by John Wingate
Peter flung round. Well out to sea, he glimpsed a trailing arc of curving white sparks. As they reached their zenith, a small red star exploded unheard, to fall like thistledown, gently, slowly, falling … falling … and was gone.
Rugged had received their message. She would keep her appointment at the rendezvous.
CHAPTER 11
On the Scent
“I don’t like this, Number One,” the Captain grunted to his First Lieutenant who was standing by him in the darkness on the bridge.
“No, sir, nor do I,” replied Number One, sweeping the horizon through his binoculars as another round from the guns sent them reeling.
Sub-Lieutenant Benson, Sinclair’s temporary relief, was down at the gun directing the fire and they had been firing now for over half an hour. Half an hour too long, in the Captain’s opinion. Everything was ominously quiet to seaward, particularly as Trapani, the home base of the destroyer First Eleven, was less than ten miles distant.
The Captain could not prevent himself from continually looking over his shoulder, expecting to see the white gleam of attacking bow waves. There is nothing a submariner dislikes more than advertising his position, for his whole life is spent in concealment.
“No, I don’t like it; I don’t like it at all,” Joe repeated to himself.
Ashore, the chatter and fireworks of the gun battle suddenly intensified. Slowly the centre of the commotion was moving to the right along the cliff. Faster, faster, the green tracer from Jan’s men moved nearer to the landing place, then, as suddenly, was followed by the crack of exploding grenades drifting across the water.
“Cease firing. Check, check, check! Secure the gun. Stand by to recover landing parties!” shouted the Captain. “Don’t worry about the fore-hatch, Number One. Keep it shut. I’ll leave the folboats. As soon as we’ve fished the landing party out of the water, I’m getting out of here. I smell a rat!”
“Aye, aye, sir. Shall I go below, sir?” asked Number One, reading his Captain’s thoughts.
The Captain nodded. To him, the strain of waiting was the worst part of it all and already the tracer was following the invisible boats out to sea, and drawing the fire nearer and nearer to the submarine.
The slow swish of the swell hissed along the pressure hull, silkily caressing the low casing and another distant chatter of gunfire barely broke in upon the silence of Joe’s thoughts. His knuckles showed white in the darkness, as he gripped the bridge-rail. At any moment, he expected E-boats or destroyers to pounce down upon them, or heavy artillery to start pinpointing the vulnerable submarine.
“Keep your eyes skinned for the folboats,” he said to the men who, waiting on the casing with heaving lines coiled in their hands and arms hanging by their sides, peered into the night until their eyes ached.
Joe saw them first. Two hundred yards on the port beam, paddling like fury out to sea. “Full ahead starboard, hard-a-port.”
Two minutes later, heaving lines hissed through the air to rattle down upon the canvas of the dory and only one folboat.
As Jan’s folboat wallowed and slithered in the swell, his choking voice hoarsely gasped from the darkness.
“This is the lot — lost Peter, Arkwright and Bill.”
The exhausted men wallowed in the sea, too far gone to drag themselves up the slippery pressure hull.
“Secure these lines round you, we’ll heave you up.”
Desperately slowly they were hauled on to the casing, where they lay floundering like beached trout, gasping for air. Jan was the first on the bridge, his face an agony of reproach.
“If only I could have held on another few minutes. I’m sure they weren’t far away.”
“Stay here, Jan,” answered the Captain kindly. “I must get the others below. Clear the casing!” his sharp voice crackled over the bridge-rail.
Already the wavelets were playing over the casing, as the submarine swiftly gathered way and turned her stern to the land and three soldiers, dripping and exhausted, were firmly and gently hauled over the bridge by kindly hands and taken through the conning tower hatch to the warmth below.
“I’m sure they’re there, sir,” Jan said when he had recovered his breath, pointing over the stern. “I saw Peter and Arkwright clearing out of the castle.”
“Signalman!” shouted the Captain to the after-end of the bridge.
“Sir?”
“Keep a good lookout along the cliff edge.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Already the menacing cliffs were merging into an unbroken line of blackness as Goddard, the signalman, carefully searched them through his binoculars, sweeping from side to side.
“We so darned nearly pulled it off,” Jan said bitterly, coming to a choking halt. Exhaustion was now overcoming him and emotion welled to the surface.
“Dim flashing blue light, sir!” interrupted Goddard, shouting from the after-end of the bridge, his glasses fixed on a distant point farther down the coast. Slowly he spelled out the message, “R V — R V — R V, sir,… RV confirmed, sir.”
For a moment the Captain hesitated, his face creased into an odd smile.
“Fire the red Very light, Signalman.”
“Aye, aye, sir. One red Very light, sir,” Goddard answered triumphantly.
He dashed to the side of the bridge, pulled out the bell-mouthed pistol and looked at the cartridge, feeling its serrated edge. He inserted the cartridge in the barrel, which shut with a click. He stretched out his arm, turned his face away and pulled the trigger. The trail of sparks showered the bridge and, looking upwards, Joe saw the red star plop out from the shower of sparklets. Slowly it floated down, gradually falling astern of them.
“Starboard twenty, steer three-five-oh,” Joe spoke down the voicepipe.
The submarine quickly swung to starboard.
“I’m going to put the Hun off the scent, Jan. Do you agree to opening up with another barrage a few miles farther north? That should draw them away from Peter and give him a chance of reaching the rendezvous.”
“Yes. Anything we can do — just anything,” mumbled Jan hopelessly.
They remained on main motors and, ten minutes later, the submarine again opened fire on the distant headland.
Once more the screaming shells burst upon the cliffs, three miles north of the previous position.
“And now let’s get out of it. Cease firing, check, check, check! Secure the gun. Clear the casing!”
The submarine turned hard-a-port and disappeared into the night to charge her batteries which were now dangerously low.
Two hours later she dived at dawn and the Captain, alone on the bridge as the water swirled around the conning tower, peered through his glasses for the last time that night.
“Confound it! Just as I feared,” he muttered, jumping through the hatch. Etched into his mind was the image of three sleek shapes, still mere blurs on the lightening horizon but, unmistakably, the familiar silhouettes of hunting destroyers.
“The First Eleven,” he whispered to himself, as he snapped on the first clip of the upper conning tower hatch.
CHAPTER 12
Flotsam
If the three fugitives, Peter, Harry and Bill, had expected a few hours’ rest, they would have been greatly mistaken. Crouched under the overhanging ledge of rock, they watched the wild firing from the clifftop gradually fade away to sporadic bursts, and then, as suddenly, cease. Distant whistles blew. On the light breeze, which had sprung up with the first light of dawn and which chilled their very marrows now that they were motionless, the guttural orders of the returning patrols floated downwind to them.
“What’s our next move?” Peter asked Harold Arkwright.
Gone were the official references peculiar to Service rank and etiquette. Instead, the years had rolled away and they might have been two boys again, stalking on their native moor. But this time the stakes were higher — imprisonment, or death by shooting against a wall.
“We ought to lie up by day, and sneak down a
t sunset to the rendezvous off the Spella rocks,” replied Harold, “but that is exactly what the Hun would expect us to do, isn’t it?”
Once more, Harold Arkwright was a submariner, moving stealthily, step by step, and always trying to be one jump ahead of the enemy — by bluff and double-bluff.
“Yes,” Peter answered, “only he doesn’t know whether the rendezvous, if there is one, would be north or south of our landing place.”
“Couldn’t very well be north, because of the islands and the proximity of Trapani,” argued Harold.
“Yes, you’re right, there. So they must assume that, if we are still alive, it must be down this way — right?”
“Right! They must also guess that another attempt will be made to take us off by sea, and that the attempt will be made by the same submarine, as soon as possible,” continued Harold.
Bill listened to the discussion and scratched his head.
“Surely the destroyers of the Trapani First Eleven will be out today, looking for Rugged?” Peter went on.
“You may bet your shirt on that,” Harry said, and continued, “The First Eleven will probably make it so hot for Joe that he will be unable to keep the rendezvous. The enemy are sure to have their offshore patrols looking for Joe and us tonight.”
Round and round went their thoughts as the net seemed to be drawing closer about them. As they discarded plan after plan, talking in low voices, Bill suddenly stiffened.
“What’s that, sir?” he asked.
A distant baying of hounds drifted down on the wind and was gone.
“Bloodhounds!” Peter gasped. “I never knew that they kept them in Italy.”
“Well, you’ve learned something then — probably trained police dogs: Alsatians or German dogs of some sort,” snapped Harold. “Let’s get cracking!”
“Wait!” said Peter. “If we run, they’ll follow our scent and they’re bound to trail us. Remember Dartmoor?”
“Yes, I do,” Harold replied.
“Remember the day we were out fishing in the mist and were mistaken for escaped convicts from Princetown?”
“Water! The only thing to beat them is water,” said Peter. “There’s plenty of that around here!” — and he swept his arm to seawards.
They all looked at each other.
“I’m game,” Harry said. “How about you two?”
“It’s our only chance. Come on, Harry!”
Bill nodded, “Proper skylark, sir!”
They all laughed. After they had stretched their aching joints, they cautiously clambered up the edge of the cliffs. Once clear of their hiding place, there was no mistaking the baying of hounds which seemed much nearer — less than half a mile away.
Anxiously searching for a break in the sheer cliffs, Peter spied a possible descent, little more than a hundred yards away.
“Come on! It’s now or never!” he whispered.
He hauled himself over the top, and, bent double, ran desperately for the gap, Harry and Bill following close on his heels. Already the eastern horizon was flaking into the cold strips of the first light of dawn.
Peter held his breath as he dropped over the edge of the cliff. If the descent was impassable, they were done! But, slithering and falling with their backs to the rough volcanic rock, they tumbled down the fifty-foot cliff, digging their heels into the rough surface to check their descent.
With a jolt that knocked the breath from their bodies, they fell, half stunned, on to the pebbles on the beach below. Peter swayed as he stood up, not knowing where he was. A dark figure loomed up against him.
“Are you all right?” asked Harold anxiously, dragging Peter’s numbed mind back to consciousness. “For Heaven’s sake, Peter! Peter! Peter, snap out of it and come on!”
It was Bill’s turn to lead the way while Harold pulled Peter’s stumbling frame after him. Years of training and severe discipline once again forced Peter’s protesting body to obey. He shook his head like a befuddled spaniel and, reeling and staggering, quickly recovered his senses.
Doubling back along the beach, in ten minutes they were within two hundred yards of the little cove on which they had landed — so long ago, it seemed. The familiar shapes of the black rocks jutting out to sea jerked sense into Peter’s mind; while behind them, the cries of the remorseless hounds filled their ears with most horrible sound. Already the brutes were baying with triumphant yelps, as they snuffled round their recent hiding place below the clifftop.
“That’s the cove where we landed, Harry! Be careful — they may have posted sentries.”
“We’ll have to risk it! Come on!”
Peter was now in full control of himself and they followed Bill swiftly and silently to the foot of the cliff, and peered round it.
“No one ’ere, sir! Come on!” Bill whispered.
“Look, Harry, look!”
On its side lay a large baulk of timber, a piece of flotsam washed up by the tide and which doubtless was from a ship torpedoed by one of The Fighting Tenth; they hauled it to the water’s edge and turned it end-on to the waves.
“Take off your jacket and leave everything except your forty-five and ammunition,” ordered Arkwright, who was already tearing off his jacket and kicking it to the water’s edge. While the others followed his example, the sound of their relentless pursuers grew no louder, for they must have been checked by the steep cliff descent.
“They don’t like our way down,” grinned Harold, a smile appearing on his face for the first time that day. “Here goes!”
Grasping the front end of the baulk of timber, he waded into the water while Peter and Bill steadied the other end. They pushed their way out to sea, until they no longer felt the bottom beneath them. The dawn had brought its morning breeze, and little wavelets now flustered the sea.
Kicking with their legs, they drove the timber out before them. Surely, steadily, the cliffs receded until they were now some three hundred yards from them. Peter glanced back over his shoulder. Above the sobs of his lungs clamouring for air, he heard the snarling and baying of their pursuers on the beach, incited by hoarse shouts of encouragement from the German guards who were stumbling along the pebbled shore.
Out, out, and still farther out, keeping the end of the timber pointing directly seawards, they pushed and kicked, paddling with their free arms. Five hundred yards now — over a quarter of a mile!
Peter could continue no longer. “Stop, Harold, please stop!”
Harold held up his hand and, turning round to look at Peter and Bill he whispered, “They may not spot us, but if they do, I’ll turn the log beam-on to the beach. Get on the far side and it will protect us.”
The sinister baying of the hounds in the cove followed by the mumble of German curses which came to them across the water suggested that their sodden clothes had been discovered.
The grey dawn had now drifted into another day. A small black object, some six hundred yards distant from the shore, jutted up and was gone again. The German patrol leader blinked, peered seawards and then rubbed his eyes. There it was again, rising and falling in the slight sea that was now running.
“Achtung!” he expostulated, pointing out to sea.
“Nein, Herr Leutnant!” a shaggy-haired sergeant replied, wagging his head, and then raised voices denoted that a heated argument was in progress, but the Leutnant was not satisfied.
“Make sure, Karl — it won’t be wasting ammunition. Open fire, just in case,” ordered the young officer.
Harold heard the snapping of bolts as the rifles were loaded, so the three hunted men slowly paddled the log round until it was floating parallel to the beach.
“Look out, men!” Harold hissed.
Crack! Wheee-ee!
The bullet whined when it passed overhead, kicking up a spurt of spray as it hit the water twenty feet beyond them. Bill’s head slowly subsided beneath the surface, and Peter filled his lungs, keeping himself under by pushing against the underside of the timber.
As he was doing
so, a loud crack split the water above him. Then another, and another. Peter’s ears sang with a sharp pain. His hand felt the jarring as bullet after bullet thudded into the baulk of wood. His lungs were bursting. He would have to come up for air soon. He couldn’t hold on any longer — thud! thud! … thud! Slowly he exhaled, letting the air globules slowly bubble from his open mouth. Still keeping his wits, he rolled slowly on to his back and allowed his head to surface so that his mouth and nose just appeared above the water. He gulped, sucking in a lungful of life-giving air. His ears drummed as he turned over again, once more out of sight below the timber, and then, suddenly, he realised that the jarring and the ear-splitting crashes had ceased.
His head slowly returned to the surface to see Bill’s grinning face, six feet away, one eye closed in an enormous wink. Then Harold surfaced, jerked his head and started to paddle with his disengaged arm, while Peter helped to bring the log slowly back, end-on to the beach. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the last of the patrol disappearing round the sharp outline of the cliff down which they had scrambled.
Harold murmured, “In half an hour’s time it will be daylight, Peter. Let’s paddle eastwards, until we get well down the coast. Luckily, we’ve got the inshore current with us which ought to take us well down. Then we’ll ease inshore and lie up. What say you?”
“All right, Captain, but it’s blinking cold!”
Slowly the unnoticed baulk of timber floated down the coast of Sicily. Within an hour, it was near the Spella rocks, and bobbing up and down in the sea’s white horses. Half an hour later, it disappeared to seawards of the black rock which was now lashed by the spray.
Peter could hardly hear Harold’s voice. Shaking his head from side to side, he tried to remain awake, although almost overcome by the cold.
“Wake up, sir, wake up!” Peter heard Bill’s urgent summons close to his ears. He dragged his eyelids open, to see Bill’s grey face close by him.
“Hold on, Peter! Hold on! We’re nearly there. Let’s go in now, as we’re round the point,” Harold’s urgent voice implored from the forward end of the timber. “Are you all right, Peter?”