by Nevil Shute
“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, 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.”
Boden asked: “What happened?”
“The bloody war came,” the older man said simply. “Just another thing, like happens all the time. It didn’t work then, going on in Oakland. I stuck it long as I could, ’n then I gave her all the jack I’d got saved up, about six hundred dollars, and skipped it back to England in a tug.”
“Where is she now?”
“I dunno. Eight or nine months since I had a letter. She don’t write much. Time she’s got the ink and the pen and the paper all together in one place she’s forgot what she wanted to say and lost the stamp.”
Boden grinned. “When did you last write?”
“Oh shucks, I couldn’t say. Longer ago ’n that.”
There was a long silence.
“I did think, one time, I was settled down for good,” Colvin said. “The job was steady and all regular, not like it was in Halifax. The last marine superintendent that they had held it down till he was sixty-eight, ’n only quit then because he wanted to. And one time I was all set to do the same. We was even talking about having kids, which is a thing I never held with in my way of life. But now, it’s just the same as it’s been all the time—I dunno why. Two years since I skipped out of Oakland, ’n six thousand miles—maybe seven.”
He sounded tired and depressed. Boden said gently: “Why don’t you write and get her over here?”
The other shook his head. “It wouldn’t be practical,” he said. “Junie’s a small town girl from a burg called East Naples, in Arkansas. Maybe she’s gone back home by this time. I did think once that I might try and save the jack to get her over. But when you come to think of it, I’d have been a sap. Like as not by the time she got here I’d have been in Capetown or some other place; we went ’most everywhere in my last ship before we settled down to convoy duty. And then she always did have a bad break if it was possible to get one; like as not she’d have been sunk coming over, or if not that, then I’d have been sunk by the time she got here and then she’d be stuck here with not enough jack to get back to East Naples. You got to be practical.”
Boden nodded.
Colvin laughed. “As for this bloody racket that we’re in on now,” he said, “she’d likely be a widow before ever she left Oakland to come over.”
He got stiffly to his feet. “Toss you which of us goes down and has a caulk.”
“You go on down,” said Boden. “I shouldn’t sleep.”
“Okay.” He fumbled in his oilskins and pulled out a watch. “Send someone down to give me a shake at twenty to eight, ’n tell the cook I’ll want a mug of tea and a hot sausage ten to eight. Give you a spell at eight o’clock.”
“All right,” said Boden. “I’ll give you a call if we sight anything before.”
“Aye. I don’t want to miss nothing.”
They rolled on steadily towards the north, over a grey sea covered by low cloud. We had picked our weather well; they saw no aircraft until shortly after noon, when a Hudson picked them up and took the identification signal which they flashed at him. At 12.30 they sighted the Lizard about ten miles to the north and altered course up Channel. They entered Dartmouth at about 20.30, shortly before dark.
* * * * *
Simon wrote out his report and I had it typed that morning by one of the Wrens in N.O.I.C.’s office. At midday, McNeil, Simon, and I left for London. V.A.C.O. was at his office on the coast; we got there very late that night and saw him first thing in the morning.
He was very pleased with the ship, and listened very carefully to Simon as he was telling him about the raid. He was interested in the state of unreadiness of the Raumboot. “You mustn’t expect to catch them in that state again,” he said. “The Germans are very quick to pick up points of that sort.”
McNeil said: “It seems very doubtful if there were any survivors from the Raumboot to pass on the information.”
Presently V.A.C.O. asked: “Well now, what is the next move? Are we going to pay off the ship, or have you any plans for going on?”
Simon said quickly, before anybody else could speak: “My officers and crew, they all want to go out and do it again. I think we ought to go again, sir.”
McNeil said: “I agree with that, in principle. But before any operation of that kind is planned, we must have information about this one. I should oppose doing it again if the Germans are aware that it was a British ship operating a flame-thrower, for example.”
I said: “I agree absolutely with you there.”
McNeil said: “If the Germans are ignorant of that and treat it as an accident, then I think it might be done again. At some later stage we can arrange to tell the people of the town that it is British and Free French action against the Germans. But first of all we must have information.”
V.A.C.O. said: “I should think you’re right. Well, go ahead and get your information, and when you want to do another operation let me know.” He turned to me. “You will see that the ship has everything she may require, Martin, and keep in touch with Brigadier McNeil. Then, when you’re ready, come and talk to me again.”
We went back to London, to my office in the Admiralty. There Simon said to McNeil: “I have been thinking about getting information, sir. I see that it is necessary; I do not want to see my crew lose all their lives. I know Douarnenez, myself. In one day I could find out everything. If I could be put on shore one night, from Geneviève, not very far away, and picked up the next night, I could learn everything.”
I said: “Who’s to say that you wouldn’t land straight into the arms of a German patrol? Then the ship might be caught as well.”
McNeil said unexpectedly: “I think we could avoid that, with the information that we have.”
I was silent. He said to Simon: “I was thinking rather on those lines myself.”
McNeil turned back to me. “I should explain,” he said, “that we have been paying more attention to Douarnenez recently. It comes into our Class A category, the places that are ripe for armed revolt. The situation in the town is very tense.”
“Apart from that,” he said, “a landing in that neighbourhood is not difficult. We have done that several times recently.”
I knew nothing of the work of his department. “You have, have you?” I said. “Isn’t the coast guarded by the Germans?”
He said: “Oh, well, it’s guarded against an invading force. That is to say, there are patrols and strong points on the beaches, at the ports, and at all points where troops or armoured fighting vehicles could land. But, obviously, the Germans can’t even patrol the whole extent of coastline that they have to cover from the North Cape to the Pyrenees. They guard the salient points, and they keep strong reserves at nodal points inland ready to concentrate at any place that may be attacked. But in between the cliffs, where no landing in force could take place, those places are unguarded usually. They simply haven’t got the men.”
“I see,” I said.
“There is no difficulty in putting one man on shore from a row-boat in the night, upon the rocks at the foot of the cliffs between the Saints and Beuzec,” he said. “We have done that more than once. The only danger is the fishing fleet and the Raumboote; you’ve got to keep away from them.”
“All this is really rather outside my province,” I remarked.
He nodded. “Let me have a day or so to work upon it,” he said. “I think we could arrange an operation to put Simon on shore there and fetch him off again without too great a risk, say in a week from now.”
He went away and took Simon with him, and I set about the arrears of work that had piled up while I was away. I worked on at the Admiralty till ten o’clock on other matters; from time to time my mind drifted uneasily to Geneviève and had to be jerked back to the work in hand. And over a late supper in my flat before I went to bed, the matter crystallised. I was not happy about what we had decided, not quite content. Geneviève was a slow ship, though fast for her type, and we were proposing to send this slow ship right back into the same area where she had done much damage. She was a very vulnerable ship, unarmoured and almost unarmed, except for the flame-gun. A Raumboot would only have to withdraw out of range of our ship’s flame, which it could do easily with its high speed, and then we would be at its mercy. It could lay off and sink Geneviève at leisure.
We were getting terribly dependent upon secrecy, much too much so. We had had luck with a surprise attack; we must not overplay our hand.
If she could have a gun as well as the flame-thrower, a gun that would sink a Raumboot, that would enable her to fight it out on even terms, handicapped only by her less speed. Couldn’t we possibly install a 20-cm. cannon in her—for example, an Oerlikon or a Hispano?
These thoughts raced round in my hea
d all night and spoilt my sleep. The matter seemed so important to me in the morning that I passed the rest of my work over to my runner and went across to Naval Ordnance, and got a handbook and an installation drawing of the gun. By midday I was in the train again upon my way to Dartmouth, to see if we could not possibly find room for it, somewhere, somehow.
I got there too late in the evening to do anything before dark. I had arranged for a naval constructor to meet me on the ship at Dittisham next morning, and early in the morning the truck called for me to take me out to Dittisham, driven by the Wren.
“ ’Morning,” I said, and got into the truck. “How’s the rabbit?”
She smiled and flushed a little. “He’s very well, sir,” she replied.
It seemed to me that I had pulled her leg a little clumsily, and so I said:
“I used to keep a rabbit when I was a boy. They’re rather fun. But I haven’t had much to do with them since then.”
We turned out of the College grounds into the main road. “This one is tremendous fun,” she said. “He’s very tame with Lieutenant Rhodes. You ought to see them having a boxing match together. I’ve never seen a rabbit play like that. He plays just like a dog.”
I said: “Rhodes is very good with animals, I suppose.”
“I think he is,” she said. “He gets very much attached to them. He had a dog once that he had to put away when he joined up. He’s still very much cut up about that.”
We drove on to the ship, where I met the constructor. I had a short talk with Colvin about the gun; he was enthusiastic for it, but doubted if they could find room for it. He got hold of Rhodes and we went down to the hard and were put on board the ship; Boden met us at the gangway.
It was a disappointing forenoon. I had hoped that we could have sunk the gun down the aft hatch; I had forgotten how much gear the ship already had on board in the shape of extra fuel-tanks and the equipment of the flame-gun. We worked over the problem for an hour, and came at last to the conclusion that it was insoluble. For the gun to have any field of fire at all it would have to stand up clear above the deck, betraying the nature of the ship. It was impossible to fit that gun and still maintain the appearance of a fishing vessel.
