by Nevil Shute
Bugs Lehmann was a very angry man. He argued for some time and was exceedingly unpleasant, but the ship’s officers were obviously armed and he had only three men with him. Presently the captain, a red-headed Ulsterman, took him down to his cabin and split a bottle of whisky with him. They were rather sorry for Bugs Lehmann in their way; there were no other ships about and it was clear to them that this option was one move in a shore battle of the gangs which would end in his elimination from the Boston trade. But there was nothing they could do to help him out.
He went over the side to his launch after a couple of hours, sullen and silent.
The captain stood with Colvin by the rail, watching the launch as it drew away. “That’s another of the little chaps,” he said. “We won’t see him again.”
“I reckon Mario’s got his number,” said the mate.
“Aye,” said the captain, “Mario’s got his number. Got his tombstone ready for him, like as not.”
Colvin laughed. “Maybe. In any case, we deal with Mario from now on.”
But they were not quite right in that. In the late afternoon three days later, Bugs came to them again. He came with six or seven men beside him in the launch. Colvin met them at the head of the companion ladder; the captain was in his bunk. Before Colvin realized what was happening he found himself covered by a Thompson gun.
He was not greatly worried. He said: “Say, Bugs, you don’t have to act like this.”
The German said: “I haf no quarrel with you, eider with the captain. You chust keep quiet, and you don’t see nodding, and you don’t say nodding. Nor de crew eider.”
The captain came up, and was covered similarly immediately he stepped on deck. Their guns were taken from them and they were locked into the chart-house; the crew were ordered below and went very willingly.
From the chart-house windows Colvin and his captain had a good view of the head of the companion, and could see most of what went on on deck. They saw a queer harness brought up from the launch, comprising a back pack of tanks and cylinders; there was a length of hose that terminated in a long metal pipe or nozzle. They watched as this equipment was buckled on to Bugs Lehmann by his satellites.
“What in the name of God is all that gear?” whispered the captain. “Is it for squirting gas?”
“I reckon it must be,” said Colvin. “Do you think it’s Mario they’re laying for?”
“Must be Mario. I didn’t expect him till to-morrow. I wish we’d never got mixed up in this.”
They waited for an hour, as dusk fell. Then from the mist towards the shore they heard the deep rumble of a heavy launch. “Mario,” the captain whispered.
They watched from the chart-house, tense and apprehensive. Bugs Lehmann’s boat was evidently lying off some distance from the ship, because the new launch circled normally to the companion. They could see Bugs crouching down behind the bulwarks, uncouth in his equipment, the nozzle poking out towards the ladder.
There was a hail from the launch. “Heartsease?”
One of the men on deck, dim in the evening light, hailed back in a good English voice. “Heartsease it is. Watch out for our companion as you come alongside.”
There was a pause, tense, pregnant.
And then a horrible thing happened. A violent blast of cherry-coloured flame shot out from the long nozzle down the companion ladder, crowded with six or seven men coming up the side. They saw Bugs Lehmann rising to his feet, directing the jet of fire full on the bodies of his Italian enemies. A burst of Tommy-gun fire followed from the bulwarks down into the launch; there were hoarse, tortured screams, and a loud sighing, windy noise of flame. The fire lit up the whole ship with its light, died, and burst out again in sudden, dreadful jets, hideous, devastating, and inhuman.
In the chart-house the two officers watched, utterly appalled. The jets of fire, full twenty yards in length, went on and on; they could not see all that was happening over the ship’s side. But in the end it stopped, and there was only the faint smoky flame of the burning companion ladder, and the blaze from the launch burning upon the water, and drifting away astern.
Presently they were released from the chart-house by an exultant gang. “I guess you got whisky to sell me to-day?” said Bugs Lehmann grimly. “That Mario, he ain’t going to need it now, I t’ink.”
He showed them his equipment with great pride; they examined it with horrified interest. It was a German type pack flame-thrower, and he was tremendously proud of his prowess in handling it. It seemed to mean nothing to him that he had just murdered seven or eight men horribly. Colvin got the impression from something that was said that Lehmann had served in the First World War as a German Flammenwerfer soldier, and that he had built the equipment himself from the German model.
They sold him all the liquor that he wanted, about two hundred cases. It was slung down into his launch and in an hour he was away, and they were left to cut away the burnt companion ladder and remove the scars of fire from the ship’s side before returning to the Bahamas. They sailed that night, resolved to work on the Virginia coast thenceforward and to give New England a long rest.
A fortnight later they saw in a newspaper that the body of Bugs Lehmann had been discovered in a ditch between Chatham and Hyannis.
Colvin told me all this, sitting in my room at the Admiralty; I was too interested to cut him short. “It was just a fool idea I had,” he said apologetically. “But it stuck in my mind these fourteen — fifteen years: the proper way to treat them Nazis. Treat ’em the way they understand. So when the admiral asked at my interview if I had any preference in my employment, I just upped and said what I thought, and it went down like that in the record. But you don’t want to pay any attention to that, sir.”
That, of course, was my affair, not his. Before I took him into my confidence, I wanted to know one or two more things about him.
“Are you married?” I enquired. One must give some weight to that sort of thing.
“No, sir,” he said. He said it with just that momentary hesitation that convinced me he was lying; it was, I thought, the first lie he had told me in the interview.
“About to be?”
“No, sir.”
His private life was no affair of mine, of course, and he had given me the answers that I wanted to hear. It seemed to me that I could safely leave it at that.
“Well, now,” I said, “the duty that you are proposed for is a special operation in a very small vessel. It’s something rather in the nature of a Commando operation on a very small scale. A good navigator is needed, and that’s what you’ve been recommended on. The vessel will be under the command of an army captain; if you accept the job you would be a sort of sailing master under his command. There will be one other deck officer under you, a lieutenant R.N.V.R. Most of the crew will be Free French.”
He said quickly: “I learned some French, one time up in Quebec.” He seemed keenly interested.
“That helps,” I said. “Does that sort of thing line up with what you want to do?”
“And how,” he said. “I got a bellyful of ocean boarding vessels.”
He said: “This means some close-up fighting with the Jerries, I suppose?”
I nodded. “It’s genuine Commando stuff. There is some risk in it — in fact, a lot of risk. There always is in this short-range fighting. It’ll be practically hand-to-hand. Essentially it’s a job for volunteers.”
“Well, I’m a volunteer for anything like that,” he said. “I guess that’s why you asked if I were married?”
“Yes,” I said dryly. “It’s as well to know.”
“Sure.” He thought for a moment. “Say, is that why you wanted to know all that about the Flammenwerfer?”
This was a first interview. “That’s as it may be,” I replied. “Plenty of time to talk about that later on.”
“Okay,” he said. “I certainly would like to have a job like that.”
I thought about it for a minute or two. I liked the man quite well mys
elf, but I wasn’t in the party. “I’m going to send you down to Dartmouth,” I said at last. “A little ship like this has got to be a happy ship; before you get this job you’ve got to meet the commanding officer, Captain Simon.” I told him how to get in touch with Simon at the port. “You’d better take the next train down.”
“Sure,” he said. “But I can work with anyone. I never get no personal trouble in a ship.”
That was confirmed in his record. There was one question I had forgotten to ask.
“You are a British-born subject, are you?” I enquired.
“Surely,” he replied. “I was born in Birkenhead.”
Colvin went down to Dartmouth on the evening train, and got to Kingswear in the middle of the night. He reported at the Naval Centre and they fixed him up with a bed. Next morning he reported back to the Naval Centre after breakfast, and there Simon went to find him.
McNeil had arranged the release of Simon from his coastal defence work some days before, and he had been putting in most of his time upon Geneviève; the shipyard were already working on the vessel. He had made two visits to the place at Honiton. On my part, after finishing with Colvin, I had spent the remainder of the afternoon telephoning other Admiralty departments and visiting the Second Sea Lord’s office, with the result that signals went off late that night releasing Boden and Rhodes for special duty.
Simon met Colvin in the Naval Centre, where these two unusual men took stock of each other. Nobody had thought to tell Colvin that Simon was half French. They walked together down to the ship, and as they went Simon was asking questions about the other’s navigational experience. What he heard satisfied him; Colvin, I think, was taciturn and wary.
They reached the quayside, and Simon indicated Geneviève. “There is the ship,” he said bluntly. “That is what you are to work in and to navigate, if you come with us in this thing.”
Colvin was startled. “What in hell kind of a ship is that?” he asked. “A fishing-boat?”
Simon said: “Certainly — a fishing-boat from Brittany. In that sort of a boat one can sail unquestioned anywhere upon the other side.”
The other looked her over, noting the high bow, the steep sheer and the sloping deck, the wide beam, and the sharp-raked transom. “Sure,” he said at last. He turned and smiled at Simon. “Well, try everything once.”
He jumped down on the bulwark from the quay, and so to the deck. In one quick tour from bow to stern he took in everything, noting the heavy timbers of the vessel, and her powerful engine. Then he turned to Simon.
“Say,” he said quietly. “Nobody told me yet just what it is this ship is supposed to do.”
Simon said: “There is the cabin, what they call the cuddy in the shipyard here. Suppose we go down there.”
They went down there for an hour, the July sun streaming down upon them through the little skylight. “There is the matter,” Simon said at last. “That is the job that this ship has to do.”
“The oil-tanks, and that, go down into the fish hold, I suppose?”
“That is the place for them,” the other said. “There is room there for everything, for all the oil we shall require. Only the gun itself, the flame-gun, will show up above the deck, and that we shall pile over with a net.”
He glanced at Colvin. “This is the way I want to fight the war, myself,” he said simply. “It may not be the way for you. If it not your way, then you should say so now.”
Colvin said: “Sure it’s my way. The way I look at it” — he paused and sought for words— “if you’re going to have a fight there’s no good sticking to the Marquis of Queensberry’s rules, if you get my meaning. If the other chap’s out to hurt you, why, then kick him in the belly and have done with it. That’s how I look at it. And this fire racket is as good a way of hurting Nazis as any that I know.”
Simon got up. “So — then we are agreed. It is a terrible weapon,” he said reflectively. And then he smiled. “Almost good enough for the Germans.”
They went up on deck. “A little can of beer?” he said politely to his navigator.
That afternoon Colvin met Boden, released that morning from his trawler. He met him in the ship. “They’re reckoning to put me into this as Master,” Colvin said, “as near as I can make it out. In that way you’d be working under me. But as I understand it, this was your idea right from the start.”
The other said: “Don’t worry about that. I’ve never had command.”
“What have you been doing in the Navy?”
“I’ve been in trawlers — about eighteen months.”
Colvin grunted; it was not a bad recommendation. An R.N.V.R. who could stand trawler life was obviously no pansy. “I reckon we’ll make out all right,” he said.
They talked about the ship for half an hour, going over every part of her in detail.
“This army chap, this Captain Simon,” Colvin said at last. “Where does he come from, and who is he? Is he French?”
Boden said: “He’s an Englishman by birth. He’s a pretty fine sort of chap, I think. He’s done at least one spying trip upon the other side.”
Colvin said: “It’s certainly a change from ocean boarding vessels.”
6
MCNEIL WAS VERY busy in the next few days, and I was not idle myself. He got the flame equipment down to Kingswear in forty-eight hours from our meeting with the admiral, and installation started in the shipyard. I went down there to organize accommodation about that time. I saw the Naval Officer in Command, an elderly retired commander, much puzzled by the unorthodox and secret nature of the party that had been established on his doorstep, but willing to help in any way he could.
After a short talk with him, I decided to put the party up the river, at Dittisham, three miles above the town. It was a quiet, isolated country district for one thing; for another, there were a few empty houses there. I got a couple of modern villas standing side by side; one was already empty and we requisitioned the other at twenty-four hours’ notice. Messing had then to be arranged, and finally transport.
Sitting in N.O.I.C.’s office I came to this one. “Transport,” I said. “While they are out at Dittisham, say for two months, they’d better have a light ten-horse-power truck with a Wren driver. That should make them independent of your organization.” I made a note. “I’ll get an extra driver and a truck appointed to you right away,” I said. “In the meantime, for the next few days, can you help them out?”
He said: “Of course. I’ve got an Austin van that they can have the use of. It’s usually pretty busy; we shall want another.”
The old commander played a typical old-stager’s trick over that van. Up at the Admiralty next day I thought it out and came to the conclusion that the lightest sort of truck might not do all they wanted in the way of transporting all the various stores and ammunition that they might require. I went one size larger, and sent them down a new, fifteen-horse-power truck with a very efficient young woman as a driver. This outfit was attached to N.O.I.C. for administration, of course; when the old commander saw it it appeared to him to be a gift from heaven. He put it straight on to his routine work, and attached the little old Austin van with Leading Wren Barbara Wright as driver to work for Captain Simon’s party.
Colvin knew all the details of the exchange within twenty minutes. He went to Simon in great indignation. “What d’you think?” he exclaimed. “That bohunk up there in the office went and pinched our truck! Commander Martin sent us down a dandy truck from London, a new one, bigger’n this. I just seen it in the garage. What say, we go and have a showdown with the old bastard?”
Simon said: “It is very wrong, and we are very much misused, but we will not make a quarrel over it. If we have too big loads for this one, or if this one breaks, then we will ask for our own truck again. But N.O.I.C. is helping us in many ways; we will now let him get away with this.”
Colvin grumbled. “I wouldn’t let him get away with it.”
Simon smiled. “Think of the junior offi
cers, and do not spoil the fun. That other woman with the big truck, she has a face like a boot.”
They were on deck, with shipyard men all around them; the old truck stood on the quay. A gang of men were unloading cans of cooper’s grease and drums of tar from it. Rhodes, newly promoted to a lieutenant, was standing talking to the driver.
She said: “I put some cow parsley inside the gate last night, sir. Did you find it?”
He said: “Oh, yes — it was frightfully good of you to bother. I gave him half last night, and the other half this morning.” He hesitated, and then said: “I was away at Honiton the day before yesterday, with Captain Simon. Somebody fed him while I was away. Was that you?”
She said: “I wasn’t sure if you were coming back that night, so I thought I’d better. Mrs. Harding isn’t allowed in there, is she?”
“No. It was very kind of you to think about him.”
She flushed a little, and said: “Oh, that’s all right. I let him out for a little run, but I was scared of him getting under that heap of depth charges, so I didn’t let him out for long.”
He was immensely grateful to her. He had been very worried on that trip to Honiton that they would not get back in time for him to take Geoffrey out for his daily constitutional, and now, it seemed, he need not have worried at all. Miss Wright, as a naval rating, had access to the net defence store at any time, and she was willing to look after Geoffrey in emergency, it seemed.
He said: “He can’t get under the depth charges if you put the plank up across the ends. Didn’t you see the plank?”
She shook her head.
He said diffidently: “If you like to come down there this evening when I’m feeding him, about seven o’clock, I could show you how it goes. Then if you want to have him out again, you can.”
She said: “All right. I’ve got to go over to Brixham this afternoon, so I’ll be able to get some more cow parsley. I’ll bring that along with me.”