by Nevil Shute
Colvin said: “One day, when peace comes, if I am still living, I will come back here and we will talk of this.”
He went back to the wire and the farmer recrossed it on the sail; Colvin regained the sail with some difficulty and went back to the shore. It struck him then that he had never learned the farmer’s name.
Ten minutes later he was in the water again, swimming to the dimly seen boat, towing the oars behind him by a cord around his shoulders. It was not a long swim, not much more than a hundred yards, and that now to him was nothing, helped by his Mae West. Before he reached the boat he saw another one, a little to the west.
He climbed into the boat and examined it. It was about twelve feet long and heavily built; it was fouled with sea-gull manure and seemed very old. There was a little water in the bottom of it and there was a cigarette tin at the stern, evidently used for bailing. A stout chain over the bows, with a padlock, held it to the mooring.
He dropped into the water again and swam over to the other one, but that was in a worse condition than the first, and he swam back again.
It was not much of a boat to cross the Channel in, but it would have to do. He pulled himself into it and then, cold in the wind, he set to sawing through the mooring chain. The wind was still in the south-east, and freshening.
Presently the chain parted quietly in his hand. He made it fast with a bit of cod-line, and then considered his position. He had oars and thole-pins, and a piece of canvas that he hoped would make a sail. He had no food or water; he had not attempted to bring any since he had to swim out to the boat. He was wet to the skin, and his boat was very old. Probably she would leak like a sieve.
“I pretty near chucked it up,” he said to me from the bed. “But then I thought that if the Jerries got me I’d be shot, as like as not, ’n if that was to happen I’d be better off at sea. And so I went.”
What he did was this: The wind was very nearly fair to carry the boat out to sea into the Four Channel. He dropped into the water again with very little buoyancy in his Mae West, and, swimming, tried to push the boat towards the south. The wind took her and he worked on her, ready to duck round to the other side of her if any firing started up. But no fire was opened on him, and no light came. He slid past the rocks of Kermorvan, fifty yards clear, and the wind carried him out into the rocky channel.
The tide was running very strongly to the southwards round the land, and the wind was southerly. The boat spun round and round in a heavy tide rip; he had great difficulty in getting into her. When he was in her the motion was so violent that he had difficulty in rowing, and in an hour he was carried south nearly to Pointe St.-Mathieu. But by that time he was about two miles off the land.
Then, with the moonrise, the tide turned and the wind veered more to the south, and began to blow quite hard. Rowing north before it he was carried up to Le Four at a great speed; he could not judge exactly where he was, but he was probably off Le Four at about three in the morning.
There were still three or four hours of darkness before him. He had stopped once or twice to bale out with the cigarette tin, but the leaks were not too bad. He now stopped rowing, and bent about half the area of canvas that he had to one of the oars as a sail, and stepped the oar at the bow thwart, and sailed on northwards, steering with the other oar over the stern.
“It was just dandy, that,” he said. “I went on a couple of hours that way, ’n if it hadn’t been for the weather I’d have felt like a million dollars.”
But the weather was against him. In the dark night he went rushing in his crazy little boat down the steep slopes of sea, with the water tumbling and crashing all around him and a high crest raised behind him overhead that threatened to fall down upon him and engulf him. Then, at the bottom of the trough, his clumsy vessel would broach to and need the whole of his strength and skill upon the steering oar to get her straight again. While he was heaving and labouring she would rise sluggishly as the swell passed beneath her, and then forward once again in her mad rush.
“I was a durned fool,” he said weakly. “But I wanted to get right clear of the coast before the day. And then I broke the oar.”
Struggling to get her straight after one of those rushes, he put too much weight upon his steering oar, and it broke off at the worn part by the thole-pin. He grabbed for the blade and missed it as it floated from him; then she had broached to and in the dim light a wave crest towered above him and crashed down.
“Lucky she didn’t turn clean over,” he observed. “Durned lucky.”
He did the only thing; he threw himself down in the water on her flooded bottom boards. A swamped boat with the weight well down in her seldom turns over, and in a minute or two he got the oar down that had served him as a mast. And sitting so, up to his neck in water as she rode over each swell, he set to work to get her free of water, first by rocking her and then by scooping out the water with his folded canvas. Time after time she filled again just as he thought to get a little freeboard showing, but in the end he won. The first light of dawn found him sitting on the bottom boards of the lightened boat, bailing down the water that he sat in with the cigarette tin.
“It was blowing pretty near a gale by that time, from about south-west,” he said. “I reckoned that I’d better stay down, lying in the bilge, ’n let her go.”
In that weather it was all that he could do, and the safest course, but there was another side to it. He was still very near to the French coast. An open boat with a man rowing or sailing it northwards would be an obvious target for machine-gun fire from any German aeroplane. But a boat drifting in a rough sea with a body lying motionless in the bottom of it was a common sort of sight; the German gunner might well think of the labour of cleaning his guns when he got home again before he fired on a thing like that.
He stayed down like that all day, numb and soaked and bailing every now and then with his tin. Towards evening he got up on the thwart, thinking to try to sail again, but the motion when he raised the oar was so sluggish and alarming that he quickly struck his mast again, and slipped down on the bottom boards. “She went easily that way,” he said. “With any weight up top, she wasn’t so good.”
The wind in the Channel was about Force 7 that night, south-west, and the temperature about 38 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The wind kept up all the next day and the following night, but it grew gradually colder.
“I thought I was done for,” he said simply. “Days ’n days, and each day worse and colder than the last.”
All of us may one day have to face that sort of thing. It had never come to me, nor has done yet, but I was curious to know what the threshold of death looks like. “Did you think about things much?” I asked. “Or was it kind—of numb?”
“I didn’t seem to have no control,” he said. “Half the time I was blubbering like a kid.”
“Because you knew that you were for it?” I said gently.
“Oh shucks, if wasn’t that. It was Junie’s watch. She bought it with her own money ’n give it me, back in San Diego. It was the only thing I had of hers, and it was stopped and spoilt, with the water all in it.”
The sick-bay steward came in for the second time, and I got up to go. “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “I’ll have it cleaned for you.”
I travelled back to London that afternoon, and went straight to my office. There was a note there asking me to ring McNeil as soon as I came in; I picked up the telephone and spoke to him at once.
“Is that Martin?” he said. “I’ve got a bit of news for you from the other side. Two messages.”
“I’ve got a bit for you,” I said. “I’ve seen Colvin. He’s in Haslar Hospital.” I told him very shortly how he had been picked up.
“That’s fine,” he said. “Look, would you like me to come round to you?”
“No, I’ll come to you,” I said. “I’ve got to go out anyway. I’ll be with you in half an hour.”
I rang off, and then rang up N.O.I.C. Dartmouth. “Commander Martin speaking,
” I said. “Admiralty. Look, sir, you remember that Wren who used to drive the truck for my party?”
“Leading Wren Wright?” he said.
“That’s the one. She was engaged to one of the officers, Lieutenant Rhodes.”
“Was she? I didn’t know.”
“I can’t get any news of Rhodes,” I said. “But one of the other officers, Lieutenant Colvin, has turned up. He’s in Haslar. Would you tell her that? As a matter of fact, it would be quite a good thing, if you could spare her for a day or so, if she went to Haslar to see Colvin. They were all in it together, and he has no relatives in this country. I think we might give her a railway warrant for that, if she wants to go.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll see to that. I’d like to know as soon as you hear anything further.”
“I’ll keep you informed,” I said.
I went out then, and took a taxi to the London Chronometer Company in the Minories. I asked to see the manager, and when he came I remembered him and he remembered me. “I came to see you about five years ago with the recording chronographs we had in Foxhound,” I said.
He nodded. “I remember, sir. How are you keeping?”
“Not so bad.” I gave him Colvin’s watch. “It’s had sea water in it for a week,” I said. “I want a really good job made of it, and I want it done quickly.”
“You don’t want much, do you?” he said dryly.
“Look, do the best you can,” I said. I told him a little of the story. “It’s a case we’re interested in at Admiralty.”
“What if I find it needs a new movement altogether?”
“Give it one,” I said. “But get it looking like it was before.”
I left it with him, and took a taxi back to McNeil’s office in Pall Mall. He passed me two messages across the table, both of them marked across the top in red MOST SECRET, as was usual.
The first said:
RENNES. The 145th regiment of infantry, part of the 64th Division, has arrived in Rennes. This division has been on the Russian front in the Rostov sector, and has now been transferred to Brittany because of the increasing unrest in this district. Units of the division are to be quartered at Morlaix, Carhaix, Douarnenez, and Quimper. The division is much under strength and is now not more than 5,000 men. The clothing and equipment of the men is in bad condition. Ends.
I glanced at McNeil. “This is very good news,” I said quietly. “This is what you have been working for.”
“Anything that takes pressure off the Russians is good news,” he said. “Look at the other one.” He said that in a tone I didn’t like.
I picked up the second message. It read:
DOUARNENEZ. A proclamation issued by the Commandant announces that thirty hostages have been arrested, comprising ten men past working age, ten women, and ten children. It is stated that the town is harbouring an English officer who is believed to be a survivor from a British ship sunk in the Iroise and to have been concerned in setting fire to German vessels. The hostages are to be shot on November 15th unless this officer is given up. Ends.
I stared at this thing, not knowing what to say. “It’s probably Simon,” I said at last. “He must have got ashore.”
The brigadier said: “Simon is the least likely of the lot. Simon can pass anywhere as a Frenchman; he’d have no need to go into hiding. No, it may be Boden or it may be Rhodes. One of them, at least, is still alive.”
“Just,” I said bitterly.
There was absolutely nothing we could do, and nothing much to be said. It was one of those things it’s really better not to think about too much.
“How’s Colvin?” McNeil asked at last.
I told him the story briefly. “He’ll be all right,” I said in the end. “I suppose he’ll be about a month in hospital. He must have been in that boat for five days and nights, and that’s not funny in this weather.”
“No,” he said, “it’s not.”
I left him soon after that, and went back to my office. It was November the 9th, and there were six more days to go before November the 15th. I turned to the arrears of my ordinary work as anodyne, but I could not tire myself sufficiently to sleep.
I went down to Newhaven to see the admiral next day, to report to him how the matter stood. It was a winding-up report, of course; as an operation of war the Geneviève incident was over and done with. All that remained to do was the final clearing of the paper work, dockets to Casualties Section, and that sort of thing, and in that the admiral was not much interested.
“Will you want to see Lieutenant Colvin, sir?” I asked.
“I don’t think so, Martin,” he replied. “Not unless he particularly wants to see me. See the Second Sea Lord’s office when the time comes about his posting. See that he gets a job that will suit him.”
“Very good, sir,” I said.
It was a relief to turn to other work.
I went back to London and the days dragged on. They were grey, windy days, raining most of the time. I heard indirectly that Barbara Wright had been to Haslar to see Colvin and had gone back to Dartmouth next day, but I did not get in touch with either of them. I had nothing good to say.
No further messages came from the other side.
My two years at Admiralty expired about that time, and I raised the matter with V.A.C.O. one day when he was in the office. “My two years is up at the end of this month, sir,” I said. “I’d like to get to sea again, if possible.”
He nodded. “I knew it was about this time.” And then he said, rather unexpectedly: “I shall miss you, Martin. You’ve been a great help to me.”
I said awkwardly: “That’s decent, sir. Would you—do you want me specially to stay on?”
He smiled. “I suppose you hate it here. You’d rather go to sea.”
I said: “Well—quite frankly, yes. I’d rather be at sea. But if you want me, sir, I’m quite willing to stay.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t stand in your way.”
That was that, and I went on in the office in a better frame of mind. And the next day I had a telephone call from Plymouth, from the Chief of Staff.
He said: “Martin, is an R.N.V.R. officer called Rhodes anything to do with that party of yours? Operation Blanket?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “He was the—er—the special gunner.”
He said: “Well, he’s back. He came back wounded, with a boatful of French fishermen. They came into Falmouth this morning.”
A sort of sick wave of relief passed over me. “I’m glad to hear it, sir,” I said. “Is he much hurt?”
“Chest and lungs, I think,” he said. “He’s in the naval hospital there.”
I said in wonder: “It’s nearly a fortnight old, that operation, sir. He must have been ashore—on the other side.”
“I think he has.”
I glanced at my watch. “I think I’d better slip down to Falmouth myself, right away.”
He said: “Well, I think you might. There are one or two rather curious features that I can’t very well tell you over the telephone.”
I said: “I’ll go down there to-day.”
“You’ll find our Intelligence Officer down there,” he said. “I’ll ring through to him and tell him that you’re coming.”
I rang up McNeil to tell him, but he was out of London. So I caught the afternoon train to Cornwall alone, and sat all day wondering and speculating about what had happened on the other side. The train was late and we did not get in till nearly midnight; I turned into the hotel and slept uneasily.
I was down at the Naval Centre early next morning, and met the Intelligence Officer, a retired lieutenant-commander. He was most interested in checking up on the bona fides of the fishermen and he was taking them all off to London on the morning train. “I haven’t seen this officer, Rhodes,” he said. “He wasn’t very well yesterday.” He paused and then he said cautiously: “If what I’ve heard is true its a very queer story.”
“What’s queer about it?” I enqu
ired.
He shrank back into the maddening caution of the Intelligence. “I’d really rather not discuss the matter at the moment,” he said. “It’s all got to be sifted.”
I said: “I’m down here to see Rhodes and to find out what happened to my party. The fishermen aren’t my concern. Suppose I stay down here and see my officer, and then meet you back in London? What I learn from him may pad out what you get from them.”
He agreed to that, and I went up to the hospital. I was beginning to know the smell of hospitals quite well on this infernal job. I saw the surgeon-commander first, in his little white painted office.
“You’re Commander Martin?” he enquired. “I’m glad you’ve come. This young chap Rhodes has been asking for you ever since he came in.”
“How is he?” I asked.
“Not too grand. He’s got a wound in the left shoulder and chest that touched the lung. The trouble is that it’s a fortnight old. It’s had attention of some sort during that time, but it’s in a pretty nasty state.”
I said: “Can I see him this morning?”
The surgeon said: “Oh yes. He won’t settle down till he’s had a talk to you. Make it as short as you can, but he’s got a lot he wants to tell you.”
He paused. “Before you go in there, there’s one thing I should like you to see,” he said. “It’s puzzled us a good bit.”
He rang the bell and a steward appeared at the door. “Get that uniform,” he said. The man went out and the surgeon turned to me. “I won’t keep you a moment.”
The steward came back with a bundle of clothes tied up with string. They unrolled it on the floor. It was a German petty officer’s uniform with short pea jacket of thick navy blue cloth bearing the eagle’s wing and swastika, a cap with the same emblem, a blue jumper with a blue naval collar, and trousers to match.
“These are the clothes he was wearing when he was admitted into hospital,” the surgeon said. “It’s a German naval uniform.”
I turned the clothes over. “So I see. What were the men with him wearing? The fishermen?”