The Man who Missed the War

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘Philip, what’s the matter with you? Use your wits, man! Abandon the launch and get on the raft at once. It’s your only chance.’

  He needed no second urging. The dream in which his dead friend had driven him up on to the deck of the Regenskuld so that he might learn of the plot against his life was still vivid in his memory. He knew nothing whatever about spiritualism, and this was no time to consider the implications of these occult manifestations; he accepted them instantly as Divine intervention, and as though an electric current had been turned on inside him he suddenly felt a surge of new energy and determination.

  Lashing the wheel, he made a dash for the cabin and, shouting to make Gloria hear above the storm, told her to pack at once as the launch would not last long and they would be safer on the raft.

  She took it well and shouted back: ‘How long can you give me?’

  ‘Half an hour—an hour if you like,’ he yelled; ‘but we mustn’t leave it too long, and the sooner you’re ready the better.’

  She nodded, and grabbing the handrail to save himself from falling he stumbled up the stairs again, then lurched along to the wheel. Now, he began to ease the launch bit by bit nearer to the raft, as opportunity offered, and after half an hour he was within thirty feet of it on its lee-side.

  To his relief he found that, although it was not very high out of the water, the great solid bulk of it provided much more shelter than he had expected. Edging the launch still nearer, he managed to get a grip on the raft’s narrow platform with a boathook, and pulled himself alongside.

  The next ten minutes were risky work. As the raft and launch soared up great mountains of water, or slid down into seemingly bottomless valleys, he took his life in his hands tying the two vessels together. At last the job was done, and Gloria, who was already standing by, was able to pass him up some of the things that she had packed. She seemed to have collected everything that was movable at the bottom of the cabin stairs, and Philip spent nearly half an hour throwing the bundles and cases she passed him on to the wide flat surface of the raft. Then he helped her up and, choosing a propitious moment when the launch and the raft were on the same level, half-lifted and half-pushed her from one to the other. Two minutes later, as they came level again, he sprang after her.

  They had not been any too soon in abandoning the launch, and were still lying flat on their faces breathlessly wriggling their way forward towards the centre of the raft, when one of the ropes that held the launch to it snapped. It immediately swung outward, and as the second rope parted it was whisked away like a cockleshell in the storm.

  ‘That’s the end of the old launch,’ cried Philip in Gloria’s ear. ‘Thank God we managed to get on to the raft! It can’t sink, anyhow.’

  ‘No,’ she shrieked back. ‘But ‘tis hundreds of miles we must have been driven by the storm, an’ with the launch you’ve lost your radio-sending set. Will anyone ever be able to find us now?’

  8

  The Enemy

  Even as Gloria spoke they saw the launch again. Head down, stern up, it seemed to balance precariously for a moment on the crest of a monster wave, then it disappeared from view. With it, as she had so grimly pointed out, they had lost their only means of giving their position when the storm subsided, so that they could readily be found and picked up. But they had little time to worry about that now. Their situation was still near-desperate, and every ounce of energy that still remained to them was required if they were to save themselves and their scanty possessions from the fury of the tempest.

  Having landed on the lee side of the fifty-foot-square raft, they were on that part of it least exposed to the buffeting of the waves, which, every time they struck, sent huge cataracts of water high into the air. Every few moments these great columns of spray would come hurtling down on the flat surface of the metal cargo containers with a smack and a swish, leaving not one inch of dry space on the whole two hundred and fifty square feet; and occasionally a wave larger than the rest would sweep right over the whole area.

  Only one thing prevented Philip and Gloria from being swept from their insecure holds into the sea. This was the six-foot-square well that had been left in the middle of the cargo containers. The centre of each wave that washed over the raft broke on this, pouring into it and out through the scuppers which ran under the cargo containers for that purpose. As Philip realised that it was to this they owed their temporary safety, he blessed the name of the Naval Commander in the Plans Division at the Admiralty, who, so many months ago, had suggested these wells as refuges for servicing crews should they be caught by a squall on one of the rafts. The two castaways now wormed their way towards the well, pulling and pushing their most precious packages with them as they went. Philip had to make four journeys to get the other things, but, twenty minutes after landing on the raft, they and all the things they had brought were in the six-foot-square hole.

  It was only five feet deep, the height of the cargo containers that surrounded it, so when standing upright they could see out over the flat tops of the containers and were exposed to the full force of the gale; moreover, it was impossible to sit down as every eight or ten minutes one of the larger waves poured into it, temporarily submerging them up to their waists. They were safe there, but, as Philip looked at Gloria’s dead-white face, he wondered how long they would be able to stand this frightful buffeting before they collapsed of exhaustion and exposure.

  His eyes were still on the girl’s face, when she suddenly lurched forward and was terribly sick. A wave swamped over them knocking her off her balance, and she fell to her knees. He pulled her to her feet and held her to him as the water gurgled away down the chutes. As the raft had no keel, method of propulsion or steering gear, there was no means of keeping it even moderately steady. It rose and fell, sometimes with a sickening swiftness, and often one corner of it cocked right up in the air at a terrifying angle, while water cascaded across its flat surface. Philip was a good sailor, but the motion was too much for him, and in another few minutes he was forced to give way to an agonising retching which made him feel he was going to choke up his heart.

  When he had recovered a little he saw that Gloria had slipped to her knees again and was leaning half-unconscious against one of the four round manholes in the sides of the wall, by which cargo could be stowed in the containers as well as by other manholes in their tops. Pulling himself together with an effort, Philip set to work on the bolts that held the manhole nearest him in place, with the idea that if they could get inside one of the containers they would at least be out of the wind and escape being drenched every ten minutes.

  The bolts were stiff, but he found a makeshift lever among the gear brought from the launch and, after a quarter of an hour’s hard work, desperation lending strength to his efforts, he managed to get the manhole open. Climbing through, he pulled Gloria after him and, one by one, rescued the sopping packages from the well; then he slammed to the circular iron door and, stumbling over Gloria’s legs in the darkness, fell upon the heaving floor, where he was abominably sick again.

  How long they lay there neither of them was afterwards quite certain, but Philip thought that it was two nights and a day. He remembered getting up on several occasions to peer out through the manhole door, but whether it was dark or light no change was evident; great gobbets of water still smacked down on the cargo containers, and every now and then, after a tossing of more than average violence, the well was half-flooded by a spate of foaming water.

  Inside the compartment all the elements of a nightmare caused them hardly to know when they were awake or asleep. To keep out the water the manhole door had to be kept shut, with the result that they were lying in pitch-black darkness. As they had nothing on which to fix their eyes, it seemed to them as if they were being whirled round and round and jerked up and down like cherries in a cocktail shaker. There was no ventilation and no heating, so it was both stuffy and cold. The only thing with which to ease the discomfort of the hard floor on which they lay o
r crouched was the bedding from the launch, but this was still soaking wet. For many hours neither of them was more than semi-conscious, and, at such short intervals as either was sufficiently compos mentis to think of the other, it was only because their companion’s presence was recalled by the sound of chattering teeth or fitful groans.

  At last Philip was brought out of one of his long bouts of miserable timeless inertia by the suddenly crystallised knowledge that the floor was no longer pitching up and down beneath him with the violence of a bucking horse; it was merely soaring and sinking alternately with comparative gentleness that was not altogether unrestful. On standing up, forgetful of the low ceiling, he bumped his head; but after fumbling for a moment he found the manhole door and opened it, to discover that it was day and that the square well no longer had water slopping about in its bottom. It came to him then that his clothes had dried on him, and he took some comfort from the thought that sea water is said never to give people either rheumatism or a chill.

  Having climbed through the hole, he drew himself to his full height and looked slowly round the horizon. A stiff sea was still running, and on every side lay the same grey, desolate prospect of racing, foam-flecked waters. The sky overhead was still black and lowering, but the wind had dropped, and it looked as if the worst of the storm had blown itself out. There was no ship in sight, no aircraft, and no sort of indication as to in which direction the nearest coast might lie.

  Only one thing gave Philip a rather grim satisfaction. Rafts Number Two, Three and Four were still attached to Number One, and that, he felt, went a long way to prove his contention that, provided the load of each raft were equal in weight and distribution to the others the stress of tide and winds should be exactly the same on them all. As four rafts had remained connected through such a tempest, he had little doubt that the other six were not far distant, and that most, if not all, of the cables connecting them had also held; so that, had they and many more been in the care of a trawler carrying two launches to act as mother-ship, as he had originally planned, she would soon have rounded them all up.

  It was nice to think that there would at least still be part of his convoy to show when the destroyer, which he had no doubt would be sent out for them, arrived on the scene to pick them up; but all the same it was damnable luck that the good weather had not lasted for another forty-eight hours so that the launch and her whole string might have been towed in triumph to a safe anchorage in Southampton Water.

  He heard a movement behind him and turned to see Gloria emerging from the hole. Her hair was matted, and there were dark rings under her eyes. As he took her hand to help her, he recalled how she had refrained from making a single complaint during their night and day of ordeal in the launch, and the courage she had displayed during the perilous business of transferring to the raft. He began to say what a good show he thought she had put up, but she cut him short.

  ‘Oh, there’s nix to it, Boy. I was so mighty scared that it just stopped me being sick until we were safe on the raft here. But where will the storm have taken us? Have you any idea at all?’

  Philip shook his head. ‘Until the sun comes out I can’t even get an observation that will give us a fix; but I’m afraid we’ve been swept a long way south. We’re probably somewhere in the Bay of Biscay.’

  ‘Where would that be?’ she startled him somewhat by asking.

  ‘It lies between the western coast of France and the northern coast of Spain.’

  ‘And how far are they from Portsmouth?’

  ‘Anything from two to seven hundred miles.’

  ‘Holy Saints! An’ I thought Europe was a small place! Will your friends in the Navy ever be able to find us now?’

  ‘Oh, I think so,’ he spoke more confidently than he felt. ‘I’m sure they’ll send an aircraft out spotting for us, and once we’ve been located they’ll probably arrange for something to come out from the French coast to pick us up.’

  ‘Then I’d be able to go straight to Paris, wouldn’t I? That would be fine!’

  ‘Yes, provided you can satisfy the French Immigration officials.’

  For a moment they stood in silence, then he added: ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m jolly hungry. Shall we see what we can find to eat?’

  She sighed. ‘What wouldn’t I give for hot coffee an’ hamburgers, right now. Still, there’s half a cold tongue—the salt water won’t have harmed that—an’, if the sea hasn’t gotten into the tins, there’s plenty of biscuits to be eating with it.’

  They began to rummage among the bundles and packages that they had salvaged from the launch. Everything was still damp and unpleasantly sticky from briny sea water, but the lump of tongue, when extracted from the table napkin in which it had been wrapped, proved perfectly edible, and enough biscuits for their immediate requirements had escaped a wetting.

  Gloria had no watch, and Philip’s had stopped, so they had no idea what time it was and could only guess that when they had finished their meal it was about three o’clock in the afternoon. It was now the first week in October, and the darkness of the sky threatened an early nightfall, so they felt that they would not have any too much time to make themselves more comfortable while daylight lasted, and set about it right away.

  Of the four cargo containers, each occupying a quarter of the raft’s area, one had been devoted exclusively to oil, for refuelling the launch while the convoy was at sea, and was still well over half-full. The other three contained the selection of mixed goods that Philip had purchased in New York with a view to testing how the various items would stand up to a two months’ voyage and probably a much rougher passage than they would have had in the hold of a ship.

  Before leaving the cabin, Gloria had had the sense to pack up his instruments and the books that he used for his nautical calculations, but she had not thought to bring the papers that he kept in the drawer of the table; in consequence, the manifest giving details of the cargo on the raft, and the contents of each numbered case, was lost. All they could do was to open a package at random here and there.

  It was not easy work as the bales and cases were stacked close together to prevent their shifting, and the only light they had was that which percolated in through the open door of the manhole; moreover, they both soon began to suffer from a most painful crick in the neck, owing to lack of headroom. Gloria had managed to save all the cooking utensils from the launch, and Philip knew that, if only he could locate them, there were cases which contained both oil-heating stoves and primuses among the cargo, either of which would have served for cooking. There was also a great quantity and variety of food. But, during the afternoon and evening, all they succeeded in gaining access to were potatoes, sugar, garden implements, raw cotton, molasses, ball-bearings and rubber sponges.

  The bale of raw cotton opened up and spread out proved a most welcome substitute for their damp bedding, and with more of the biscuits off which they had made their evening meal they ate some spoonfuls of sugar, knowing that it would help to keep up their strength.

  Next morning they found that the sea was calmer and that the sun had come out, so they carried up all their damp bedding and belongings and spread them out to dry on the deck made by the flat roofs of the containers. For breakfast they had the rest of the tongue, but they now found themselves exceedingly thirsty, and, having nothing at all to drink, set to on a determined and more systematic examination of their cargo.

  Philip succeeded in removing the main hatch in the top of one of the containers, and this gave them much easier access to a good part of its contents. Moreover, while they worked in it the head of one or other of them was always partly in the open above the hatch level, so it was easy to keep a lookout for the aircraft which they felt sure must be seeking them.

  Many of the things they could reach most readily were of little use to them, as it was in this container that all the extra sails for the rafts had been stored, together with the great lengths of rope and twine, spare cables and beacons, etc.; but Philip
felt certain that the case containing the oil-stoves was also there somewhere. During the course of the morning they came across carpets, a case of ladies’ shoes, a crate containing six bicycles, a quantity of fireproof asbestos sheeting, twelve electric fires and several bundles of cheap curtains and tablecloths. Philip had bought all these things and innumerable others through a wholesale trading company in New York, with the idea that when they had served their turn as test cargo he would, by having brought them freight-free from the U.S.A. to the United Kingdom, be able to re-sell them at quite a decent profit; but none of them seemed of much value to him now.

  A little before midday they saw a British aircraft to the west of them, which appeared to be cruising quite slowly. Both of them sprang out of the hatch and began to wave lengths of the blown-out tattered sails from the stunted masts of the raft. But the crew of the aircraft did not see them, and it flew serenely on.

  Philip took an observation of the sun and worked it out that their latitude was now 46° 42″ North, so his surmise that they were about on a level with the centre of the Bay of Biscay proved correct, although he found that they were well outside it in the Atlantic, approximately on the Tenth Meridian West. However, he knew that these calculations were subject to a very wide degree of error now that he could only guess at the time by the height of the sun in the heavens, and was not even quite certain what day it was.

  Not having discovered any further food supplies, they had to make an unappetising lunch off some more sodden biscuits, and their thirst was now really beginning to worry them seriously; but early in the afternoon Gloria found a crate of grapefruit juice, and afterwards they came upon several sacks of coffee beans, a case of corned beef and another of tinned corn; so, although they could not yet make coffee, their evening meal had more substance and variety.

  Just as dusk was falling they saw another aeroplane, this time flying in towards the French coast, but it gave no sign that they had been seen, and they turned in, hoping for better luck next day.