by John Wingate
At once Peter felt a great loneliness. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw a slight swirl at Rugged’s stem as she slowly went astern on her motors, sliding back into the night.
Swish — swish, swish — swish!
The licking of their paddles was the only sound he could hear on this placid sea, save for the ominous growl of the breakers pounding upon the beach a few hundred yards ahead of them. Already he could see a white pencil line of surf, where the waves slapped down on the rocky shelf.
Ah! There was the small black rock to the left. He turned slightly to port to leave a larger rock on his starboard hand, farther away. Passing between these two, he should be able to run straight into the small sandy cove which they had spied at the bottom of the fissure. He held water to allow the others to catch them up. Only the surge and the sigh of the swell, as it heaved and swirled around the jagged rocks, disturbed the stillness of the peaceful night. Peter had only to rip the canvas of his boat on some hidden rock to render her waterlogged and useless.
He looked back over his shoulder. There was the faint outline of Jan’s boat, his paddle motionless. So far, so good! Peter swept his arm forward in a signal, and they started paddling cautiously. On alternate strokes, he dipped his blade into the water to see whether he could touch bottom. He paddled onwards. The small breakers were now swirling on top of him and suddenly he was in the flurry of foam.
Clutching the paddle in his left hand, he heaved himself out of the tiny cockpit, and dropped into the pounding surf. He was surprised to feel his boots touch bottom immediately, and to realise that the water was only knee-deep. Keeping the boat’s stern towards the swell while Hawkins jumped out, Peter hove the canoe on to the beach, clear of the breakers.
They stood motionless, feeling stark naked in their loneliness, and sensing that an unseen enemy was waiting for them on the towering cliffs. Instinctively they dropped flat, listening and straining their eyes. For a full minute they lay prone.
Then Peter sat up and produced his shaded blue flashlamp. The thin blue pencil of light flickered seawards.
“O-K,” he flashed.
Jan thrashed his way in, two minutes later, Bill helping him from the canoe. Two folboats now lay side by side on the sand. The dory grated on the beach, and three ponderous figures splashed nimbly ashore. Jan took command.
“Graves, get the boats out of sight. Have them ready for instant launching if you hear anything. Guard them well for they’re our only return ticket!”
“Yes, sir, and good luck, sir.”
Jan’s teeth gleamed in the darkness as his mouth parted in a wide grin. Peter chuckled as he thought that never had he seen such a sinister bunch of Germans!
Peter followed Jan in single file, Jarvis, Jock and Bill bringing up the rear. A few steps brought them to the foot of the fissure. Jan looked upwards.
“Easier than I thought,” he whispered. “I’ll nip up and sling you down the rope.”
Instantly he was gone, crouched against the clay landslide. Agile as a cat, he disappeared. Three minutes later the end of the rope snaked down from the darkness to drop at their feet. Peter gave Jan a moment to belay it, then, hand over hand, he shinned to the top, followed in quick succession by the other three.
Far below, the blackness of the sea merged with the invisible horizon, and already the sound of the surf soughed more distantly.
“Perfect night for this job!” whispered Jan, leaving the rope belayed around a large boulder. “And we mustn’t forget that,” he reminded Peter, patting the lifeline.
They turned their backs on the sea. Against the skyline, barely four hundred yards away, the bleak walls of the old fortress were faintly visible against the night sky. Its castellated battlements, broken by its immense rounded towers, had defied many invaders. Already Peter could see the two main towers which formed the gateway and, to the left of them, the main corner towers.
“Harry’s in that one,” he whispered, pointing.
It was odd to be so near and yet so far.
“Let’s go round to the back, where you’ll go over the wall,” whispered Jan. “Jarvis, you stay here at the top of this cliff. Jock, I’ll leave you to cover us by those bushes at the main gate. Hawkins, come with us. Let’s go, Peter!”
Jan loped into the night, Peter and Bill close at his heels. So quietly and lithely did Jan move that Peter almost lost him by the north-western corner. The Commando’s movements were uncanny. Suddenly he would stop, crouched and motionless, his nostrils sniffing the air like some pointing setter. Instinctively, he seemed to feel where danger lurked and to sense an atmosphere with a skill that only comes to men who hold their lives in their hands. For so long now, he had lived on a taut string, like an acrobat on the high wire. One false move, and all is over, but Jan’s experiences during the last two years had given him a sixth sense that he was now using to the full.
Small, scrubby bushes dotted the area around the massive walls, and these cheered the three conspirators, for they gave them ample cover. Unless they ran blindly into an outlying patrol, their chances of remaining undetected seemed good.
As they slowly reconnoitred the castle walls, they tried to memorise the whole scene detail by detail, for use on the morrow. Creeping slowly to the foot of the wall, Peter looked upward and saw the castellated top some twenty feet above him.
“A grapnel here,” Peter whispered to Jan who was lying on the ground beside him. “A grapnel here, and I could nip inside.”
“Better take Hawkins with you tomorrow,” said Jan. “You can both climb inside. He could guard the grapnel on the battlements, just in case of accidents.”
Peter nodded, as Jan beckoned him and Bill to follow. Bill was already mastering the technique of moving in the dark, and he was remarkably light on his feet. Like three flitting shadows, they slunk through the scrub, some twenty yards from the walls, until they had travelled right round the northern and eastern flanks of the castle. Cautiously now, Jan dropped flat, crawling on his stomach as he reached the south-eastern tower. The open gatehouse, a massively timbered arrangement, sagging at the hinges and obviously long overdue for repair, was only thirty yards distant.
A sentry box stood by the right-hand tower and the sentry, a mug of soup in his hand, meandered to and fro across the entrance. The dim, blue light from the arch above him showed the steam wisping from the soup in rising vapours. Coils of barbed wire blocked the entrance on either side, while the gate itself was a white swinging pole which was operated by the sentry.
Slithering backwards on their stomachs, Jan, Peter and Bill disappeared into the night. As they made a detour round the gatehouse, they could see into the courtyard within the castle where wire-protected Nissen huts filled the open square. Here another sentry paced backwards and forwards under an arc lamp, his rifle slung from his shoulder.
Jan nudged Peter and they gave the entrance a clear berth before returning to the wall by the south-western tower where Bill’s heart leaped as he bumped into something soft which gave to his touch.
“Don’t, ye flat-footed matelot — you’re tickling,” Jock giggled feebly.
Bill had forgotten Jock, waiting there by the gate!
Peter looked upward, and noticed the dim, yellow lights glowing dismally from the slits of windows in the south-western tower, although all the other towers were in darkness. Peter whispered to Jan:
“I reckon this is Harry’s room.”
“All right. Go ahead.”
When they were boys, Peter and Harold Arkwright had often spent their holidays together. Harry’s father would take them wild-fowling on the tidal mudflats off Bideford, and there they had learned the calls of such sea birds as the wigeon and redshank, the curlew and snipe. At home they learned to imitate the weird cry of the curlew, and they would whistle it across the mudflats to each other.
As Peter’s cheeks retracted to whistle the plaintive note, Jan’s fingers fumbled for his Luger pistol…
Tweeet — tweeet, tweee —
tweee — tweee, twee — tweeee —
It was superbly done. Peter’s head slowly turned from the gateway to seawards, as he threw the sad cry through the still night. In Morse code, the slow, plaintive note clearly spelled out the word ‘morrow’.
Their hearts beating, they waited long moments for enemy reaction. There was none.
They watched the lights at the top of the tower, expectantly, hopefully. There was no sign. Still the dim lights shone. Looking at the luminous dial on his watch, which glowed in the darkness, Jan gave Peter another five minutes.
“Again,” he whispered.
The curlew’s weird cry floated plaintively again through the stillness.
“Donner und blitzen!” swore the thickset sentry under the gatehouse.
Peter and Jan half rolled over on their sides, as they reached for their pistols while Bill covered his head with his hands, one eye balefully open.
Peering carefully towards the gate, they heard the sentry still cursing. He stooped down and, still with the steaming soup bowl in his hand, hurled something in their direction. Peter and Jan ducked, and heard the stone land a few feet from them. The sentry’s cursing grew louder as he wiped the slopped soup from his sleeve.
“Rotten shot!” grinned Jan. “He doesn’t like birds!”
Suddenly Peter jabbed Jan with his elbow. He pointed above them. The dim light in the top aperture was slowly flicking on and off: ‘dot, dash, dot’ — it slowly blinked out its message — ‘R!’.
“He’s received it, Jan, he’s received it!” whispered Peter excitedly as they smiled at each other.
Jan looked at his watch. One o’clock.
“Let’s get out of here and wait on the beach. Come on!”
Creeping on their stomachs to pick up Jock, all four started loping back to the cliff edge.
Jan suddenly froze in his tracks, then flung himself down behind the nearest scrub, and frantically waved his arm at Peter, whilst the other two silently melted into the gloom beside Jan. Holding their breaths, they felt, rather than saw, a dark figure loom up in front of them. Whistling the ‘Horst Wessel’, the German lumbered straight at them. There was no avoiding the patrol now, for he blundered unconsciously onwards.
Jan reacted instinctively and as the German’s heavy boots crunched around his head, he sprang upwards at the soldier’s throat.
Peter heard the sharp intake of breath as the German, frightened out of his senses, gasped with fear and then crumpled as his steel helmet clattered to the ground. Shocked more by fright than anything else, the Hun lost consciousness.
“Curse it!” said Jan, as he crouched over him, Commando knife in hand, “I can’t murder him in cold blood. Come on! Let’s lug him back on board. He may be of use to us.”
For a fraction of time they waited, but the sentry at the gate still gulped his soup.
“Come on!” Jan hissed again.
They heaved the limp body across Bill’s huge shoulders. Peter took the German’s rifle, while Jan went ahead with his revolver cocked, to search for Jarvis and the rope on the clifftop.
The slumped body jerked, the arms and hands swinging limply as Bill loped seawards. When they reached the cliff edge, Bill twisted his huge frame and the body slipped to the ground.
Jan was untying the rope when a fearful, nerve-racking squeal pierced the night. The jolt had shaken the Hun into consciousness, and the shock had reduced him to hysterical screaming.
Jan leaped through the air, landed astride the man’s chest and drew his gun.
“Shut up!” he hissed as he jabbed the gun into the man’s chest but the German was by now almost insane with fear and the sight of the gun only made him scream the more hysterically.
“Get on down, all of you!” ordered Jan. “I’ll bring up the rear.”
Peter swung off into space down the rope and Jock followed. As Peter’s head disappeared below the clifftop, he glimpsed the beam of a large searchlight sweeping the approaches to the castle. Lights flashed on at the gatehouse from whence sharp, guttural shouts and the clatter of nailed boots disturbed the night. Peter slithered downwards until his feet dropped on to the rocks below and then Jock landed with a lurch alongside him.
“Get the boats ready,” Peter hissed.
On the clifftop, Jan shoved his cupped hand across the German’s mouth, but it only made him squeal and choke the more. In a moment of frantic exasperation, Jan pushed his left fist into the man’s gullet but the German’s teeth sank into Jan’s hand, causing searing pain.
Jan grunted. With his right hand he groped for his revolver and slipped it from its holster. He grabbed it by the barrel and smacked the butt across the soldier’s temple. The body jerked and Jan quickly withdrew his torn hand from the man’s mouth, as the slack jaws relaxed. The Hun’s eyes rolled upwards and glazed into unconsciousness again.
“Grab him, Hawkins. Get cracking!” snapped Jan urgently.
Bill disappeared over the edge holding the unconscious body over one enormous shoulder, while he shinned down the rope with amazing dexterity. As his head dipped below the clifftop, he could hear the enemy almost on top of them.
Jan jerked a grenade from his belt. While he fumbled for another, he pulled out the pin of the first grenade with his teeth, and, with an overhand lob, he hurled it far out into the sea. The noise of running soldiers was now behind him and almost over his shoulder as he heaved the second grenade into the sea below.
Tearing the pin out of the third grenade, he counted two, turned round with his back to the sea, and lobbed the hand grenade as far as he could at the lumbering enemy. Then, as he slipped the rope off the rock and started to slither over the edge, a brilliant orange flash seared the darkness and outlined the castle walls in sharp relief. The shouting stopped.
Jan dipped his head below the edge, as bullets whined into the darkness over him and green tracer criss-crossed the clifftop. When his bruised body slumped at the foot of the cliff, eager hands picked him up and dumped him into the waiting dory in which sat Bill with his unconscious prisoner. Wading up to their chests, Peter and Jock launched it out into the breakers, out and beyond the white line of surf with Graves paddling furiously.
Like two marathon swimmers, Peter and Jock returned to the beach and, half swimming, half running, forced the folboats like arrows into the sea. Then they straddled them and slipped inboard driving them with long, desperate strokes.
“Go on!” shouted Peter stupidly, his voice almost inaudible in the bedlam now loosed above his head. Jock surged ahead, overhauling the dory to lead the way back to the invisible submarine while the plopping of bullets hitting the water, ricocheting and whining into the night, spurred the little convoy to frantic efforts.
Peter turned his head over his shoulder. On the clifftop, now already beginning to fade, he saw lights blinking like puzzled glow-worms, twinkling in the confusion. Green tracer criss-crossed in large arcs, well out to the right and crawling across the sky. He slowly overtook the dory, and saw that Jan had added his own efforts to the flailing paddles. Peter drew ahead and shouted to Jock to follow as the exhausted little convoy disappeared out to sea.
Peter peered into the darkness until his eyes ached and then stopped paddling and drew the red glass from his pocket. He put it before his eyes and slowly searched the horizon. No sign, not a glimmer of a red flashing light.
He felt desperately lonely and a wave of panic swept over him. Had Rugged heard the two grenade explosions? Perhaps she was too far out and out of range? Why, in the name of goodness, couldn’t they wake up, so snug and warm in their bunks? Already, twinkling lights were tumbling like a necklace down the cliff about half a mile to the northward. The enemy were close on their heels, their tracer sweeping and flying into the night in short bursts, kicking up the sea where it hit.
He found his hand shaking as he searched again through the red glass. Where was she? Was that smudge something, or merely imagination playing him false? No. Yes, oh yes! There she was! A dim red flash, t
hen another and another. Very, very, close.
“There they are!” yelled Peter, a sob of relief catching his voice, while he stretched out his arm to port, to point the way. He grasped his paddle and gave a few quick strokes and almost collided into the gleaming sides of the submarine whose black conning tower loomed above them. A heaving line rattled across the bows of his canvas boat. He grabbed it and passed it across to Jock who had bumped into him. Half a minute later, the dory was alongside.
A blue pencil of light was sweeping the surface of the sea, half a mile to the northward of the submarine. Somehow, they never knew how, they were dragged inboard, sprawling helplessly over the fore-casing, completely exhausted. Willing hands picked them up and handed them swiftly over the conning tower and down to the warmth below. Lines were passed around and under the folboats, and they were yanked out of the water, slipped through the fore-hatch, and secured safely.
The searchlight slowly swung up to them, casting an oval circle of weird light as it went while the men on the bridge held their breath. It crept right up to within a hundred yards of their port side, stopped, and slowly swept back again. Then they dropped the limp body of the German down the fore-hatch, the boat being ready to dive immediately it was secured. Already the submarine was sliding away from the shore, stern first, the white line of foam licking along her sides.
The fore-hatch was shut. The klaxon roared and the upper lid clanged shut.
“First clip on! Sixty feet.” Joe’s familiar voice, so firm and confident, sounded like music in Peter’s ears, as he picked himself up from the Control Room deck.
He laughed. Jan was in front and crawling on all fours into the Ward Room, his green Commando’s overalls leaving a snail-like trail after him.
“You seem to be in a hurry!” Joe murmured.
CHAPTER 9
The Spider …