Dive in the Sun (9 page)

We should be about a quarter of a mile offshore, he pondered; that’ll enable us to sink the boat in deep water and still make it possible to swim to the beach fairly easily. He pictured the details on the chart which seemed burned into his brain, and wondered if they could make the trip to the small hill at the side of the village without being seen.

Duncan looked up from his controls, his face suddenly alert and strained.

Curtis tensed automatically, and bent his head as if expecting to hear the sound of engines overhead, but Duncan frowned and shook his head briefly.

‘No, Ralph, it’s not that,’ he said slowly. ‘The motion—d’you feel it? We’re jerkin’ a bit too much!’

Curtis bit his lip. Duncan was right; the boat was rolling far too much, and as the depth gauge crept backwards and the boat swam persistently upwards, the motion of the hull, normally steady and calm until the actual moment of surfacing, was extremely uneasy. That could only mean that the weather had deteriorated during the night, and one of the brief Adriatic gales had materialized to make their task even harder.

Taylor spun the spokes carefully and shifted in his seat. ‘Bit of roughers!’ he muttered. ‘Just our bleedin’ luck!’

‘It’ll make us more difficult to spot, if there’s anyone watching.’ Curtis kept his voice even. ‘We shall have to make it quick though.’

The boat lurched, and he put out his hand to stop himself falling. The heavy automatic against his hip reminded him again of the uncertainty, and for an instant a tremor of panic coursed through him. He cursed himself. No second thoughts now. This was another point of no return.

‘Ten feet, Skipper!’

Curtis was grimly reminded that this would normally have been approaching periscope depth before he had blinded the boat with his stupidity. He wondered vaguely if Duncan was thinking the same.

He slipped the clips on the main hatch and braced his shoulders beneath it. The motion was much worse and the whole control-room was swinging through a crazy arc, throwing pieces of loose gear from side to side, and making the hunched occupants cling on to the controls, or anything else, to prevent serious injury.

‘Surfaced!’ Curtis spat the word from between his clenched teeth, and heaved open the hatch. For a moment the blast of cold air which lashed him across the face made him gasp, but the sight of the high grey waves which seemed to dwarf the casing of the boat forced all other thoughts from his mind. Gasping painfully, he dragged himself over the coaming and crouched on the small, wave-swept deck. He had to cling to the broken periscope with all his strength to prevent himself from being tossed into the swirling, white-capped water, and with his eyes half-blinded by spray he peered anxiously towards the shore, or where it should have been. Overhead the scudding black clouds tried to disguise the feeble efforts of the dawn to break through, and he knew that unless he acted at once, daylight might surprise them helplessly tossing on the surface. As the boat lifted sluggishly beneath him he caught sight of a dull grey hump and a thin strip of beach. It looked miles away, and as the boat fell heavily into a trough he realized that it was going to be a difficult trip, and they would be in poor shape when they reached the protection of the shore.
If
we make it, he thought wildly.

A long, low roller, its jagged crest laced with blown spray, pushed the boat on to its side and sent a stream of water
plunging
through the half-open hatch. The boat felt heavier and was not answering to the helm. It could not be long now.

Curtis choked as his head ducked under the clawing seas, and leaned into the control-room. Water surged about the confined space, and already a necklace of blue sparks danced across the switchboard.

‘Come on!’ He had to yell to make his voice heard above the thunder of the breakers. ‘Bale out!’

Taylor appeared beside him, his slight body distorted by his life-jacket, his unruly hair already plastered across his tanned face. As he scrambled up beside Curtis he looked at the sea and swore.

‘Christ! Look at that bleedin’ lot!’ He forced a grin. ‘Feel jus’ ready for a swim!’

Curtis nodded and helped to pull Jervis over the coaming. The boy looked as white as death, and as a curtain of spray rose over the pitching hull he cried out and hung on to Curtis’s arm.

‘All got your life-jackets fixed?’ He had already checked, but anything was better than just sitting in silence as the water pounded across their sodden bodies.

Duncan pulled himself up beside them, panting heavily. ‘She’s goin’, Ralph!’ The water streamed across his thick hair, adding to his wild appearance. ‘No need to open the vents!’

‘Right, lads!’ Curtis spoke jerkily. ‘Make for that hill and try to keep together! If we get parted, get there anyway, and watch out!’

Taylor stood up, his legs splayed on the slimy metal. ‘’Ere we go, blokes!’ There was no humour in his eyes, as with a deep breath he stepped clear of the casing. In a second he was well away from the boat, his body buffeted by the waves, and his dark head and orange life-jacket showing only briefly over the surging water.

Duncan followed, making a huge splash as his seaboots kicked out behind him. ‘Keep goin’, George, I——’ his words were drowned by the roar of the rollers cascading across the midget submarine’s stricken hull.

Curtis gripped Jervis’s arm savagely, so that their faces
touched
. ‘Keep going, and don’t look back!’ It was suddenly terribly important that the boy should be safe. ‘I’ll be behind you. Now jump!’

Jervis stared mesmerized at the sea and sobbed, his face puckered up with fear.

The boat plunged again, but didn’t seem to be answering her buoyancy tanks.

She’s going, Curtis thought desperately. For a moment a twinge of regret crossed his mind. The plunging, waterlogged hull beneath his slipping feet had lost its power to kill and maim, it was somehow pathetic as it tried to lift above the waves yet fell each time deeper into their cruel embrace. The bull-ring lifted momentarily in defiance, and then he felt her begin to slide from under him.

‘Jump, man!’ He thrust his hand under Jervis’s life-jacket and pushed. Together they fell spluttering and gasping into the spray. Curtis felt his ears sing, and tasted the bile in his stomach as he was sucked under. He emerged, choking and gasping, and turned, treading water, to watch
XE.51
’s propeller turning slowly in the air, as the small, cigar-shaped hull pointed skywards like a memorial. To us, he thought, with sudden fear.

Then it vanished, and with a groan he started to strike out towards the beach, all thoughts banished from his mind but for the cruel necessity to keep swimming, and not give in to the desire to let himself be dragged after his command.

Of the others there was no sign, but he did not seem to worry any more. Nothing mattered but to keep swimming. To keep swimming.

THE SHORT, STEEP
waves pounded along the beach, whipped into fierce breakers by the blustery wind. As the sky brightened, their colour began to change from a dirty grey to a deep, cold green, and their anger and strength seemed to mount, as if to
vent
their full fury upon the white sands before the sun rose to drive their passion back into the langour of a late Adriatic summer.

Duncan had lost sense of time, and until he felt the sand grate against his leaden boots he had begun to feel that his sense of direction had gone, too.

The water within two hundred yards of the tempting safety of the beach was shallow, and half swimming and half crawling, he made a slow and painful progress. Each time he tried to rise up to his feet in the waist-high water a breaker would smash him down from behind, and he felt the strong undertow pulling at his sodden clothes, and the treacherous sand sliding and sucking at his boots. The life-jacket was more hindrance than help, and several times he tried to slip from the harness, but each time he had to give his full strength to a fresh tussle with the waves, which dealt him unwavering body blows from every direction at once.

As he reeled once more to his feet, he half turned and saw a yawning crest bearing down on him, and wearily he kicked forward to save himself. He had a blurred impression of being hurled forward like a twig on a mill-stream, then his face and chest were crashing and scraping on the smooth sand, and he waited for his lungs to burst. He laid where he had been flung, vaguely conscious of the heaviness of his limbs and the receding roar of the water. Gingerly he opened his eyes and winced. His eyes and mouth were seemingly filled with grit, but he realized that he was firmly on the beach, and a feeling of urgency drove his aching body to its knees and he crawled clumsily up the shelving sand, the sea creeping and hissing up to his heels, to claw and pluck in one final effort to claim him.

The buttons had been ripped from his blouse, and his trousers dragged at his hips as if anchored to the ground. His hair was matted across his streaming forehead, and he was aware of the grit burning in his left eye and the painful beat of his heart. He sat on his haunches in the puddled sand, glaring round with one eye, a wild, gaunt figure, dark against the lightening sky. The beach was empty, and not even a seabird challenged the disturbed fury of the water.

Suddenly his glance steadied on a small blue hump which ebbed and rolled across the other side of the sand spit.

With hidden energy Duncan staggered to his feet, and half shambling, half running, he hurried towards it. He kept shaking his head to clear the water and the deafness from his ears, and he held his face to one side to give his good eye a clearer view.

Taylor’s body was limp, and in Duncan’s hands it already seemed to have the frailty of death.

He pulled the man’s head clear of the waves and began to drag him up the beach. Taylor’s feet bobbed and nodded with each effort, and his heels cut two pathetic furrows in the virgin sand. As he laid him down, the water began to pour from his open mouth, and Duncan’s heart bounded as he heard him begin to retch. Taylor vomited and groaned, and hit out feebly at the air. As his torn fingers touched Duncan’s arm, they clutched tightly to the wet cloth and stayed motionless, while the remnants of his mind tried to convey the sense of safety to his half-drowned body. His eyes fluttered open, and Duncan gently wiped the sand and salt from his face.

‘All right, cobber? Take it easy.’ Duncan smiled sadly.

Taylor stared at him in a mixture of fear and disbelief. ‘Steve? Steve?’ he croaked vacantly. ‘What you doin’ ’ere?’

Duncan grinned broadly. ‘Waitin’ for a bus! What d’you think?’

He propped him carefully against a hillock of soft sand and peered round quickly with his awful, one-eyed stare. ‘You stop here, chum, I’ve got to get after the others!’

Taylor groaned and lay back obediently. ‘The others? Oh yes, the others!’ He gingerly felt the firm ground under him, and suddenly smiled. ‘Christ, that was close!’

Duncan moved down to the water’s edge, his mind working furiously. He could now see the other side of the small cove quite clearly and the hill for which he had battled so painfully. Must look for the others, he thought, can’t just take George and leave them to rot.

He broke into a run, his boots slipping and sliding, and his stinging eye making him stagger into the water in a drunken, zigzag course.

He halted, sniffing the air, some sense of warning flooding through him. In front of him was a small broken cliff, where one of the hills around the village had fallen into the sea. He heard a voice and then a few short footsteps.

He craned his head and fumbled for his pistol. His groping fingers found only an empty holster, and without even giving it further thought he doubled his huge fists and stepped slowly to the edge of the rocks.

A feeling of relief changed his caution to one of abandon as he saw Curtis swaying in the water knee-deep and staring out to sea. ‘Ralph! You son-of-a-bitch! Am I glad to see you!’ He reached him in a bound and gripped him by the arm.

Curtis shook at his hold, in a feeble, pre-occupied effort to free himself, never taking his eyes from the sea, and it seemed to Duncan that he was trying to walk back into the waves.

‘Ralph! What’s up? Have you seen somethin’?’ He glared painfully over the water, but saw only the empty tossing whitecaps.

Curtis took another step and mumbled half to himself in a low, broken voice.

‘I’ve let him go, too! I’m going back for him!’

‘Who? Ian?’ Duncan swung him round to study his face with sudden anxiety. ‘I found old George; he’s coughin’ his heart up on the beach, but he’s dinkum otherwise!’

Curtis didn’t seem to hear. ‘I let him down. He needed me, and I let him go!’

A thin watery beam of yellow light lit up their bruised faces, and Duncan trembled with suppressed urgency.

‘Come on, Ralph! There’s nothin’ you can do. If he’s gone, he’s gone, an’ that’s that!’

Curtis turned drunkenly on the soft sand, his eyes blazing. ‘I’ve killed him, too! Damn you, let me go! I’m going after him!’

Duncan looked back up the beach. Taylor might try to find him and get lost. The skipper was obviously done in, and in no condition to make decisions about Jervis or anything else.

‘Ralph, come on, boy,’ he spoke with deceptive gentleness. ‘We’ve got to hit cover, but quick!’

‘Must go and find him.’ Curtis staggered weakly and started to wade into the water.

Duncan patted him on the shoulder, and as Curtis turned impatiently towards him, he drove his fist upwards in a short, vicious uppercut. Curtis didn’t even touch the sand, as he was pitched across the other man’s broad shoulder.

Breathing hard, Duncan plodded along the beach until he met Taylor swaying unsteadily by the hillock where he had left him.

‘Cripes! Is the skipper dead? ’As ’e bought it?’ Taylor trotted to meet them, his face strained and suddenly old.

‘Nope! He’s passed out!’ Duncan measured up the distance to the hill and took in the mass of bushes which crowned its summit like a green wig. ‘C’mon, we got to move, George, and get ourselves bedded down.’

The climb upwards was slow and painful. Every minute of the journey made Duncan’s breath wheeze and sob, and each second he expected to hear a challenge or the crash of a shot. Taylor trotted beside him, muttering and cursing, oblivious to danger and still only half aware that he had survived.