Ship of Force

by Alan Evans

  The dunes. Breath rasping, a pain in his chest and legs like jelly, his boots floundering in the soft sand. A ship-board life did not make for distance running and a glance showed him the others in no better shape than he, barely trotting on unsteady legs.

  The trench. Seeing it at the last instant and barely clearing it, staggering through the wire, falling and rolling on with a rip of cloth then on his knees and gasping out, “Down! Defensive fire! Hold ’em off!” He sprawled on the sand and tufted grass, fumbled the torch out of his pocket and flashed its beam at the sea. The beam wavered as he panted. Short. Long. — Short. Long. — Short…

  Then a pistol cracked out behind him and Buckley yelled, “Patrol!”

  Smith turned and saw them a hundred yards or so north, just vague, moving blobs of blacker shadow against the sky’s darkness. They were on the track that ran along the top of the dunes, two — three of them as the group disintegrated at Buckley’s shot, the men going down. Smith turned further, slithering right around on his stomach at the sound of more firing. The spurts of flame came from inland in the dunes and others close where Galt and Josef fired back at them. He looked again towards the sea and shouted hoarsely, “They’re here!” It was no more than a shadow but he knew it was the whaler. He stared down the twenty foot drop at the beach below. With the ebbing of the tide there was now nearly a hundred yards of that smooth, open sand before the sea. A hundred yards under fire. The shore guns would be manned…

  He wriggled back to Josef. “Give me that pistol!” He took it, then shouted, “Finlay! You and McGraw see these people to the boat! You can see it running in! We’ll keep the patrol busy!”

  He saw Eleanor Hurst’s face pale in the darkness and her eyes watching him. Then Finlay and McGraw each grabbed one of her arms and the three of them went plunging, sliding down the wall of sand to the beach below and Josef went after them.

  Smith shouted, “At the patrol! Rapid!” Because the patrol commanded the beach while the troops inland did not, though the muzzle flashes showed by their spreading that they were working around the flanks. Smith and Buckley and Galt fired away. The pistol-fire would hit no one, fired at that range and in the darkness but the patrol did not know that and Smith suspected they would be rear-echelon troops anyway. It worked. The patrol went to ground, their firing ceased and the figures running jerkily down across the sand to the surf passed unscathed.

  But now? He could just make out the black shape of the whaler in the surf, and the jerking, running shadows blending with that shape. The beach stretched out in a long, long two hundred yards.

  He said, “I’ll hold them off! You two go now!” He tossed aside his empty pistol, exchanged it for the other.

  Buckley said, “No bloody fear. We can go together an’ make a running fight of it.” Then he added, “sir.”

  Smith was speechless at this breach of discipline. And Buckley!

  But then Galt gave his view without being asked: “Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but ah don’t fancy the idea o’ leavin’ you up here. If we all goes thegither then yin can help the other.”

  Before Smith could answer the decision was made for them. A machine-gun hammered from the surf and tracer slid through the night in a line pointed at the luckless patrol. Smith blessed Dunbar’s foresight or caution in shipping the Vickers in the whaler. He shouted, “Right! Let’s go!”

  They jumped together. Smith had a brief, bizarre memory of playing like this as a child, falling through the air down the first steep drop then landing in a spurt of sand to slide down the last few feet of the wall to its foot. Then they were running for the whaler as the Vickers fired burst after racketing burst at the crest behind them until they drew close and the firing ceased. Smith could see the Vickers mounted in the bow, Finlay and McGraw nearly to their waists in the sea, and holding on to the whaler’s stem. Smith splashed into the sea with the other two and waded out. The Vickers fired again right over their heads. Tack! Tack! Tack!…

  Hands grabbed them from inside the boat and Finlay and McGraw shoved them up and out of the grasp of the sea, into the whaler. They stumbled between the men at the oars, Smith seeing Lorimer’s face floating like a pale moon towards him, mouth opening and closing…“Shove off!”

  Smith fell into the stern alongside Lorimer, sat down with a bang and gasped for breath, watching as the whaler backed off with the Vickers firing again, the line of tracers waving slowly back and forth like a warning finger, sweeping the crest of the dunes. Then the whaler spun on her heel and as Lorimer yelled “—together!” the oars dug in and she headed out to sea.

  The Vickers was silent but a gun fired now from the crest of the dunes, it seemed right in their ears but it was about three hundred yards north. The shell screamed over the whaler and set them all ducking. Smith screwed his head around to peer at the shore receding behind him, the dunes fading into the darkness until only the line of surf marked the shore. The gun bellowed again, and again the shell was high. Rifle-fire came raggedly with flickering points of flame and the rattle of the reports coming flatly over the sea but the firing was blind and not a shot came near the whaler. He heard a whistle, faintly, and the firing stopped. Once more there was only the creak of the oars and the breathing of the men, the slap of the sea on the whaler’s stem.

  His chest ached, his legs were weak and the muscles trembled with reaction. He felt sick. “Well done.” It was the least, the very least he could say to them but he could find no other words. He had taken appalling risks. It had been a mad, hare-brained operation…Or had it? They’d had surprise on their side, a huge factor, and he’d known that and felt there was a chance they could pull it off, known also that his conscience would plague him forever if he did not try it and simply left the woman to her fate.

  The woman. Eleanor Hurst! He stared at her where she sat within arm’s reach but her arms were folded on her knees and her bent head rested on them so he could not see her face. He had questions to ask her, but not now.

  His eyes went to the men. Young Lorimer, intent on the compass, its glow dimly lighting his face. Buckley, his bulk unmistakable forward by the Vickers. McGraw, Finlay, Galt. And the others tugging at the oars as if they were just starting, rowing a clean stroke while he sat exhausted. They had backed him all the way. He was lucky, lucky in his men.

  Chapter Six

  Smith had the helm now. The boat crept on, moving in a darkly circumscribed little world of its own and all of them listening now until the sound came faintly but clearly across the sea: Dunk!…Dunk-clunk!…Dunk!…It was Smith’s improvised buoy and he steered in the direction of the sound, at first tentatively because sound plays tricks in its passage over water; it is not easy always to mark the direction of its source. But it grew stronger.

  Smith asked: “Did you have any trouble finding the buoy?”

  “No, sir.” answered Lorimer. That was true enough but he did not add that he had suffered an agonised minute before the buoy had made itself heard when he had sweated at the thought that he might miss it and lose the whaler in the North Sea. He had been glad of the stolid veteran seaman at his side, knew why Smith had set the man there and had suffered no injured pride. He had just been grateful and marvelled at Smith’s insight.

  Smith said, “There it is.” The buoy was just a black lump swaying on the surface of the sea. As he eased the helm to bring the whaler’s bow on to it he asked, “You heard our firing and came in?”

  “We heard that klaxon and thought there must be something up, sir. That was some time after the gun-fire and we thought that might have been from De Haan but it sounded more as if it came from the sea, nor-east by north.”

  “Gun-fire?” Smith did not remember any gun-fire. “Heavy?”

  “Just five or six reports, sir. That’s all. And some time after that we heard the klaxon.”

  “Um.” Smith thought about it. “Oars!”

  The oars came in and Buckley in the bow reached with the boat-hook and hooked on to the buoy. The whaler lay r
olling gently in the sea. The men rested and rubbed forearms over sweating faces and panted.

  Galt said, “I never knew you could run that fast, Hec.”

  McGraw answered lugubriously, “Me neither! Must ha’ lost a stone!”

  Soft, wheezing, breathless chuckling. Reaction was setting in.

  But they were not clear of trouble yet, not by a long shot — and with the proximity of the shore batteries that phrase was apposite. Smith said, “Quiet. Keep a sharp look-out.”

  Buckley was a hump in the bow where he squatted on his hunkers by the Vickers. Eleanor Hurst was slumped against Smith now, limp as if she slept but he could see her eyes wide.

  He said softly, angrily, “What lunatic had this bright idea?”

  She accepted now that the man was Smith. The man she had known. Still, she wondered at him, as she wondered at her own self-possession, surprised at how calm she was.

  “What bright idea?”

  “Putting you ashore to spy, of course.”

  She stirred and sat a little straighter but still close. “I can’t tell you who he is but he isn’t a lunatic. He said he’d come to me because I knew the country and spoke the language like a native. He told me what he wanted me to do and explained the risks. I volunteered. And for the most part it was simple enough.”

  “Simple!” Smith’s voice lifted and he saw the men staring at him.

  Eleanor Hurst shrugged. “I won’t say I wasn’t frightened because I was; even in London when we — were together. A motorboat landed us last night, a Belgian met us and we crept up from the beach and only once saw a patrol before we got to his house. During the day we wandered about peering at the woods from a distance. We were stopped by patrols a couple of times but the papers we had were all right. It wasn’t till tonight that things became — complicated.”

  Smith stared out at the dark sea. The boat rocked slowly and the buoy gave its reverberating dunk! dunk! dunk! Where was Sparrow? He fingered the torch. She was long overdue and the light was growing; when Buckley turned his head Smith could make out his features now. He would have expected Dunbar to be early. He was uneasy.

  He asked, “What were you looking for?”

  “I shouldn’t tell you, but we were just looking. We didn’t know what was in those woods and we never got a chance to find out.”

  Smith said, “Schwertträger.”

  Her head snapped around, eyes wide. She whispered, “How did you hear that?”

  Josef was also staring.

  Smith answered, “How did you?”

  He saw her exchange glances with Josef, saw the Belgian nod. She said, “The man who came to me. He said they’d had reports by carrier pigeon — they drop them to the Belgians by parachute, you know?” Smith nodded. “Well. He said they had reports of something called Schwertträger. It was secret and connected with the woods south of De Haan and the Germans had sealed them off.”

  So somebody else knew about Schwertträger, or rather wanted to know about it. And someone had asked for reconnaissance flights over the woods.

  The girl beside him shuddered — with the night’s chill? She said stubbornly, “It was worth a try. I thought it worth trying.”

  But they had found nothing. What could it be? Some kind of tank? But why then would a U-boat commander be involved?

  Josef said, “There was the train.” Smith looked at him questioningly and the Belgian went on, “The — people we contacted, they told us that the train, the light railway, you know? It has been leaving Zeebrugge with Army engineers and marines and loaded with crates and timber in big sections. It arrives empty at Ostende.”

  Engineers — and marines?

  He shifted restlessly. Where was Sparrow? He looked at his watch again. Dawn would come soon to expose them on this empty sea to anyone on the shore and that would be the end of it. He was certain they were on station but if Dunbar in Sparrow had made a mess of his navigation he might be patrolling a mile away. But he could not believe that. Dunbar was an old hand…

  “Ship, sir.” Buckley calling softly from the bow. “To starboard.”

  Smith saw her bulk and used the torch to flash the long-shortlong of a K as she came on, at first just a vague shape in the growing light under trailing smoke then the shape hardening as she trudged down on them…

  “Oars!” He barked it at them and they jumped to it. She was not Sparrow, and she was going to run them down! “Give way!”

  The oars dug in and heaved the boat forward as the men strained to drag it and themselves out of the path of the ship, and failed — just. Smith swung the boat away so the towering stem missed them but her bow-wave nearly turned them over and then her side hit them and stove in the boat with a smashing of oars.

  They fell or jumped from it, yells cut short as they hit the water and went under. There was a minute of chaos as they thrashed around in the wake of the ship, paddling clumsily then all of them struck out for the wreckage of the boat that drifted among them. Smith blinked water from his eyes and saw the head of Eleanor Hurst, nearer the boat than he and swimming strongly for it. She grabbed hold and Smith laboured after her with the weight of his clothes dragging and hindering, reached it with one last desperate lunge and clung to it beside her, coughing.

  They were all coughing, spitting out water. Smith started hoarsely calling the roll: “Buckley…”

  They were all present.

  Then he remembered. “Josef?”

  No answer.

  “Did anyone see the Belgian?”

  No answer. They turned their heads to peer out over the waves. They called his name, shouting all together then stopping to listen. They never got an answer from Josef. But a hail came out of the darkness and slowly the ship swept on them again from out of that darkness.

  “Wer da?”

  A light flashed out, wavered, then swept and found them.

  Smith knew that much German. ‘Who is there?’ None of them answered. They could see the figures at the rail, that she was a small coaster of maybe eight hundred tons or less, her engines and funnel right aft. The figures stood in the bow staring down at the men in the water where they were lit by the pool of light from the torch. One of them leaned further over the rail, pointing, his hand with its prodding finger in the cone of light and he bawled, “Engländer!”

  The ship had stopped and rolled gently in the beam sea. She’d made a lee for them and as she drifted down towards them the figures at the rail dropped ladders over the side. Smith could see the men clearly now, the bearded faces and blue jerseys, the soft caps with the peaks tugged down, the skipper with his head stuck out of the wheelhouse aft. He wore a homburg so he had to be the skipper. And then one came hurrying with two rifles so that as the first of Smith’s crew dragged himself out of the sea and up the ladder the bolts of the rifles slid out then snicked home as the men worked them, feeding a round from magazine to breech.

  Smith hung on to the ladder and pushed Eleanor Hurst on to it and thought they would be naval reservists because they handled the rifles with familiarity. Maybe too old for U-boats or the High Seas Fleet but not too old to run small cargoes down the coast under cover of darkness.

  He saw all of his men aboard then followed them to join their dejected, dripping group. Someone had relieved the skipper at the wheel so he was able to stare at them in the light from a hurricane lamp he held over his head at arm’s length. He was bearded, short but wide, made huge by a thick coat over a jersey. He conducted a brief interrogation.

  “You. Englisch.” He pointed at them. The men were all in working dress but they wore their badges of rank. Smith’s jacket was unmistakable to these men.

  Smith nodded. “Yes.” There was the skipper and one other man with an apron knotted around his waist, doubtless the cook. Also the two men with rifles. All of them gaped at the little crowd of British sailors.

  Then the light from the lantern fell on Eleanor Hurst, her hair unpinned and hanging limply to her breasts where the blouse clung to them. The
skipper snatched off his hat, sought words and only found “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

  Smith shook his head again and that ended the interrogation. The skipper burst into rapid German and the other three nodded. Smith caught the word “…Schiff!” The skipper’s arm waved, pointing out into the darkness and he snapped a cover over the lantern. His conclusions were obvious: Smith and his men had come from a ship and it or another might be out somewhere in the night, seeking them, possibly close now.

  Smith hoped so.

  But the rifles waved, menacing, gesturing. Smith and his party obeyed the gestures and started to stumble aft along the deck. Dawn was close upon them but the shutting off of the light brought a temporary blindness so they stumbled over obstructions on the deck and the guards were not immune. There was a flash of flame that lit them all and the crack of the rifle set their ears ringing.

  Smith heard someone yell, “God!”

  His head turned. “Anyone hit? Anyone hit?”

  The bullet could not have passed through the knot of them without striking someone. Smith thought the barrel of the rifle must have been pointed at the sky at the moment it fired because no one was hit.

  The skipper had been ahead of the group, climbing into the wheelhouse. Now he yelled at the men with the rifles, furious. As well he might. The bullet could as easily have hit him. One of them muttered what might have been an apology but then the rifles gestured again.

  They moved aft once more. McGraw muttered, “Somebody should tell you daft bastards to watch out! We’re prisoners o’ war and no’ targets!”

  Prisoners.

  The word brought it home to Smith, to all of them. Heads turned as they exchanged glances.

  Prisoners. Prisoners of war. Shut up in a camp for — how long? A year? Two? Longer? A year would be a lifetime.