your eggs in the one basket.”
“What?” And then he said: “Well, that’s so. I never got much fun out of going around or dancing with anyone else.”
The older man said: “It’s just dandy if it happens to work out like that. But then when something happens, like it did with you, you’re in an awful spot.”
“I know.”
The dawn was grey now, over a cold grey sea that foamed past them and slopped in at the scuppers as they rolled. “I never got so deep as that with any one woman,” said Colvin. “Maybe I’m not the kind for a great lover. Maybe I think too much of myself.”
Boden glanced curiously at the handsome, middle-aged man by him. “Were you ever married?”
“Lord, yes,” said the other. “I was married earlier’n you, way back in the last war when I was twenty-one. I been married five or six times, maybe more. Over’n over again. But it never took.”
For the first time in a year Boden was intrigued, taken out of himself by interest in someone else’s affairs. He said: “What used to happen?”
“Most times I lost my job,” the merchant sailor said. “That happens pretty frequent in the shipping business. Like when I was in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the import trade. Then they repealed the prohibition law, and we was all on the beach, all the lot of us together. Well, some stuck around in Halifax till they were down and out, but that was never my way. I just drew all I had and gave it to the wife — and there was quite a wad, close on two thousand dollars. I took fifty of them and skipped out to look for work some other place — shipped as a deck-hand on a freighter going south. Three months later I was master of a coaster sailing from Shanghai. Chinese, of course, but better’n nothing.”
He paused. “Well, there you are,” he said. “I never was much of a hand writing letters, nor was she. After saying I was quite well and was she quite well and the weather was lousy I was finished, ‘n you can’t keep married upon that when you’re eight thousand miles apart. Even the Pope of Rome himself couldn’t keep married that way.”
“No,” said Boden. It seemed the only thing to say.
“It’s the way things are in the shipping business,” said Colvin. “Mind you, I’m not saying that I’m not to blame. I guess I always wanted to go places and do things more’n I wanted to stay home with the wife. And then you get stuck down in some foreign place like Shanghai that I was telling you about, or else maybe in Sydney, and every month you think that you’ll be on the beach again, and it drifts on for years. And then maybe you get a notice that you’ve been divorced for desertion, or else maybe you get so God-damned lonely that you just say what the hell, and go and marry someone else. And in a year or two it starts again all over.”
Boden said: “You never felt like chucking up the sea and getting a job on shore, and settling down?”
Colvin laughed. “I did do that one time,” he said. “I got a shore job in Frisco; I was Marine Superintendent of the Manning Stevens Line. Not a lot of jack attached to it, but I don’t need much. We got a little apartment out in Oakland, and everything was dandy while it lasted. But it didn’t last.”
