The stranger seemed to be able to read his mind. “No you don’t,” he said. “If you edge back another inch I’ll shoot, and I don’t mind telling you that I am a prizewinner at revolver shooting.”
“Give me a minute to think it over,” said Dundas.
“I will if you turn round with your back to me. Do it slowly now. If you move too quickly I’ll shoot.”
Dundas moved slowly round, shuffling cautiously on the floor boards. Immediately he felt something prod him in the back.
“This bullet will rip your spine clear out,” said the stranger softly. “I warn you to make up your mind quickly. If this fog clears I’m done for, you see, and I’m not taking any risks.”
Dundas trod his mind as a squirrel treads its mill, but no help came. It was clear that this man was desperate. Whatever he had done, whatever he wanted to do, it was sufficiently obvious that he was prepared to risk his own life. It was equally obvious that he would not allow the life of any other to obstruct his purpose.
“Come on,” said the stranger again; “sixty pounds is sixty pounds to a fisherman—and the season’s bad, I know. Heroics won’t help you if you’re a corpse. Better take my offer and keep your mouth shut about it. Nobody will know, you can say you got lost in the fog, and couldn’t get home again—engine broke down or something. Any tale….Come on!”
“Can you give me any help when we get near the Belgian coast?” said Dundas suddenly. “I don’t know the marks.”
“Good man,” said the stranger; “then you’ll do it. No, I shan’t be able to help you much. I don’t know much about it.”
“Oh, well,” said Dundas slowly. “Doesn’t seem as if I’ve any choice, and I don’t suppose it’ll do much harm.”
“That’s right,” said the stranger. “That’s splendid. Shall we unloosen the ropes.”
“Er—cast off—er, yes. Just a minute. Let me light the binnacle lamp. It’ll be no joke working through in the fog, you know.”
“I know,” said the other, “but I’ve been waiting for a fog for a whole week now.”
Dundas knelt down and, striking a match, lit the tiny lamp of the boat compass that he carried. The green card shone wanly in its glow. He could feel the muzzle of the stranger’s revolver still pressed against his back.
“Sorry,” said the other, “but I must safeguard myself till we’re out of the harbour anyway.”
Fumbling, Dundas cleared the mooring lines, and the boat drifted away from the wall. Immediately she was lost to the world.
Dundas jerked at the starting strap, and the engine came throatily to life. Foam swirled under the stern of the boat, and she surged forward through the unseen water. The fog dragged past them, faintly gold in the light of the lamp.
“We’ll have that out,” said Dundas after a moment; “the visibility’s impossible as it is.”
The stranger had squatted himself down next to the engine casing on the starboard side. He stretched out and grasped the lamp, found the wick lever, and turned it out.
They went on into the blackness with only the faint green eye of the binnacle making sign of life in it all.
After a minute or two Dundas put down the helm gently. “We ought to make the entrance now,” he said.
The boat lifted to a little swell in immediate answer, and there was a momentary glance of a high black wall. From its top someone challenged, and Dundas answered, giving his name and the name of the boat.
The next instant they were outside in the live water, pitching a little to the lop that came up from the Downs.
“A-ah,” said the stranger relaxing. “And that’s that. Now you play me straight, young fellow, and you’ll be sixty pounds the richer. How soon can we get across? It’s about fifty-five miles, I should say—that’s seven hours by this boat?”
Dundas shrugged in the darkness. “It’s sixty-five miles as the crow flies. We’ll have to reckon with the tides, though.”
“When’s high tide?” said the stranger.
“High tide—oh, you mean the flood? Well, I’m not exactly sure,” said Dundas slowly. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll go south and a little east now, and round the heel of the Goodwins, and then stand out with the flood, and get right across. With luck we’ll make it by two o’clock.”
“That’ll suit me,” said the stranger, “but why not go straight?”
“Well, you see, this is an underpowered boat…” said Dundas slowly. “Don’t you know anything about the sea?”
“Nothing,” said the other airily. “I was in the cavalry.”
“The Uhlans?” said Dundas swiftly.
“Don’t ask questions, my little friend. You look after your steering.” He settled himself more comfortably. “Remember,” he added after a moment, “I still have my revolver in my hand. If you betray me, take me up to one of your patrol ships or anything, we will both die.”
Dundas grunted and peered into the binnacle.
For a long hour there was silence. Only the steady mutter of the engine, and the occasional lift and rattle of the screw in the stern glands, broke across the silence of the night. Water noises from the bow, and the lap-lap along the sides were somehow merged in the immense silence of the sea.
Only once, far away, they heard a bell buoy, and once the clatter of a ship’s bell at anchor. At the end of the hour Dundas spoke again. “We will have cleared the Goodwins now,” he said. “I’m going to stand out across the heel of them. Like to see the course we’re making?”
“How?” said the other.
“Look at the compass,” said Dundas.
“And bring my head in front of you with my back to you?” said the other. “No, no, my little friend. Remember only that I have my revolver and the soft-nosed bullets—and that if I die, you die too. The steering is your business—so long as you remember that.”
Dundas grunted again, and shifted his helm very slightly.
For another hour they held on in silence, then Dundas heard a slight noise from for’ard. A faint, rasping noise. A moment later it came again, an unmistakable snore.
He nodded grimly to himself.
The snoring went on, grew louder, became more steady, more settled. It was plain that the stranger was fast asleep. For three hours it went on, varied occasionally by little grunts and slight pauses following a change of position.
Dundas occupied himself steadily with his helm, making tiny alterations of course from time to time, checking them carefully with a great silver watch that he held in the light of the binnacle lamp.
Quarter of an hour before midnight the stranger awoke. Dundas felt the jerk as he straightened up, hurriedly.
“You’ve been asleep,” he said quietly, “for a long time.”
The other muttered incoherently for a moment, and then said yes. Presently the implication seemed to strike him. “And you tried nothing, no, no funny business.” He paused. “That was good,” he said. “You are being sensible, my young friend. Sixty pounds is sixty pounds. Ach—I was tired. Three days and three nights without sleep, most of them spent in the fields of the wretched country behind Ramsgate. Lieber Goit, I was tired.”
“Three days and three nights. That’s since Monday, then?”
“Yes,” said the other.
“Monday was the day of the big explosion?”
“What of it?” said the other.
“You….”
“Partly,” said the other cynically. “Since you are being sensible it does not matter if you know.”
“But you are English, aren’t you? Your voice….”
“Come, come,” said the stranger. “I was at an English school, but you knew from the start….”
“I suppose so,” said Dundas grudgingly.
“And how near are we?”
“Not far now,” said Dundas. “We should
get there a little earlier than I thought, half-past one perhaps.”
“Good,” said the German.
With long spells of silence and occasional brief conversations they pressed on through the night. Once or twice the fog thinned slightly, so that they could see a boat’s length from them over the darkling water. Twice Dundas tried to get the German to tell him why he had to be at Bruges in so painful a hurry, but the other avoided his questions adroitly.
Every now and then he seemed to be listening.
“Strange,” he said once. “Strange, we should have heard the sound of the guns by now.”
“Nothing strange in fog,” said Dundas; “you can hear something that’s miles away sometimes, and another time miss a fog gun when you’re right on top of it.”
The night was getting on now. When Dundas next looked at his watch it was a quarter past one. “We should be very nearly there,” he said. “Can you take a sounding?”
“What do I do?” said the other.
“Feel in the locker to your right and see if you can find a fishing line with a lead,” said Dundas. “I’ll slow down, and you throw it ahead of you, feel when it touches the bottom, and then measure it with your arms outstretched.”
The other fumbled for a bit, experimented once, and then after a second cast said, “Nine times.”
“Call it eight fathoms,” said Dundas. “We’re closing in on the coast.”
Five minutes later he slowed for another cast.
“Six times,” said the German.
“Getting there; we’re inside the five fathom line.”
Five minutes later they heard the sound of little seas on sand, a soft rustle that was yet loud enough to come over the noise of the engine, and the rustle and rush of their progress. Somewhere in the darkness a sleepy gull called.
“We’re there,” said Dundas whispering; “get ready.”
The other stood up, wrapping his coat about him. Even as he did so Dundas switched off the engine, and in absolute silence they glided in. Suddenly the boat grated, dragged forward, and grated again. The German lurched, steadied himself with a hand on the thwart and said: “Lieber Gott.”
“The money,” said Dundas.
“But yes,” said the German, fumbling in his pocket. “You are sure this is Belgium?”
“By the distance we’ve run,” said Dundas, “and the time, it must be.”
“Ha,” said the other, “take it!”
Dundas met the other’s hand and took a rolled bundle of notes. “Thank you,” he said. “Get out over the bows; there’ll be a little more than a foot of water, and give me a shove off before you go. I must get afloat again.”
The other lumbered over the side, splashed for a moment, and then, bending down, heaved. The boat slid astern, Dundas pushing on the other side with the loom of an oar.
In a moment it floated free, surging back into deepish water. Dundas straightened himself, the starting strap in his hand.
“High tide’s at three,” he called out loudly.
He heard the other splash through the shallows, and then a scrunch as he reached the dry sand beyond. A voice came clear out of the fog to him: “What’s that?”
He heard the feet run on, scrunching over the sand and then stop suddenly. The voice came out to him again. “There’s water here. A strip of sand and then….”
“High tide’s at three,” shouted Dundas again, “but the Goodwins are covered before the flood.” He bent down and jerked at the starting strap and the engine woke to life. Sitting down he headed the boat round until her bows pointed a little west of north.
Swiftly he crossed the four-mile circle of water inside the Goodwin sands that he had thrashed round and round so many times during the long night. There was six miles between home and the neck of the South Goodwins, upon which a lone man stood watching the slow, relentless, upward movement of the tide.
“Thirty dead in the big explosion,” said Dundas softly to himself. “Women, too. Well…” he fingered the roll of notes. “Dirty money’s as good as clean to the Red Cross fund. And the Goodwins pays for all.”
UNDER ENEMY COLOURS
CAPTAIN A. O. POLLARD
ALMOST ENTIRELY forgotten today, except by collectors of crime and espionage fiction, Captain Alfred Oliver Pollard (1893–1960) was once an enormously prolific writer of spy and adventure novels, producing forty-six novels in those genres, published between 1930 and 1962, as well as short stories and nonfiction, notably books about military deeds and history, including Fire-Eater: the Memoirs of a V.C. (1932), an autobiography focused on his military career in which he makes it obvious that he enjoyed the fighting—especially the killing of the enemy.
Pollard volunteered for service in the British Army in 1914 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1914 in the Honourable Artillery Company. He saw combat frequently, being wounded twice, but returned to battle almost immediately both times. His extraordinary bravery on the front lines earned Britain’s highest honors, including the Victoria Cross, and he is reported to have been England’s most decorated soldier of the Great War.
His first book, Pirdale Island (1930), and other of his earliest titles were crime stories. He soon turned to thrillers pitting British soldiers and agents against the Nazis and, when that war was settled, turned his heroic characters against those from the Soviet Union
Among his other fiction, Pollard wrote science fiction novels in which he introduced inventions created by the villains, designed to be used for evil purposes. In The Murder Germ (1937), for example, a mad scientist infects innocent people with a concoction that causes them to commit unspeakable acts that mirror his own.
Virtually all of his books carry the byline that includes his rank.
I have been unable to trace the original publication of this story. It was collected in My Best Spy Story, edited anonymously (London, Faber & Faber, 1938).
UNDER ENEMY COLOURS
A. O. POLLARD
THE NIGHT WAS pitch black, absolutely ideal for the job, reflected Second-Lieutenant Martin Westlake of the Royal Flying Corps. Provided he did not lose his bearings, which, in his youthful self-confidence, he did not think at all likely, his task would be completed and he would be on his way home again in less than an hour.
“Five kilometres north-east of the G in Veldeghem,” the Colonel had said. “Shut off your engine and glide down to fifteen hundred feet before you give the signal to jump.”
Martin glanced over the side of his cockpit. There was very little to be seen except a feathery layer of cloud but, through a gap, twenty thousand feet below him, he glimpsed the everlasting Very lights which marked the position of the opposing trenches.
They were over the lines, then, and from now on he would have to keep his eyes skinned for signs of enemy scouts. If he were spotted before he had dumped his cargo the whole show would have to be abandoned.
The “cargo,” seated grim and silent in the rear cockpit, was a Belgian agent who was being dropped by parachute to glean some vital information for the Intelligence Corps. Beyond the fact that the green-tabbed major who brought him to the aerodrome had introduced him as Monsieur Jacques Poulière, Martin knew nothing whatever about him.
From various rumours that had been circulating for the past month, however, he guessed that the spy’s mission was connected with an expected German push. Aerial photographs had revealed the presence of a number of new dumps behind the enemy lines and no doubt Intelligence were anxious to ascertain the approximate date when the assault would begin.
Martin kept steady on his course for another ten minutes. At the end of that time he calculated he ought to be in the vicinity of Roulers. It was a German rail head and he was well aware, from a reconnaissance made a few days earlier, that there was a big concentration of troops in the neighbourhood. Had the night been clearer the sky would have been alive
with searchlight beams and he would have been lucky to get by without a challenge.
After Roulers it should be safe enough to drop down to ten thousand feet, or even less. If a Hun searchlight unit caught him in a beam so far into enemy territory, the black crosses pasted on the underside of his lower wings would convince them that he was one of their own pilots.
Better give it another five minutes to make sure. Veldeghem was only ten kilometres farther on. Even if the wind had veered a bit and he was off his estimated track he should have no difficulty in spotting the place where Poulière was to leave him, once he got below the clouds which had stood him in such good stead.
“You can’t make any mistake,” the Colonel had assured him. “There’s a river with the railway crossing it at right-angles. If Poulière drops off when your leading edge cuts the point of intersection he should land just right.”
The five minutes was up at last, and closing down his throttle Martin put the nose of his Bristol Fighter into a glide. At every two thousand feet fall in height, registered on the altimeter, he reopened his throttle and flew for half a minute to prevent his engine getting too cold; then throttled back again and continued his descent.
He was down to eight thousand feet and still the cloud was too dense for him to make out any landmarks from which to check his position. According to time reckoning he ought to be very close to his objective.
For the first time he wished that visibility was a trifle clearer. Should he risk going down a little lower, or would it be better to fly about until he found a rift which would give him a peep at the ground?
The problem was acute. If he flew around and failed to find a break, he might lose himself. On the other hand if he went lower and was spotted before he was ready to dump his passenger he might jeopardize Poulière’s chances of an undetected landing.
No great imagination was needed to visualize Poulière’s fate if he fell into enemy hands. There would be a drumhead court martial followed by a dawn parade for a firing squad. A Belgian spy was too sharp a thorn in the German plans for any expectation of leniency.
The Big Book of Espionage Page 21
