The Man who Missed the War (19 page)

By a rough calculation based on his observation taken the day before, and his now practised judgment of speeds, Philip reckoned that they were some sixty miles or less south-west of the Lizard and that, if they continued on their present course, they should pass some thirty miles to the south of it during the night. But the trouble was that the wind had changed. It was now blowing from the north, and they were still out in the open ocean, not yet having come under the shelter of the coast of Cornwall.

Within an hour it was clear that the Raft Convoy was no longer making its way into the entrance of the Channel. In spite of the fact that Philip kept the launch heading north-east by east, they were drifting south. With the wind in its present direction there was no risk of his being driven on to the rocky Cornish coast, so he turned the launch north, head on to the
rising seas. He could do no more now than prevent its rolling to some extent and hope that the storm would die down by the following day.

They were cheered considerably about half past five by an aircraft bearing the red, white and blue circles of the R.A.F., which came down quite low overhead and circled round twice before flying off again in the direction of the English coast. It might have been coincidence but Philip felt certain that it was the long arm of the British Navy which had sent out an aircraft to locate them, and, now that they had to face another storm, it was comforting to think that they were no longer quite alone, but had friends ashore who were concerned for their safety.

As night closed down dark and menacing, squalls of rain began to add to their discomfort. The wind had veered again, but not in their favour. It seemed that an ill fate had decreed that they should be caught in the first of the autumn gales, and that they were in for a real nor’-easter.

Philip remained in the cockpit of the engine-room fighting desperately to keep the launch head on to the waves, which seemed to be increasing in size every moment. The storm was far worse than either of the two bouts of bad weather that they had struck while crossing the Atlantic and at two o’clock in the morning, loath as he was to do so, he decided that he must disconnect the launch from the chain of rafts, otherwise when the cables slackened the Number One Raft might be hurled right on top of them.

Gloria was sick but refused now to remain in her bunk for more than a few hours at a time, and insisted on crawling along the deck from the cabin to the engine-room to bring him biscuits and a thermos full of hot coffee.

When morning dawned, the sea was running mountains high, and for minutes at a time they could see no further than the great green valley across which they were sliding, while from the crests they caught only a swift glimpse of other crests breaking into great curving rolls of foam; but Philip managed to keep the Number One Raft in sight, and never let it become more distant than two crests away from him.

At nine o’clock, Philip decided that he really must take a rest, but the launch began to roll so dangerously within five minutes
of his leaving the steering-wheel that he had to hurry back to it. It was not, however, till two hours later that he became really alarmed.

He suddenly noticed that after each wave had broken over the bow of the launch the water was taking much longer to slide off. He guessed the cause in a second. The pounding of these great waves was so heavy that the forward compartment had sprung a leak again, where he had only been able to patch it, and had gradually filled with water. This, he knew, was serious, and he was now so tired that he could not keep the launch nose on to the storm for much longer. If he let up for more than a few minutes a cross sea might hit them, half-swamping the cabin and the engine-room; and, with the forward compartment useless as an airlock to help keep them buoyed up, the launch would go under.

His brain was so numbed with weariness that it almost refused to function, but he knew that he had got to do something about the situation before very long, because otherwise he would not have the strength left to do anything at all. The launch could not live through another night of this, and probably not even another few hours. Waves were constantly breaking over the forward compartment, so there was no possible hope of pumping out the water, even if he could have reached it without being swept overboard. Yet, terribly aware as he was of the deadly peril which now menaced them, he was so exhausted that he could think of no measure which might avert the final catastrophe.

Suddenly, above the screaming of the tempest and the thunder of the waves, he heard a voice. As clearly as though the words had been spoken in a quiet room, the vigorous tones of the dynamic little Canon smacked home in his ears.

‘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?’

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 or 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.