by Nevil Shute
She said: “What are you going to do, sir?”
I yawned. “I’m going to have a double whisky. I shall stay up a bit longer.”
She said: “I think I ought to stay, sir. I’ll go and see if I can make a cup of tea.”
She went and raked out the night porter, and presently she came back with her tea while McNeil and I drank whisky. There was nothing we could do but wait. McNeil made up the fire. Then we sat on before it, half asleep, hour after hour.
At twenty-five to three the telephone-bell rang. I roused and heard the night porter going to it in the passage. I went out and took the receiver from him.
“Duty Officer here, sir,” it said. “Your ship has just signalled for permission to come in.”
A great load slipped from my shoulders. “Fine,” I said. “I shall wait here till I hear her pass up-river; then I shall get along to Dittisham and meet her there.”
I rang off; behind me were McNeil and the Wren. “Coming in now,” I said. “We’ll wait here till she passes and then get along.”
McNeil said we’d better have another whisky, and I didn’t disagree. The Wren was radiant. “It’s splendid — I’ve been terribly anxious. It’s silly, I know.”
“They’ve done a bit of good this time,” I told her. And then the telephone-bell went again.
“Duty Officer here, sir. Your ship has just made this signal: ‘Request permission to berth alongside at Dartmouth to land casualties.’ Is that all right?”
“That’s all right,” I said. “Where will you put her?”
He thought for a minute. “It’s raining so hard. The west ferry pontoon is vacant, and that’s got a roof. The ambulance can back down there and we can have some light. I’ll put her at the west ferry pontoon, sir.”
I said: “Right. Make that signal to her. Then ring up the hospital and tell them to prepare for casualties.” Behind me I could feel the Wren listening. “Ring up Dittisham and get that ambulance and the surgeon back, quick as they can get. See if the hospital can send down a few ratings for stretcher-bearers, and get a rating or two down to the pontoon to help them berth her.”
“Very good, sir.”
I put down the receiver and turned to McNeil. “She’s got some casualties to land. She was bound to have, from what we heard. She should be berthing before long now.”
By my side the Wren said timidly: “Have they been in action again, sir?”
I glanced down at her; all the sparkle had gone out of her and she was looking tired and worn. I could not tell her much. “They were in action, I think,” I said. “If what we heard was true, they’ve done very well. But we shall know before long.”
We gulped down the whisky and put on our coats. It was pouring with rain; outside it was pitch-dark and windy, a dirty kind of night. The streets and the quayside were quite deserted. The pontoon was only a hundred yards from the hotel; I sent the Wren to drive the truck round and McNeil and I walked across through the rain.
For a time we three huddled on the pontoon, finding what shelter there was in the black darkness between bales and crates, staring down over the black running water to the river mouth. Then she came. We saw her moving white mast-head light and then her red port light; we stood there watching those two slowly moving lights till she loomed up on top of us out of the darkness to the slow uneven chugging of her engine in the rain.
A truck drew up just before she berthed, and a petty officer and a couple of ratings in oilskins tumbled out of it and began fumbling with a flood-light of some sort to get it rigged. I moved up to a bollard and caught her heaving-line myself, and with McNeil pulled in her warp and made her fast. The ratings took her stern line and the light came on; then we were over the bulwark and on board.
In the shadowy light we saw that she had taken punishment. There was a gaping hole in deck and bulwarks at the bow, starboard side, close up beside the stem; they seemed to have stuffed it up from the inside with sails or mattresses. Around the flame-gun it looked as if they had had a fire. One hatch was open. Half of the little wheel-house had been carried away, and the same burst had damaged the engine, cracking one cylinder casting; they had come home on five.
Colvin came to meet me from the wheel. “‘Evening, Colvin,” I said. “What casualties have you got?”
“One stretcher case,” he said. “Louis Richier got a splinter in his back. Then there’s two walking cases. Captain Simon lost two fingers, sir — left hand. Jules Clisson — he’s got a wound in the throat and jaw.”
I said: “Any dead?”
“Two, sir. André, the maître, he got killed right out. I made that chap Rollot maître in his place right away; them Frenchies won’t work right without they have a straw-boss. And then Caspar, one of the two Danes, he died about midday.”
It was a heavy list for so small a ship’s company. “I’m very sorry you got this bad luck,” I said. “Did you go into the harbour?”
He stared at me. “How in heck did you know that?”
“We got a report a few hours afterwards from somewhere on the other side. It said you got two Raumboote moored up against the quay.”
“Sure we did,” he said. “We made a proper muck of them. But then one of them little cannon, like you wanted us to have, got going and did all this to us in two shakes just as we were getting back into the rain.”
“You’re not hurt yourself?”
“Not a scratch, nor Boden, nor Rhodes. Rhodes got a bit of fire all round about him when they split his oil-pipe for him, but he hopped out all right. I reckon his asbestos overall saved him.”
“Did he get burned at all?” I asked, thinking of Worcester Sauce.
“I looked him all over this morning myself, but I couldn’t find nothing. I reckon he was too darned quick.”
The rain streamed down upon us steadily; in the shadowy half-light everything was soaking wet. The ship had water in her, too; I could hear it swishing as she moved at the pontoon. “She’s not making much,” said Colvin. “We pump her out each watch, ‘n that’s enough to keep it under.”
The ambulance came slowly backing on to the pontoon, and the young surgeon came on board. “It’s a fine show,” I said to Colvin. “Far better than I ever thought you’d do. Now let’s get these casualties on shore.”
Simon, still in his blue civilian suit, his left hand grotesquely bandaged and in a sling, was talking to McNeil down aft. I had a word with him, and then set to work with the surgeon to get the stretcher case on deck and to the ambulance. I glanced aside as the stretcher was eased over the bulwarks on to the pontoon. In the dim semi-darkness Rhodes was standing on the pontoon with his Wren, in among the crates, in the wet, windy rain. He was in fishing clothes, as they all were. The two were standing very close together, holding hands, watching what went on on board the ship. They did not seem to be talking.
We got the casualties into the ambulance and it moved off. McNeil was taking Simon independently to the hospital; it was necessary that he should get his information out of Simon before the doctors got at him to dull his mind with pain or drugs. They went into the truck with the Wren driving them; I saw them off and turned to Rhodes.
“You’ve had a pasting,” I said. “I’m very sorry. How did you come to go in there?”
He was dead-tired, almost falling over as he stood. “Simon told us when he came back,” he said. “You couldn’t miss a chance like that. If there’d been fifty men behind us we could have taken the whole town.”
He was too tired to give a proper story, and I didn’t ask for more. “As it is,” I said, “you’ll take a drop of leave.” I turned back to the ship. Colvin was there on deck, and Boden with him. “Would you like to leave her berthed here for the night?” I asked. “I’ll get you transport up to Dittisham. Or will you take her up?”
He said: “The ferry comes here in the morning. And besides, she’s not just like we’d care to have the public looking at her, sir, in daylight. I’d like to take her to the mooring ‘n finish off the
job.”
I nodded; it was better so. I went to telephone the shore party to get out in the motor-boat to meet us at the mooring with a lantern, and to telephone to the young surgeon to get back to Dittisham. Then I got back on Geneviève; we cast off and felt our way up-river in the darkness and the rain.
Boden was standing by me at one time. I said to him: “You’re not hurt, Boden?”
He shook his head. “I was lucky. But we hurt a lot of Jerries, sir. Rhodes must have got over fifty with the flame-gun this time, on the Raumboote and the jetty.”
“The French got some,” I told him. “They seem to have risen and attacked them in the streets.”
“The French did? Oh, that’s fine...” he breathed.
I saw them all on shore and the ship safely in the hands of the base party. Back in the villas I stayed with them while they had a meal; most of them were too tired to eat and took only a drink of cocoa or of wine before they tumbled into bed to sleep. One or two wanted the assistance of the surgeon and his sedatives; I stayed there till they were all asleep. The young surgeon would stay with them till they woke, sleeping himself upon an empty cot.
It was six o’clock and very nearly dawn before I was ready to go. The Wren was waiting there for me with the truck, looking about all in. She drove me back to Dartmouth in the rain.
This is the story of what happened on their operation, made out from the official report and from what they told me in conversation from time to time:
After they left Dartmouth they set a course to pass ten miles off Ushant, and they held to that all day. It was raining practically the whole time that they were out, with only short intervals; we had chosen those conditions for their trip, of course, but it didn’t make it easier for them. Apart from navigation difficulties, they were all wet after the first few hours, and stayed wet for the remainder of the time.
They saw a German aeroplane towards the evening of the first day, perhaps thirty miles from the north coast of Brittany, flying north-west. It was a Heinkel III; it passed within a mile and it paid no attention to them. No report it may have made of them flying low and purposeful just underneath the clouds, did them any harm.
They were off Ushant at about eight o’clock at night in darkness and wet mist, and altered course down into L’Iroise. From then onwards it was tricky, anxious work for Colvin and Boden. Visibility was practically nil; from time to time they heard the foghorn at Le Jument, but not clearly enough to take a bearing of it. They went ahead boldly trusting to their tidal calculations and dead reckoning, and stopping every now and then to make a sounding to compare with the depth shown at their estimated position on the chart.
Two hours later they had run their distance. They were making for a little rocky cove that lies between Beuzec and the Saints. The cliffs run straight along that portion of the coast a hundred feet or so in height, but at this cove a sheep-track ran down to a tiny beach, completely covered at high water. They had a good map of the country behind. Simon had studied it till he knew the way from the beach to Le Rouzic farm by heart, but now their trouble was to find the beach.
They were surrounded by a wet, clammy mist; it was pitch-dark and they could see nothing. Soundings supported their dead-reckoning position, more or less, but that meant little over a sea bottom that was generally flat. They stopped their engine and lay for a minute or two listening. They heard nothing.
They put the engine on again and went ahead dead slow, peering into the darkness, ready to go hard astern before they struck. They went on for ten minutes, stopped again to listen, and went on. Then they stopped again, and this time they heard the wash of waves upon rocks and sea-birds crying in the darkness. Immediately Colvin anchored, and they had a consultation in the tiny chart-room.
“This is the coast all right,” the navigator said. “But where your beach is I’m darned if I know. It might be three miles either way of us.”
Simon said: “Three miles only? Not more than that?”
Colvin shook his head. “We should be within that much.” They had confidence in him.
Simon folded up the map and put it in the inside pocket of his blue civilian suit. “I will go and see if I can climb the cliff,” he said. “To-morrow night I will be at the beach at midnight. If it is clear, you steam along the coast if you cannot find the beach, and I will flash the torch. If it is thick, like this, then Boden lands and comes to meet me at Le Rouzic farm; the boat waiting on the rocks. That is quite clear?”
“Okay.”
“If you do not find me, you must not stay here after three o’clock. You must go back to England; I will get back in another way.”
They turned out the little oil lamp over the chart-table, pulled back the hatch, and went on deck. The Bretons had put the light punt that they carried over the side; it lay against the topsides in the running tide. Two of the Bretons dropped down into it and Simon followed them; Boden came last of all.
From the deck Colvin said softly: “All the best,” and Rhodes said: “Good luck.” The painter was dropped down into the bows and the punt slid astern; she vanished from their sight before the oars were shipped.
Presently, pulling straight inshore, they came to rocks on which the sea was breaking. They skirted them eastwards till they found a possible landing in a cleft, and Simon clambered out in the dim light, slipping and stumbling as he went. From the boat Boden watched him venturing towards the shore for ten yards; then he was lost to sight.
It was arranged that he should flash a series of dots with the torch from the cliff-top if he were safely up; a series of dots and dashes was a call for help. They lay off in the punt a little distance from the rocks where he had landed, straining their eyes into the darkness. A quarter of an hour later came a series of dots well up above their heads. They turned the punt and rowed out to sea, heading a little bit up-tide and steering with a dim light over the boat compass. They found the vessel with some difficulty and got the punt on board. Then they weighed, turned to the north-west to give a wide berth to the Saints, and put to sea.
Simon had little difficulty with the climb. He found a spur of rock and went straight up the ridge; it grew steeper, but presently he felt grass roots and earth beneath his hands. He went on up a steep, grassy slope, scrambling upwards with hands, feet, and knees. The darkness and the mist prevented him from seeing what he was doing, which was perhaps as well; it struck him presently that the sea noise was very nearly straight below him. Then the slope eased, and presently he could stand up. He turned, and with his torch shaded by his open coat, made his series of dots in the direction that he judged he had come from. Then he faced inland and went on.
He had a little luminous compass, and by this he made his way inland. He came to a stone wall, crossed it, and went on over what appeared to be a pasture, stumbling among gorse-bushes. Then came a field of stubble and another pasture, and then there was a wood before him.
He shaded the torch carefully and looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past twelve; he had been on shore about an hour. Counting the time that he had taken to climb up the cliff, he judged that he had come about a mile inland; half a mile farther on there should be a road running parallel to the coast.
He skirted round the wood and found the road immediately.
He stood behind the hedge with the road before him; if there were German patrols they would very likely be upon it, and he did not dare to risk a meeting. No French civilian would be innocently wandering the roads beside the coast at midnight on a night like that; an encounter with the Germans would mean certain arrest. He was uncertain which way he should go. The road ran roughly east and west; it was marked on his map, but he might be anywhere along the length of it.
He stood there, sniffing at the wind and rain. Presently it came into his mind that he was too far to the east; he turned west and began to follow the road, skirting along behind the stone walls that bordered it, following the field. His eyes were well accustomed to the darkness by that time; he could see abou
t ten yards through the driving rain. He was soaked to the skin.
He went about half a mile, and came to a cart-track leading into the road and a ruinous barn beside it. He gave the barn a very wide berth; it might well be a German strong-point full of enemy troops. Two hundred yards farther on he huddled down into a thicket of brambles, pulled out his map, and very cautiously examined it in a faint glow from his torch. He was all wrong. The wood and the barn and the track were shown approximately in the relationship that he had discovered, but he was a good two miles too far west. He must go back and go the other way.
At about half-past two the buildings of Le Rouzic farm loomed up before him. In London, in the office in Pall Mall, warm, well lit, comfortable, and secure, he had been told what he must do. The lad in the French uniform had told him in great detail. He must not go through the yard because the dog was there. He must be very careful in case Germans were billeted there, as sometimes happened. He must go through the orchard; in the darkness and the rain he found his way. He must leave the pond upon his left and he would come to the laiterie; counting from the door, the first two windows must be passed by. The third window was the one.
Simon stood there, drenched in the rain and wind, tapping in the rhythm that he had been taught.
Presently the window stirred and opened a chink. The voice of an old man whispered in the Breton dialect: “Is anybody there?”
Simon said: “I have a letter for you from your son.”
The old man whispered: “There is a door along this way. Go there and I will let you in.”
Ten minutes later he was sitting by the fire, newly revived with wood, stripping the wet clothes off him. A candle stood upon the table. The old man, in night-shirt and a jacket over it, was reading the letter aloud, slowly and carefully. His wife stood by him, bare feet showing under her black dress, hastily put on; the grey hair hung down on her shoulders. Hovering in the background there were other women, partly dressed, keeping out of sight, and listening.
