To Risks Unknown (29 page)

Coutts shouted, ‘God, the headland has disappeared!' It was true. Within minutes the visibility had fallen to yards as wind and sea lifted and surged together into one insane symphony. ‘Those two boats are pulling too far round!'

Crespin had to yell above the shriek of the wind. ‘If you stay here you might as well shut up! But if you want to do something useful then go and help calm those poor devils below!'

Coutts seemed about to protest. Then he gave a shrug and clawed his way to the hatch. The deck was heeling so badly that he appeared to be standing at a forty-five-degree angle.

‘And start the pumps, Skipper! This hull can't be too good after all these years.'

Ross's face was streaming with spray but he managed to shout back, ‘Just the
one
pump, sir!' He bared his teeth as a big wave lifted over the rail and sluiced down the full length of the deck, sweeping some partisans into an untidy heap of limbs and weapons below the foremast.

Soskic was watching through narrowed eyes. ‘What do you intend, comrade?' He sounded neither worried nor critical. Merely interested.

‘I
was
going to cling to the island on the far side of the channel. But unless this wind drops we'll have to go about and try to beat straight for Gradz.'

Crespin swung round, ducking, as the mainsail exploded above his head with the force of a gunshot. It was split from head to foot, and as he stared he saw the wind paring it away, so that within a minute the canvas was reduced to a garland of tattered ribbons.

He yelled, ‘Get the other sail off her, Skipper! We must use the engine alone!'

All around him men were struggling and cursing as they fought with the spray-swollen halyards and tried to remain on their feet.

‘Come
round
, Skipper!' Crespin watched the deck tilt over once more, and stay there, with the water creaming inboard as if the schooner was already rolling on her beam ends. ‘Hard astarboard!'

Ross spat some of his beard from his mouth. ‘Wheel's hard over! She's not answering!'

Another crested roller cruised from the mist of spray and broke hissing over the weather side. The schooner shuddered and settled more firmly on her side. Below his feet Crespin could feel thuds and scrapings, and imagined the trapped people falling helplessly in blind, terrified confusion.

The foresail came down in a sodden, flapping tangle, and as if released by a hidden spring the deck began to swing upright again. Crespin watched as the bows lifted and lifted, so that Preston and his Bren appeared to be pointing straight up towards the scudding clouds. Then down she dropped, the smashing vibration shaking every timber and throwing more men bodily against the bulwarks.

But she
was
turning, crashing into the advancing rollers, then lifting wildly before careering down again into the next trough, and the next after that.

Crespin peered astern. It was a miracle, but both boats were still there, tossing like leaves on a whirlpool. One of the partisans even managed to wave to him before falling back into his boat, his legs sticking unheeded above his frantically baling companions.

Ross had tied himself to the wheel and was hauling at the spokes with all his strength. ‘She's taking it well. Just so long as the engine keeps going!'

Crespin needed no reminding. In spite of the wind and sea his ear was constantly listening to the engine's labouring beat with its steady accompaniment from the pump. If it failed now the schooner would broach to and capsize in minutes. The people crammed between decks would know little about it until she was already on her way to the bottom.

He had lost all sense of time and distance. His world had become confined to the next eager line of waves, his reflexes reduced to withstanding each sickening climb and jolting descent, while he waited for the old schooner's seams to burst apart and surrender to the onslaught.

As if in a daze he saw two figures emerge from the hatch, a dripping corpse between them; man or woman he did not know for its face was masked in blood. The men waited their chance, rising and swaying with their lifeless burden as if in some macabre dance, then as the last wave receded along the deck and gurgled from the streaming scuppers they heaved it overboard and ran for the hatch again without a backward glance.

Crespin tried not to think of the others. And the children. He yelled, ‘Any sign of land?'

Soskic replied, ‘We must be clearing the Mljet Channel!'

Crespin stared at him. Surely Soskic was mistaken. But in his heart he knew that he would know these waters like the back of his hand. And if he was right it meant that they still had the full ten miles of open sea to cross before they could reach the inlet at Gradz.

He peered at his wrist with amazement. His watch had gone, torn from the strap without his knowing. In spite of the gale raging around him he had a sudden picture of his mother when she had given him the watch as a present. It had been when he had received his commission at Dartmouth. Now, like her, it had gone forever. Another link wiped away.

He said harshly, ‘Well, we shall just have to stick it out!'

Twice more Crespin saw bodies thrown over the side, but they were soon forgotten when Ross informed him that the pump had given out and the water was gaining in the bilges at an alarming rate.

Coutts came on deck soaking wet and covered with oil and slime. ‘Some of those people will drown if we don't get 'em up here!'

Crespin shouted, ‘If they come on deck we
will
turn turtle!' He grasped Coutts' sodden coat. The goatskin felt slippery with oil. ‘Just get down there again and organize a bucket chain!' He added savagely, ‘Do as I say quickly. Try
saving
a few lives for a bloody change!'

He saw Coutts' sudden anger and knew that he would kill himself now rather than give in to the sea.

As the soldier slipped and fell through the hatch Soskic shouted, ‘You have a fine way of doing things. I could use you in my little army!' He was grinning as if it was a huge joke.

Crespin turned as a man tipped the first drum of water over the hatch coaming and wondered how Coutts was managing to cope with translating his orders into deed in the confusion and darkness below. He said, ‘The sea has taught me one thing. If you turn your back for a moment you're finished!' He saw Preston staring back from the bows to listen and realized with a start that the roar of wind and water seemed to be fading.

Soskic gripped his arm. ‘You see? The sea is ashamed, your words have had a fine effect.'

Crespin wiped his streaming face. It was incredible. With the same suddenness of its arrival the storm was already moving on and away, the wave-crests flattening in its wake as if spent with the fierceness of their efforts. Astern the clouds were thinning, and through the curtain of spray the cliffs of the mainland stood out with sudden brightness as the sun broke through once again.

In the towed boats the partisans paused in their baling to cheer and wave their arms, and even as he watched Crespin saw the cloud shadow moving rapidly across the water, like a trapdoor being raised, until with eye-wrenching brilliance the sun swept across the schooner and opened up the sea ahead of her pitching stem. First one and then another island appeared, shining momentarily in the sudden glare before fading again in a drifting haze which masked the bared horizon in a long curtain of fine vapour. The schooner, too, appeared to be wreathed in steam as the heat explored the streaming planking and rigging, soaked into the exhausted men and made them stare at one another as if witnessing some kind of miracle.

And there, dead across the schooner's bows was Gradz. It was little more than a purple hump in the filtered sunlight, but as the word was passed below Crespin heard a chorus of shouts and cries, while in the open hatchway he saw bearded faces and dark-haired women staring up at the tattered sail, their eyes filled with wonder and disbelief.

Coutts emerged from the hatch dripping and filthy. He looked guardedly at Crespin and then grinned. ‘You'll be glad to know that I've got the pump going again.'

Crespin ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Thanks.' Then he smiled. ‘For everything.'

Ross pointed suddenly. ‘Aircraft, sir! Red four-five!'

Crespin wiped his glasses on his shirt and followed the line of retreating clouds. Then he saw it, glinting brightly as it flew into the sunlight, like a child's toy.

He said slowly, ‘Reconnaissance plane.' Around him he could sense the sudden tension. ‘Might not see us.'

But it did. It was a very small, high-wing monoplane, and as it turned into the sun it began to lose height until everyone on deck could see the bright arc of its propeller, the twin black crosses on the wing.

Coutts snapped, ‘You men on deck! Hold your fire until I give the word!'

Crespin lowered his glasses and glanced at Soskic. ‘Have you seen it before?'

‘Occasionally.' The commandant was lighting a cigarette, but his eyes were following the approaching aircraft. ‘The Germans use it for patrolling the main roads usually.' He threw the match over the rail. ‘But this time I think they look for us.'

Crespin could hear the plane's high-pitched engine now above the schooner's heavier beat. It was taking its time. Making quite sure. Then quite suddenly it dived steeply towards the sea, the sunlight flashing across the Perspex windshield as it levelled out above its own reflection.

Coutts glanced questioningly at Crespin. ‘Shall we shoot at the bastard?'

Crespin raised his glasses again. ‘Wait a bit longer.'

The little aircraft flashed down the port side less than a cable away, making the water shimmer below it in a miniature shock-wave. Then it pivoted neatly and began to climb again, turning and rising until the sunlight blotted out its silhouette and its tilting wing gleamed in the glare like burnished steel.

Coutts said half to himself, ‘Watch out for the Hun who comes out of the sun!'

‘Here he comes!' Preston swung the Bren round and jammed the bipod on top of the capstan.

With a sudden roar the spotter plane swept straight across the schooner's poop, the shadow floating over the water like a black crucifix.

‘Open fire!' As Crespin shouted above the engine's roar the air quivered to the onslaught of gunfire as every man who was in position to shoot poured a sporadic burst after the plane. Machine-pistols, the Bren, anything, even though there was almost no chance of scoring a single hit.

Coutts grinned. ‘That'll teach him, the cheeky bastard!'

Crespin did not watch as the aircraft grew smaller and smaller against the clearing sky. He said, ‘Full power again, Skipper. You know why this time!'

Then he sat on the hatch cover and tried to light his pipe with some damp tobacco. It was useless to keep looking at the island. You could not make it get any nearer just by willing it so. And the harder you stared, the farther away it seemed to be.

Coutts crossed to his side and offered him his light. ‘Try this. You'll run out of matches in a minute.' He waited until Crespin succeeded in getting his pipe going. ‘Pity about the spotter plane,' he said quietly. ‘It could have been worse. No bloody Messerschmitt would have been put off by our popguns!'

‘What time is it now?' Crespin watched the pipe-smoke drifting across the rail.

‘Half past eleven, if my watch is still all right.' Coutts held it to his ears. ‘In case I don't get time later on, let me just say that I think you've been bloody marvellous. The way you got us out, and in a poor old relic like this!'

Crespin said, ‘Tell me again, when we're in Malta.'

The minutes dragged by without anyone saying a word. When he looked towards the bows Crespin saw the island had already grown, so that it spread out on either hand, with the paler shadows of Korcula overlapping beyond. He could see the tallest hill and the deeply shadowed headland where they had anchored the schooner and waited for Coutts to return in the dory.

It all seemed so long ago. And here they were, with a clapped-out old schooner and over a hundred bewildered but grateful people, going from one uncertainty to another.

Something like a deep sigh came from the watching men in the bows, and when he got to his feet Crespin knew the reason before he reached them. He saw the smoke first, a dirty brown smudge peeling from the edge of the channel, hanging against the washed-out sky as if it would never move. He raised his glasses as the men stood aside to let him pass.

He said flatly, ‘It's the
Nashorn.
'

Coutts murmured, ‘What do you think?'

Crespin tried to picture the islands as he had studied them on the chart so many times. ‘She's doing about eight knots. Our speed is no more than four.'

Coutts looked away. ‘So that's it then.'

Crespin moved the glasses very slightly. The German was altering course already, so that he would pass around the opposite side to his usual patrol. Jutting out from the dark cliffs was the steep spur of headland. In the powerful lenses he could see the fine line of broken water at the foot, around which lay the inlet, and safety. It was pointless even to consider it. The headland was like a magnet, towards which both vessels were being drawn. Even in spite of the German's massive guns they might still have made it in safety, he thought bitterly. But for the storm and the great weight of passengers they could just have scraped through.

Soskic spoke at his side. ‘The German will cut off your chance to enter the inlet. You are too much hampered to make up the required speed, yes?'

Crespin was still watching the other vessel. How strange and menacing she looked with her massive covering of armour. His glasses enabled him to see the false bow wave which had been painted below her anchor. It was an old trick and gave the impression of far greater speed.

He replied, ‘Something like that.'

Soskic grunted. ‘As I thought.' He rapped out an order to one of his men, and when Crespin looked round he saw the tall commandant striding aft, a long knife gleaming in the sunlight.