by Roger Bax
We sang in turn, more or less, first a Russian song, then an English one. Denny and I rendered all the old standbyes like ‘Tipperary’ and ‘Two Lovely Black Eyes’ and ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, and we made a great hit with ‘Polly Wolly Doodle’ and ‘My Bonny Lies over the Ocean’. Kleinman made us sing several of them twice—he thought them ‘swell’. We must have made that quiet and beautiful night hideous with our raucous discords for I certainly had no pretensions as a singer even when sober, and Denny added volume rather than harmony. Also, he couldn’t be dissuaded from beating on the table with his fists in time with the songs, so that he set all the plates and glasses dancing. No longer did he look like a Methodist sidesman. His face was scarlet, his eyes were bloodshot, his suit was rumpled and his once-neat white collar was unfastened at the neck to give him air.
I’ve a fairly clear recollection of a kind of hiatus in the noise, when we were all too hoarse and tired to sing any more, and then of Kleinman getting up on his side of the table and swaying a little, so that he reminded me of one of those little china figures with nodding heads, and saying something about ‘Champanski’. I remember seeing four bottles of Russian champagne on the table, and then hearing a lot of popping. Champagne on top of vodka was murder, but it tasted fine. We sang a bit more—at least, Kleinman and I did—in a desultory way. Stepan was plucking rather ineffectually at his balalaika and appeared to be crying quietly to himself. I couldn’t see the little man’s eyes any more—the second round of champagne had made everything go misty. His face was just a vague round blob. Then the whole cabin began to rotate. It went over and over and over, and I felt dreadful, and that was the last thing I knew.
Never have I wakened to consciousness so reluctantly. When I first tried to move my head I doubted if I should live. My mouth felt as though it was full of sawdust. I was lying down and I wanted to go on lying down. But I also wanted to drink. With infinite caution I moved my head to the right and saw that Denny was lying motionless on the opposite bunk. We were back in Dawn. At that moment I could hardly have cared less.
I must have given a loud groan, for someone came into the cabin and I saw that it was Joe. He looked revolting—his grin was so wide that I thought his face would fall in two. He said, “Oh, what a beautiful morning!”
With a fearful effort I struggled into a sitting position. “Water,” I croaked, “for the love of Mike!” Joe produced a jug, and I took a long swig. After I’d had the water I felt drunk all over again.
“Would you like some ham and eggs?” said Joe. He had a simple sense of humour. I shuddered and drank some more water. I could have drunk water for ever.
Then Denny began to stir, and I saw my own agony repeated. We were still wearing most of our overnight clothes, and they were in a shocking state. After a time, with infinite pain, we managed to throw them off and to struggle into shorts and shirts.
I sat on the edge of the bunk with my head in my hands. I said, “Where are we, Joe?” I knew somehow that it was important, but I couldn’t remember why.
“At sea,” said Joe cheerfully.
I said, “Good old Joe!” I had a feeling that he had given the right answer. I would have slapped him on the back except that there was a loose piece of iron in my head that kept dropping every time I moved.
Presently Joe made some black coffee and we drank a lot of it. I tried to collect my thoughts, but found it hard to concentrate. I said, “What time is it?”
Joe said it was one o’clock.
“What, in the afternoon?” asked Denny incredulously.
“Of course,” said Joe.
“Good God,” said Denny. “What time did we come home?”
Joe said: “I fetched you when the singing stopped. Just after three.”
“Did we come quietly?” asked Denny.
Joe was still grinning. He said: “I thought you were both dead. What happened?”
I looked at Denny. “Tell him what happened,” I said.
“What happened where?” said Denny.
“On that boat,” I said.
“Never heard of it,” said Denny. He looked at himself in the mirror and groaned. “And to think I’m going to meet my wife tonight!”
It was the hangover to end all hangovers. We sluiced ourselves and shaved with infinite care and still felt as fragile as old parchment. Then we stepped rather gingerly into the cockpit. The fresh air felt good, but the bright light was blinding. It was another warm summer day, but there was a pleasant breeze and I saw that Dawn was quietly sailing herself. I thought that in two or three hours I might begin to feel moderately human again. I gazed around, but could see no sign of land in any direction. I said, “Where exactly are we, Joe?”
He showed me the chart, on which our course and position were marked in pencil. We were about thirty miles north-west of Tallinn and bang in the middle of the Gulf. I still couldn’t get my ideas into focus. I said, “Joe, I know we had some plan last night, but I can’t remember what it was.”
“I shouldn’t try,” said Joe. “It’ll come back to you. Everything’s under control.”
I wound a wet towel round my head and said: “What happened, Joe? Tell us your story. P’raps it’ll help us to remember.”
“Well,” said Joe, “after I’d got things shipshape in the cabin and had a meal I went up on deck for a smoke.”
“And listened to us making beasts of ourselves,” said Denny.
“Exactly. It was very warm and pleasant and I had a little rum to keep me in good spirits. I could hear quite a lot of what you said, particularly when the boats swung together. Then you began to shout and sing and the party got very noisy. I waited, and there was some more talking, and then I couldn’t hear anything at all. So I rowed over.”
“We must have been a fine spectacle,” I said.
Joe nodded complacently. “You certainly were. It looked as though there’d been a free-for-all. You didn’t actually fight, did you?”
“Fight? Good heavens, no. At least—I don’t think so. We were all most friendly.”
“Well, the little man had blood on his face and a black eye. He must have fallen against something pretty hard. The lieutenant was snoring on the floor—he seemed very comfortable on a lot of broken glass. Denny was curled up in the cockpit, and you were lying across the table with your head on your arms.”
“Wonderful scene,” I said. “Just like the ‘Sleeping Beauty’.”
“Well, not quite,” said Joe. “I didn’t feel like kissing any of you, believe me. I had a hell of a job getting you into the dinghy. Denny began to come round after I’d thrown some water over him, but he collapsed again when I got him aboard here. I had to lower you into the dinghy with a rope!”
“Poor old Joe! Didn’t the other two show any sign of life at all?”
“Not a flicker. I didn’t even have to be quiet. If I’d opened the seacocks they’d have gone down without a whimper.”
“Vodka’s dynamite,” said Denny.
“I know,” said Joe. “I tried it. I thought I might never have another chance. Their champagne’s not bad, either. Anyway, I got you aboard here and tried to sober you up a bit, but you were too far gone. I couldn’t get you to swallow anything. It was hopeless trying to undress you, so I decided you’d have to lie as you were and sleep it off. The rest was easy. I untied their warp, made sail, and here we are.”
“Did you leave them adrift?” I asked.
Joe looked pained. “I couldn’t do that,” he said. “They might have been a danger to someone else. I found their anchor in the fo’c’s’le—the one they were supposed to have lost—and left them all secure.”
“Very considerate. I wonder how they’re feeling at this moment.”
“That lieutenant’s tough,” said Denny. “I bet he’s having vodka for breakfast. When we went into the cockpit to look at the engine he started drinking out of a bottle. Did you see their engine, Joe?”
Joe nodded. “It must be fifty horsepower.”
> “At least,” said Denny. “I bet they can do fifteen knots.”
I was still struggling to get a clear mental picture of our situation, and that remark of Denny’s helped to make things click into place. I said: “I suppose they’ll be after us. Or maybe they’ll put out a general alarm all over the Gulf. Do you think they have a radio transmitter on board?”
“They haven’t,” said the efficient Joe. “I looked.”
I was beginning to focus again. I tried to imagine myself in Kleinman’s position, and then I wasn’t so sure about the general alarm. By N.K.V.D. standards he hadn’t done so well—he’d hardly want to admit that we’d got away because both he and his lieutenant had got drunk. He’d be more likely to comb the Gulf for us in an attempt to retrieve his error. He’d know that with our engine we couldn’t be more than sixty or seventy miles away. He’d also know that we were definitely up to mischief. He’d be after us. I couldn’t imagine what we should do when Neva appeared. Perhaps it was the hangover, but I didn’t see that we could do anything. It rather looked as though we’d merely postponed our failure by a few hours.
I gave Joe an outline of what was in my mind. He was puffing calmly at a cigarette and seemed at peace with the world. I said: “How long do you think we’ve got, Joe? An hour or two?”
“I think longer than that,” said Joe, blowing a lovely smoke ring. “You see, before I left their boat I took a look round and saw a lot of cans of spare petrol in the cockpit. So I dropped them overboard in a couple of fathoms. The only petrol they’ve got at the moment is what’s in their tank.”
Well, that certainly made our prospects much brighter, and Joe deserved the cheer we gave him. It meant we had probably gained a day and a night free from pursuit. Kleinman and the lieutenant, coming out of their drunken sleep, would only now be discovering the loss of their petrol. They would have to put back into Porkkala or some other base to refuel—always supposing they had enough petrol in their tank to reach port. There was no chance that they could do all that and still seek us out before dark. We had regained our freedom of action.
The most urgent thing now was for Denny and me to get rid of our respective hangovers in readiness for the arduous night’s work. We hove to at about three in the afternoon and I went overboard for a refreshing swim. After that we had a ‘hair of the dog’ and some food. I still found it very difficult to concentrate, and after I’d cleaned up my shoregoing clothes we both turned in for a snooze.
When Joe woke us a couple of hours later there was a note of urgency in his voice. “It’s time we got moving,” he said. “We’ve just under thirty miles to go. That’s about three hours’ steaming and an hour’s sailing. Lend a hand, will you?”
We all turned to, and in a few minutes Dawn was heading south-east under power. Three hours’ steaming should bring us to the entrance of Tallinn Bay just as the sun was going down, and an hour under sail would see us at the Vake shoal—with luck—just at dusk. So far, our timing was excellent.
We had had so many problems to deal with in the past twenty-four hours that we hadn’t been able to think much about the details of the rescue. Now we went over our plans point by point. The girls would probably be pretty exhausted when we picked them up out of the water and we equipped the dinghy accordingly. We rolled up their clothing in two separate waterproof bundles and stowed them carefully under the dinghy’s stern seat. We put in several towels, some food, a thermos of coffee and a flask of brandy. It was agreed that Joe should stay with Dawn at the anchorage and that Denny and I should row in.
The old tingling excitement was coming back now as the crisis approached. I couldn’t help casting apprehensive glances round the horizon and wishing that these last hours of daylight were over. Providence had so far been kind. The sea was quiet and warm, the breeze was gentle but sufficient, the beat of our engine was steady. If only our luck held!
Just before half past seven I tuned in to Steve’s Leningrad wavelength. There was almost certain to be a message and we waited even more tensely than usual for him to come on the air. He wasn’t so very far away from us and he came through as clear as a bell. Sweat gathered on my forehead as I heard the word ‘Today’ and I scribbled furiously to get the message down. My hand had acquired an alcoholic tremor, or else it was excitement that made me take a lot longer than usual to transcribe my shorthand.
“Today in Leningrad,” ran the broadcast, “I have been privileged to go and examine post-war reconstruction work, which is far ahead of my expectations. First, it is only proper to recall the fearful bombardment which made Leningrad a hell in the war years. The shelling had consequences with which Leningraders have mainly dealt, though it left marks on the city. Some effects of that long and ghastly ordeal are still visible. Occasionally in the angles of buildings you can see even now heaps of old weed-covered debris which the citizens have been too busy to clear away.…”
That was all of it that mattered. With my heart pounding and the other two breathing down my neck I ringed the significant words. They were GO AHEAD TO HELL WITH MARKS AND ANGLES.
I loved Steve for that message—not merely for his pleasing ingenuity in conjuring Marx and Engels out of such unpromising material, but for the buoyancy and assurance, which did us more good than any conventional bon voyage. He had evidently played his part—the girls would be there to meet us. Now it was up to us.
Just before sundown we got our first and last glimpse of Tallinn, but it faded quickly as dusk spread over the sea. We were still well on schedule. Joe had been ceaselessly occupied with the chart and the engine and his watch. He had guaranteed to get us to the Vake shoal by nine, and he was going to do it. With dusk upon us there was nothing but the harbour lights to guide us, and pilotage required the utmost concentration. So far we were all right. On our starboard bow there was a flashing white light high up on the northern tip of Nais Island which we had no difficulty in identifying. Right ahead were the red and white flashes of the Aegna light.
As darkness fell Joe switched off the engine, and once more we helped him make sail. With the engine silent we felt more secure. The wind was little more than a zephyr just forward of the beam, but we were making fair progress. The atmosphere aboard was now electric. There was nothing to do but wait, and nothing useful to say. Better to leave it to Joe. His eyes were everywhere, watching the sails, peering out at the buoys, checking the compass. His taut features, faintly illuminated by the binnacle lamp, were a mask of concentration. Far ahead, in the darkness of the wide bay, lights were winking out on the low shore and from buildings high up in the three-tier town.
Suddenly Joe gave a sharp exclamation. “There it is,” he cried, pointing landwards. “See it? The Vake shoal. Time the flashes.” I strained into the darkness, following the line of his pointing finger, and in a moment I saw a white flash which disappeared and then flashed again. I counted, and the interval was four seconds. Our first objective was in sight.
“Good old Joe,” I said softly. “We’ll be on the dot.” Now that we had spotted the buoy it beckoned us insistently. There was no possibility of losing our way; there were no navigational hazards. With our grey hull and our tanned sails we were quite invisible a few yards away. The only danger was that we might be run down in the dark, but that risk would pass as soon as we reached the shoal.
We were all keeping our eyes open now for the most vital of our direction-posts—the Viimsi leading lights. Again it was Joe who spotted them first, far away on the port bow. They were not, of course, in line yet—that wouldn’t happen until we took the dinghy south of the shoal. But they were readily identifiable—one light was flashing every second and the other occulting every four seconds as the chart indicated.
The night seemed very still as we slid slowly and silently into the depths of the Bay. Out of the distance, faint shore noises came stealing over the water—a train whistle, a motorcar engine, and every now and again the strains of music. Judging by the illuminations along the beach below the town there was a
lot of activity going on. Over on Viimsi, however, all was dark, apart from the leading lights. It seemed that our rendezvous had been well chosen.
Just before nine Joe said quietly, “Stand by to let go,” and I went forward to tend the anchor. I could see that we were almost abreast of the Vake light, and could make out the shape of the buoy. We sailed on for a hundred yards, nearly ramming one of the four coloured beacons which marked the limits of the shoal. I felt Dawn swinging into the faint wind and just caught Joe’s hushed instruction to “Let her go”. I lowered the anchor over the bows with infinite care as we began to gather sternway, and paid the cable out as quietly as I could. Joe heaved the lead and I heard him say “Three fathoms”. I veered twelve fathoms of cable. There was almost no current, and barely enough wind to pull the chain taut.
I scrambled down to the cockpit. Joe said: “I’ll look after the sails. You’d better get going—it’s five to nine.” He helped us to launch the dinghy, and Denny and I clambered in. It was a moment that imprinted its details permanently on my mind—Joe’s tense face as he leaned over the gunwale holding our painter; Denny’s quiet matter-of-factness as he arranged himself for the long trip and made sure the luggage was safely stowed; the buoy flashing just astern of us; the warm air and hushed stillness and bright stars.
Joe gripped our hands. “I’ll expect you when I see you. Good luck! Good hunting!”