The Lonely Sea (15 page)

Rescue came at 4.00 p.m. when the destroyer
Hurricane
spotted them and came alongside. Only one person was able to climb up the lowered scrambling nets—25-year-old Angus MacDonald, the ship's carpenter in charge of the boat, and due to whose magnificent seamanship all the survivors undoubtedly owed their lives. All the survivors…ten out of the original forty.

Kenneth Sparks' adventures form a strange contrast to those of Colin Richardson. He too, was
in a crowded lifeboat—there were no less than forty-six people in it—but, instead of being eighteen hours in the boat, as Colin was, before being rescued, he and his forty-five companions spent eight days and nights on the surface of the broad and hostile Atlantic—and all forty-six of them miraculously survived.

The difference in survival ratios appears unaccountable at first sight—until it is remembered that Kenneth Sparks' boat did not become swamped and waterlogged, and those in it were not condemned to sit in crouching immobility with the ice-cold water up to their chests: with a judicious sharing out of clothes and covering and huddling together for mutual warmth, even the chill night air of the Atlantic can be borne: it is only when one is immersed in the freezing water itself that there can be no defence.

They also had another great advantage—a means of propulsion through the water. Colin Richardson's lifeboat had had all the oars swept away in the first few moments, but on Kenneth's boat there were no oars to be lost. There was, instead, a screw attached to a long driving shaft, turned by means of vertically mounted push-pull levers between the seats. Not only did this give them directional stability and enable the man in charge, Third Officer Purvis, to keep head to stern on to the worst of the seas, but it also had the great advantage that it could be worked by anyone,
the exercise providing life-giving warmth on even the coldest of nights.

They suffered, of course—they suffered cruelly. The cold and exposure were with them all the time—Kenneth spent two months in hospital after his rescue—so were the discomfort and sheer physical fatigue of holding on in the heavy seas. They had food and drink, but not enough: hunger, thirst and sleeplessness were part of their every waking thought. Kenneth Sparks is convinced that he and the five other children aboard that boat owed their survival to Miss Cornish, an official escort later honoured for her courage: she spent nearly all her waking hours in massaging the hands and feet of the children to keep the lifewarming blood circulating, giving them exercises and telling them countless stories to keep their minds off their desperate predicament. It says much for the entire success of her efforts when Kenneth says that no one among them ever lost hope of being rescued. And rescued they finally were, located in the first instance by a patrolling plane, and then picked up by a destroyer that took them safely home to Scotland.

Such, then, is the tragic story of the
City of Benares,
surely the most pathetic and heartrending story of the war at sea. It is reasonable to hope that not even the most ruthless U-boat captain would have torpedoed the
City of Benares
had he known that there were a hundred children
aboard, but speculation is no consolation and makes the story no less dreadful.

A dreadful story, but not without its splendour. Apart from Colin and Kenneth and his five companions, only twelve other children survived. A pitiful handful. But it was to give a chance of life to this pitiful handful that dozens of adults out of the 163 crew and passengers gave their own lives willingly and without thought of self.

Who, for instance, was the man who towed a raft away from the sinking ship, just as it was in deadly danger of being sucked under, saw the children on board safely on a lifeboat, turned back again, towed another raft with a woman and four children through the huge seas towards another lifeboat, turned away again into the darkness to search for other survivors and was never seen again?

We do not know, nor does it matter. All we can know is that this man who selflessly gave his own life, would never have thought of recognition nor cared for it had he been given it. An unknown man, a nameless man, but he remains for ever as the symbol of the spirit of the
City of Benares.

His watch was the pride of our captain's life. It was of massive construction, being no less than three inches in diameter; it was made of solid gold; it was beautifully engraved with cabalistic designs of extraordinary intricacy; and finally, it was attached to a chain, whose dimensions, with regard to both length and circumference, had to be seen to be believed. The chain also, needless to say, was made of gold. Anyone, who had the temerity to doubt this last fact, was handed the chain and coldly asked to observe for himself that it was stamped on every link.

In addition to the aforementioned merits, the watch, our captain claimed, was completely moisture-proof. We had, on several occasions, urged him to prove his words by submerging the subject of discussion in a basin of water, but, on each occasion, the captain's reply, uttered in a very injured tone, was to the same effect, namely, that
if we did not believe his statement, he was not going to stoop to demonstrate its truth to us. From this, we could only conclude that the captain, like ourselves, had his doubts as to his watch's ability to defy the ravages of water. It was indeed, we knew, a very, very sore point with our captain, one which he longed, with all his heart and soul, to prove, but lacked the courage to put to the final test.

Usually, this watch was hidden from the plebeian gaze—and fingers—in a locked case, which, in its turn, lay in a locked drawer in the captain's cabin. But today, it reposed in the captain's waistcoat pocket, while the chain, such was its length, seemed almost to girdle the area of the captain's maximum circumference. Waistcoats are very uncommon with ‘whites', and it was maliciously rumoured that the captain had had his specially made for the purpose of accommodating and displaying the watch and its accessories. Be that as it may, here was our captain, this blistering June afternoon, going ashore for his last interview with his Basrah agents, wearing a genial smile on his face, and, about two feet further south, his beloved time-keeper.

When he came back a bare two hours later, his launch nosing its way through the date-laden lighters surrounding our vessel which was anchored in mid-river, his genial expression was no longer there. Neither was his watch, and our deduction, that the latter circumstance accounted for the former, proved to be correct. Having solicitously
helped the red-faced, perspiring captain on board, we waited patiently.

He was, at first, incoherent with rage, and, with his clearly visible, ever-mounting blood pressure, we feared an apoplectic stroke. Fortunately for him, he at last recovered the power of speech, and this undoubtedly relieved, to a great extent, his almost over-powering feelings. He was very bitter. His language, in addition, was shocking, but we had to admit that he had full justification for it.

He had, apparently, been walking peacefully back to the ship from his agents, with malice in his heart towards none, but nevertheless, taking due and proper precautions for the safe-guarding of wallet and watch, when among the riffraff of the street bazaars. Once clear of them, he had dropped these precautions, deeming them needless, and, at the entrance to the docks, he had had to push his way through a group of Arab sailors, whom he, in his great and regrettable ignorance, had thought to be as honest as himself. (His bitterness, at this juncture, was truly remarkable.) Suddenly, he had been jostled in the rear with great violence, and, on turning to remonstrate with the discourteous one, had not felt his watch and chain being slipped from their moorings, with that dexterity and efficiency which bespoke of long and arduous practice, so that, when about to resume his journey, he found his watch no longer there.

At this point he again lost the power of speech, and to our fearful and dreading eyes, his entire disintegration appeared not only probable, but imminent. Recovering himself with a masterly effort, however, he resumed his narrative. Although unable to espy the actual perpetrator of the theft, who had, with commendable discretion and alacrity, completely vanished, he had realized that the jostler must have been his confederate, and had pursued the said confederate for over half a mile, before being eluded by the Arab in a crowded thoroughfare. This, we realized, accounted for our captain's complexion and superabundance of perspiration.

Here again, having once more relapsed into incoherency, he was left to his vengeful meditations, alternately muttering ‘My watch' and ‘The villain', the former with a touching pathos, and the latter, preceded by some highly descriptive adjectives, with an extraordinary depth of feeling.

Thirty hours later found no appreciable diminution in our captain's just and righteous anger, although he could now speak like a rational being, albeit forcefully, concerning his grievous misfortunes of the previous afternoon. We had loaded our last case of dates just on sunset, and, early that morning, even as the first faint streak of grey in the eastern sky heralded the burning day, had gratefully cleared the malodorous port of Basrah.
We were, by this time, fairly into the Gulf and proceeding serenely on our way, South by East, through the stifling tropical night, the darkness of which was but infinitesimally relieved by the cold, unthinkably-distant pinpoints of stars in the moonless night sky.

Our captain, whose outraged feelings evidently refused him the blessed solace of slumber, had recently come up to the bridge, which he was now ceaselessly pacing, very much after the manner of a caged leopard, all the time informing us as to the dire retribution which he intended meting out to the present illegal possessor of his watch, should he ever be fortunate enough to lay hands on him. The lascar quartermaster, very zealous in the cap-tain's presence, was poring over the compass box, while in the bows, the lookout-man was either thinking of his native village in far-off Bombay, or had found sleep vastly easier to come by than our captain.

This last was, of course, pure conjecture, but it must have approximated very closely to the truth, for the first the lookout knew of the dhow lying dead in our path, was when a loud splintering crash, accompanied by even louder frenzied yells, informed him that our steel-bows had smashed the unfortunate dhow to matchwood.

‘Don't say we've run down
another
of these b—y dhows,' groaned our captain wearily (it is a surprisingly common occurrence), ringing the engines
down to ‘Stop', and bellowing for a boat to be lowered with the utmost expedition. This was done, and then minutes later the lifeboat returned with the shivering, brine-soaked crew of the erstwhile dhow; the captain, duty-bound, went down on deck to inspect them, as they came on board.

The rope ladder twitched, and as the first luckless victim—how luckless, he did not then completely realize—appeared over the side, the captain's jaw dropped fully two inches, and he stood as if transfixed.

‘That's the gentleman I chased yesterday'—he ejaculated joyfully (‘gentleman', as will be readily understood, is employed euphemistically), then stopped, staring, with rapidly glazing eyes, at the second apparition, who had just then topped the railing. Dependent from this, the second, ‘gentle-man's' undeniably filthy neck, and reaching to his waist, was a most unusual ornament for an impoverished Arab—no less an object than our captain's purloined watch and chain, thus miraculously restored to him, by the playful caprices of Fortune.

With drawn breath, and with sincere pity in our hearts, we waited for the heavens to fall, for the captain to execute his oft-repeated, bloodthirsty promises, for, in short, the instant and complete annihilation of the Arabs (four in all), who were regarding the captain with the utmost trepidation, which they were at no pains to conceal.

To our no small astonishment—and, it may be added, relief—the expected Arab-massacre failed to materialize. Instead, stepping quietly forward and lovingly removing his watch and chain from the neck of the cringing, violently-shivering Arab, the captain, in a strangely gentle tone, in which there seemed, to us, to be a barely repressed inflection of triumph, merely said, ‘Take these men below and give them something warm to eat; we'll hand them over to the Bahrein police, in the morning.'

We were astounded. We were amazed. We were utterly and completely dumbfounded. Our modest comprehension could not grasp it. What, we asked ourselves, wonderingly, was the reason for this incredible change of front? We were not left long in ignorance.

Swinging round on us, and brandishing his watch on high, the captain shouted: ‘See!—er, I mean, hear!' We heard. The clamorous ticktock, ticktock of his watch would have put any selfrespecting alarm clock to shame.

‘Waterproof!' he cried exultingly. ‘Waterproof, you blasted unbelievers! Waterproof!'

It was, I verily believe, the supreme moment of our captain's life.

It was quite dark now and the Great North Road, the A1, that loneliest of Europe's highways, almost deserted. At rare intervals, a giant British Roadways truck loomed out of the darkness: a courteous dipping of headlamps, immaculate hand-signals, a sudden flash of sound from the labouring diesel—and the A1 was lonelier than ever. Then there was only the soothing hum of tyres, the black ribbon of highway, and the headlights of the Jaguar, weirdly hypnotic, swathing through the blackness.

Loneliness and sleep, sleep and loneliness. The enemies, the co-drivers of the man at the wheel; the one lending that extra half pound of pressure to the accelerator, the other, immobile and everwatchful, waiting his chance to slide in behind the wheel and take over. I knew them well and I feared them.

But they were not riding with me tonight. There was no room for them. Not with so many
passengers. Not with Stella sitting there beside me, Stella of the laughing eyes and sad heart, who had died in a German concentration camp. Not with Nicky, the golden boy, lounging in the back seat, or Passière, who had never returned to his sundrenched vineyards in Sisteron. No room for sleep and loneliness? Why, by the time you had crowded in Taffy the engineer, complaining as bitterly as ever and Vice-Admiral Starr and his bushy eyebrows, there was hardly room for myself.

I glanced at the dashboard clock. 2.00 a.m. Nine hours since I had left Inverness and only one stop for gas. I realized I was very hungry.

A couple of miles further on a neon sign blinked garishly through the heavy drizzle. A drivers' pull-up. I swung the Jaguar off the road, parked beside the heavy trucks and limped inside.

It was a bright, noisy, cheerful place, about half full. I picked up my bacon, sausages and eggs and went over to an empty table by the window.

The meal finished, I lit a cigarette and stared out unseeingly into the driving rain. Now and again I could hear the rumble and swish as a truck or night-coach rolled by on the Great North Road.

The Great North Road. The prelude, the curtain call to all the highlights of my life—long Italian summers on my father's ship, Oxford and the Law, the Royal Naval Barracks, Portsmouth. All these other times, I reflected, there had been uncertainty.
So, too, this time. All these other times excitement, anticipation. But this time only doubt and wonder, foreboding and slow anger.

I fished out Nicky's telegram again

ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG STOP HALLELUJAH STOP THE DE'IL LOOKS AFTER HIS AIN STOP NOW SUCCESSFUL BREEDER OF OIL WELLS STOP STAYING SAVOY WITH ALL THE OTHER MILLIONAIRES STOP RRR

NICKY

I pushed the telegram back into my pocket. RRR. The Special Service code-sign—‘Where do we rendezvous?' I had wired back
SEE YOU SAVOY 7 P.M. WEDNESDAY.

Even now I did not know why I had done it. It just had to be done. This was one loose end in my life that simply had to be cut off. Courage, fear, curiosity, anger—these did not enter into it. There was just simple compulsion. This I had to do.

I paid my check, climbed into the Jaguar, pulled out on the A1, set the hand throttle and headed south.

I was confused. The bit about the De'il—the Devil looks after his own—a phrase he had picked up from me: that I could understand. He had seen the flaming eruption of disintegrating steel and burning oil as the Heinkel's glider-bomb had smacked accurately into the engine room of the F149. I had no right to be alive, the surgeon had
said—but he had made a pretty good job of my crocked leg and mangled arm.

But I couldn't figure the rest of the telegram. It was too friendly. Too friendly by half for a man who, when we had last parted—five minutes before the explosion—had been standing on a desolate Tuscan beach at the wrong end of my Service Colt .45. I could see him yet, could see the anger dying in his eyes, the disbelief, the astonishment, the emotionless mask. I had stood there trying to hate him—and failing miserably—and trying not to hate myself. I had failed in that too. And I heard again his promise, quiet, almost conversational: ‘Don't forget, Mac—I'll be looking you up one of these days.'

I sighed. Our first meeting had been rather different. I flicked the dashboard switch. 2.45. Two hundred miles to London. I shoved the hand throttle up a notch.

Malta, 1943. The George Cross island. The island of Faith, Hope and Charity—the three obsolete fighters pitted against the savagery of the Axis air fleets. Malta. The sorely battered capital of Valetta and the Grand Harbour, that destination of a very few, very lucky merchant ships, of the 40-knot plus gauntlet-running minelaying cruisers, of the submarine gasoline tankers, of the immortal ‘Ohio'.

But the war was very far away that Spring morning. All was peaceful and still and bathed in sunshine as I walked into the Admiralty HQ.

‘Lieutenant McIndoe to see Admiral Starr?' the duty petty officer repeated. ‘Along the passage, first on the left, sir. He's alone just now.'

I knocked and went in. A large bare room, with Venetian blinds and walls covered with maps, it was completely dominated by the huge figure sitting behind the only table in the room. Two hundred and fifty pounds if an ounce, red-faced, whitehaired and with bushy eyebrows, Vice-Admiral Starr had become a legend in his own lifetime. He had the face and expression of a bucolic farmer, a mind like a rapier and a deep-rooted intolerance of those who wasted either time or speech.

He pushed some papers away in a folder and motioned me to a seat.

‘'Morning, McIndoe. Carried out your instructions?' he asked.

‘To the letter, sir,' I replied carefully. ‘Gunboat F149 is completely stripped. The extra fuel tanks are fitted and the short—and long-range receiving and transmitting sets were installed yesterday. She's fuelled, provisioned and ready for sea.'

He nodded in satisfaction. ‘And your crew?'

‘The best, sir. Experienced, completely reliable.'

‘Right.' He stood up. ‘You'll contact Ravallo this evening and receive final instructions from him.'

‘Ravallo, sir?'

‘Major Ravallo, US Army. A top espionage agent and just about the best lend-lease bargain ever. From now on, he's your immediate boss.'

I felt distinctly aggrieved. ‘Am I to understand, sir—'

‘These are your orders,' he interrupted flatly. ‘Besides,' he chuckled, ‘Ravallo will welcome you with open arms. The last time he came back from Sicily, he had to swim the last two miles. Damned annoyed, he was.'

‘Quite so, sir. Do I meet Ravallo here?'

Admiral Starr coughed. ‘Well, no, not exactly. Major Ravallo is an American—' he spoke as if this explained everything—‘and not subject to our discipline. You'll find him in the Triannon bar at six o'clock.'

‘Have another, Mac,' Nicky Ravallo urged hospitably. ‘You'll be needing it tonight yet.'

Major Ravallo, I reflected, would have made a big hit in Hollywood. With his dark, tousled hair, crinkling blue eyes, dark tan, white teeth and weird hodgepodge of a uniform designed strictly by himself, he looked ready-made material for a Caribbean pirate or a second d'Artagnan. But the gallant Major, it seemed to me, treated war much too lightly; besides, I was still smarting from the insult of being placed under an American's command—and from his smiling refusal to give me any details of that night's operation until we got to sea.

‘No thanks,' I replied stiffly. ‘So far I've never felt the need for any pre-operational stoking up
on alcohol. And I'm not starting now.' I knew I was behaving badly.

‘Suit yourself, Scotty.' Ravallo was not only unruffled but positively affable. ‘Starr tells me you're a specialist on the Italian coast and language and just about the best gunboat handler in the business. That's all I want. Come along.'

In silence we walked through the white-walled streets towards the harbour and in silence we descended by the fearsome open elevator on the cliff-face to the gathering gloom of Christ's steps. Here we hired a dico and were rowed out to Motor Gunboat F149, moored at the far end of Angelo creek.

Once aboard, I had him meet my crew—Taffy, Passière, Hillyard, Johnson, Higgins and Wilson, my second in command. They seemed favourably impressed by Ravallo, and he by them, although I did not take too kindly to his cheerful invitation to ‘just call me Nicky, boys.' They would be calling me ‘Sammy' next and I wasn't sure that I would like that.

‘How come Passière?' Ravallo asked when we were alone again. ‘Hardly an Anglo-Saxon name that.'

‘Like Ravallo?' I suggested.

He laughed. ‘
Touchè.
But still,' he persisted, ‘what's he doing here?'

‘Free French,' I explained. ‘There are thousands of them on our side—mostly in their own ships.
He's a refugee from Vichy France, a holder of the
Croix de Guerre
and just about the best radio operator I've ever known. I hope,' I added sweetly, ‘that you have no objections to the presence of non-British nationals aboard this boat?'

‘Sorry again,' he laughed. ‘I guess I asked for that.' He ran his hand ruefully through his thick black hair and grinned quizzically at me.

For the first time, I smiled back.

An hour later, the 149 cleared the entrance of Grand Harbour. Ravallo was in the wheelhouse with me, sitting on a camp-stool, quietly smoking.

He spoke suddenly.

‘We're going to Sicily, Mac. Rendezvous, midnight, two miles north-west of Cape Passero. OK?'

I said nothing, but turned to my charts and tables.

‘Half-speed, Chief,' I said to Wilson. ‘Course zero-five-zero. Hillyard, Johnson on watch. Right?'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

Ravallo jumped to his feet.

‘Here, what's this?' he demanded swiftly. ‘Halfspeed? Look, Mac, we gotta hit the rendezvous on the nose. Midnight, Scotty, midnight—not tomorrow morning. Last time I came from Sicily it took fourteen hours. Including two hours swimming,' he added bitterly.

Wilson and I grinned at each other.

‘Chief,' I said sorrowfully, ‘I'm afraid we've a doubter on our hands. The Major and I are taking a walk forrard. Ask Taffy to open her up—demonstration purposes only.'

The demonstration was brief and entirely effective. At its conclusion we walked slowly aft to the stern and sat down, leaning against the recently emptied depth-charge racks, Ravallo looking very thoughtful, almost dazed.

The effect was almost always the same. The hypnotic effect of the rushing waters and the gigantic bow-wave, coupled with the sheer physical shock of the bone-jarring vibrations of the deck and the banshee clamour of the great aeroengines was almost literally stunning.

Ravallo broke the silence.

‘Sorry again, Mac.' His face lit up with remembered enthusiasm. ‘My God, Mac, that must be one of the last thrills left on earth. What was she doing—forty-five, fifty knots?'

‘Official secret,' I said solemnly. ‘Seriously, though, I don't think you need worry about anything on the surface of the Mede catching us. And now—how about some more information, Major?'

‘Nicky,' he corrected absently. ‘Right, Mac, this is how it is.

‘This cloak-and-dagger sealed orders act isn't just for fun. It's a must. Do you know how many agents we've lost this year in Italy?' he asked
slowly. ‘Twenty-six.' He pounded his fist, very gently, on the deck, his eyes quiet, his voice level.

‘Twenty-six,' I echoed. ‘That's impossible.' (Neither of us knew at the time that the British had already lost twice that number in Holland alone. All died.)

He didn't seem to hear me.

‘A couple by natural hazards,' he went on. ‘Maybe half-a-dozen through leaks. The rest—' he waved a hand forrard—‘well, that's what this boat is for.' He paused.

‘Well, go on.' I was becoming interested.

‘German and Italian radio monitoring stations,' he explained. ‘Almost all information is sent out by radio. Fairly powerful transmitting sets which are as easily picked up by the enemy as by us. A few cross-bearings and—finish.'

‘But you still haven't explained—'

‘I'm coming to that. The idea is to fit our agents with weak, short-range transmitters—hardly more than fields—which cuts out ninety per cent of the risk of detection. Your boat will lie close offshore—two or three miles—pick up our agents' reports on its short-range receiver and re-transmit to base by the big RCA. Starr says he will have six of these boats in action by the end of the year.'

‘Aha!' I said. ‘Light dawns. I should have thought of that before. It should work.'

‘It
must
work,' he said heavily. ‘We've lost too many of our best agents already.'

We sat on deck for several minutes, companionably silent, having the last smoke on deck of the day. Presently Ravallo spun his cigarette over the side and rose easily to his feet.

‘Mac?'

I turned my head.

‘Do you mind if I have a look at the radio room?'

‘Help yourself. Passière's having supper just now.'

He left me. I sat for another couple of minutes, pondering over Ravallo's news, then went to darken ship.

After supper, we went to the wheelhouse. I took over from Wilson, who went below. The sea was as calm as a mill-pond and there was no moon that night. Conditions were ideal.

I looked at my watch. 11.00 p.m. I wished I could smoke.

‘What happens at the rendezvous, Nicky?' I asked. ‘Picking up an agent,' he said briefly.

‘The Syracuse area is getting too hot these days.'

‘Friend of yours?'

‘Sort of. One can't afford to have friends in our line,' he said quietly. ‘Too much grief. Besides—' he paused—‘Stella doesn't encourage—er—friendship.'

‘Stella?' I glanced quickly at him. ‘You mean—'