“King!”
Cole looked around frantically, trying to locate the source of the voice.
“King. Over here.”
It was Johnny. He was in the bright yellow life raft about thirty yards behind Cole. The gunner was alone.
Cole heard a gurgling noise and saw N-for-Nancy slowly slide beneath the waves. He was still staring at the site when Johnny called to him.
“For Christ’s sake get into the dinghy, King. You’ll freeze to death in no time if you don’t get out of the water.”
Cole thought it strange that Johnny was worried about him freezing to death as he swam to the raft. He wasn’t cold at all. He thought it would be worse if he got out of the water and into the life raft, but he didn’t have time to consider it — he felt Johnny’s hands grasp the fabric of his flying suit and drag him into the life raft.
“Help me along, will you?” Johnny pleaded.
Cole slapped heavily at the life raft until he managed a handhold, and pulled himself in — falling awkwardly into the tiny craft. He lay still for a moment, drained from the exertion, sucking in great gulps of air. “Where’s…?” he managed to gasp.
“Dead,” Johnny said. “We’re it. Poor young Prentice smashed his brains against the gun support frame. The other two never had a chance. We must have bounced off our tail and driven the nose right into the sea. Bloody bad end for good men. How about you? Anything broken or cut?”
Cole shook his head, surprised at how exhausted he was. Worse, he was beginning to chill. He was trembling and the cold seemed to pour into him, invading every part of his body.
“The adrenaline’s wearing off,” Johnny said. “Felt just fine in the water, didn’t you? It was the shock of all that happened. Now that that’s passed, you’ll feel the cold.”
“I can’t talk you into building a fire, can I?” Cole said, his teeth chattering.
Johnny smiled. “Swallow much water?”
“Just enough to throw up. Now I guess we sit and wait, huh?”
“Nothing to do but that. Prentice got our emergency call out. If there was anyone close enough to hear it and come to our rescue, we’ll have a warm bed and hot rum in no time.”
Cole wrapped himself in his own arms, trying to control the shivering. “It’s a big ocean. May take a while. How are we fixed?”
Johnny unzipped a waterproof pouch and pulled back the flaps. “Tins of food. Small jug of water, enough of that, I hope.” He pushed the contents to one side, searching. “Flares. Line and hooks for fishing. You any good at that, King? Fishing?”
“I couldn’t catch a cold in a snowstorm, let alone catch a fish.”
“Pity. I’m no good either,” he said, continuing. “Bits of material to catch rainwater. Enough odds and ends to keep us going.” He grew somber. “They counted on four chaps.”
The death of Peter, Bunny, and Prentice suddenly hit Cole hard. It was Peter that Cole focused on. He didn’t like Peter much and it was apparent to Cole that the feeling was mutual. But Peter had taken over the controls of N-for-Nancy when Bunny had been wounded and he had fought to keep the aircraft aloft to give the others a chance to prepare for ditching. Peter was a hero. Peter was dead.
“It’s no good, King.”
Cole looked at Johnny.
“Thinking about the others,” Johnny said. “It’ll give you nothing but hurt and it won’t change things. They’re gone, the poor blighters, and we’re alive. All we can do is try to stay alive until someone comes and pick us up.”
“I’ve never been through this before. Knowing guys that were killed.”
“It’s a bloody tough thing to deal with. You never really forget,” Johnny said. “Blokes I know who bought it, I see their faces right out of the blue. I don’t know why, they just pop up in my mind. I hate it. Maybe that’s my penance. That’s what I pay for living when they died. So don’t you go dwelling on it. They’ll come back to you often enough without you making a habit of thinking of the poor bastards. All we need to do is stay alive until someone comes and finds us.”
Cole nodded, scanning the endless ocean, knowing that he was unlikely to see anything. He heard a strange noise coming from Johnny’s end of the raft.
“Are you humming?” Cole said.
“I am,” Johnny said. “Takes my mind off things. Never learned to whistle, so I hum. I hum everything.”
“I don’t hum and I don’t whistle,” Cole said.
“Deprived, are you?” Johnny said. “Fancy a sing, then?”
“What?”
“To keep our spirits up,” Johnny said. “Normally, I’d have a pint in me hand with me mates down at the pub, but this will have to do. I’ll sing one and then you sing one.”
Cole laughed. It seemed somehow disrespectful to laugh so soon after men had died. Perhaps, Cole thought, I’m laughing out of relief that I didn’t die like the others. Regardless of the reason, he decided, it felt good.
“King,” Johnny said with a look of contrived pity, “do you think it makes a bloody difference out here whether a chap can sing or not? There’s nothing but fish and mermaids. Now, here I go —
Johnny beamed at Cole. “Well?”
“Sounds like someone squeezing a cat,” Cole said.
“Can you do any better?”
“I can recite poetry.”
“Go on.”
“That was bloody pathetic,” Johnny deadpanned. “God help us if that’s all you Yanks bring to this war.”
“I told you I couldn’t sing,” Cole said, smiling.
“You’ve proved it, haven’t you? How does that bloody limerick go?”
“What?” Cole laughed.
“Teach me yours and I’ll teach you mine,” Johnny said.
Despite everything that had happened, Cole smiled again. “Okay, listen up.” He repeated the limerick several times before Johnny said that he knew it.
“You got it?” Cole said.
“It isn’t Ode to a bloody Grecian Urn, is it now, King?” Johnny cleared his throat dramatically. “You lead off and I’ll jump in.”
“Okay,” Cole said. “Ready?”
Johnny joined in, their voices drifting over the waves, accompanied by the green waves slapping against the sides of the yellow life raft.
The little raft slid down a gentle swell, into a shallow trough, and up another wave, pausing briefly at the crest.