You should at least be scared, you dumb son of a bitch. But that was the irony of the situation. He was cold, miserable, and if he had anything left in his stomach he’d throw that up as well, and that was all he felt. He remembered everything that happened just before N-for-Nancy crashed and he knew how frightened he was then — he knew it but the feeling was long gone. What he did remember was telescoped into some sort of fractured image that, if he were asked to describe it, would come out disjointed and incoherent. Not a telescope — a kaleidoscope.
Analyze and synthesize. He decided that the classroom was hardly the place to learn.
“If they could only see me now,” Cole said, chuckling.
“King?”
Johnny was awake and looking at him questioningly.
“I was thinking about my students. I just wondered what my students would think if they could see me now.”
“They’d have to be in another dinghy, wouldn’t they? They’d have enough to keep them busy. How are you feeling?”
Cole cupped some water in his hand and splashed it on his face. “Like hell.”
“I had a refreshing nap.”
“I saw that.”
“I can sleep anywhere, anytime,” Johnny said. “I used to sleep on the Underground. You’d think a bloke would find that bloody well impossible, wouldn’t you? Not me. Slept like a baby, I did. Got on at Hobb’s End, rode to Victoria Station. Slept from one end to the other.”
“What’d you do before the war?” Cole said.
“Mechanic. Kept the trains running. The war comes and I thinks, ‘Well, that’s it for you, Johnny. You’ve got a nice cushy job keeping the trains running. They’ll not touch you.’ So I’m called up right off. And then I told myself, ‘They’ve got to keep you some place safe working on engines, now, don’t they?’”
Cole laughed. “So they made you a gunner.”
“Bloody bastards. Never been near a gun in my life. You?”
“Teacher. College.”
“Took you for an educated man right off. What’d you teach?”
“American history. Government.”
“Make a right good living, then?”
“You don’t know anything about teachers, do you?”
“I knew to keep on their good side. Had my ears cuffed more than once. Got out of school first chance I got. Still, sounds cushy. Never got your hands dirty, I suspect.”
Cole noticed something over Johnny’s shoulder.
“What is it?” the gunner said, turning around.
“I thought I saw something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Here,” Johnny said, tossing Cole one of the small plastic paddles. “Let’s get on top of a wave. We can see from there.”
Cole felt the paddle bite reassuringly into the water as he and Johnny worked to guide the raft to the crest of a swell. He tried to envision what he’d seen. It was very far away, sitting on the horizon; narrow, very narrow. It could have been a ship, a small ship. Maybe it was nothing. The sun was getting higher in the sky and its rays created a glare off the water. At least they were doing something to help themselves.
Johnny pulled the flare gun and a flare out of their waterproof pouch. He snapped open the breech and dropped the thick cartridge into the barrel.
They cleared a swell and sat briefly on the crest. Cole searched for the ship; it had to be a ship of some kind. There it was.
“There!” Cole shouted. “Over there.” Suddenly he heard a pop and then a loud whoosh as the flare shot high into the sky, followed by a thin trail of brown smoke. Cole and Johnny watched it make its wobbly ascent and then begin its slow fall.
The raft slid down into a wave trough, blinding them, and they came up again, the ocean taunting them first with a glimpse of the faraway ship, and then by denying it to them.
“Over there,” Johnny shouted, pointing across the waves. “It is a ship. They’d bloody well better come here and take us in.”
“Is she turning?” Cole asked. “I can’t tell if she sees us.”
Johnny shot another flare into the sky. “Come on, you bloody, blind bastards. We’re over here.”
A wave cut off their view.
It was a ship all right. Not a big one, Cole decided. A destroyer or maybe a corvette. It had to be a destroyer; they were too far out for a corvette.
“They’re searching for us,” Cole said. “Prentice got his message off. That’s a destroyer. I’m sure of it. Probably from a convoy.”
They rode to a crest again. There was no doubt of it now; the destroyer was closing on them.
Johnny slumped back against the soft rubber wall of the raft. He looked at his watch, tapped the crystal, held it to his ear, and then shrugged. “Gone,” he said. “A perfectly good two-quid watch rendered absolutely useless.”
“It’s a small price to pay,” Cole said.
“I wish the other chaps had made it. I’m going to miss them terribly. It just won’t be the same without them. I’m feeling a bit guilty. I mean them having bought it and me alive.”
“What did you tell me?” Cole said. “Something about not looking back. There’s nothing that you can do, Johnny. I guess just be glad you’re alive.”
Hardy lowered the binoculars and turned to Land. “Number One, assemble a party to help those men aboard. Too choppy for a ship’s boat to retrieve them. I’m sure they’ll need treatment of some kind or another, so see to that as well.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Land?” Hardy added. “I don’t fancy stopping long in U-boat country, so have the men snap to.” Hardy resumed his watch, picking out the bobbing life raft in the rolling swells.
Number One rejoined Hardy on the bridge. “All set, sir. I’ve detailed a party on either side of the ship. That will leave us free to approach from port or starboard.”
Hardy looked at his number one in appreciation. “Well done, Number One. That’s thinking, all right. You might find yourself on Prometheus one of these days with initiative like that.”
“No, thank you, sir,” Land said. “I prefer Firedancer.”
“That answer has considerably reduced my confidence in you, Number One. Let us go and fetch those poor bastards out of the water.”
Her hull was scarred and rusted and her numbers were nearly invisible, bleached by the harsh sun and scouring salt spray of the North Atlantic, but to Cole the British destroyer looked as large and imposing as a battleship. When the ship was close enough he saw a party of sailors lining her deck, ropes in hand, waving at the raft. He had never seen sailors of the Royal Navy at sea before and he was amazed at their dress — they were wearing castoffs of every description, except for the two officers standing by the men of course. They were properly dressed. If any American sailor had reported for duty looking like this crew, he would have been tossed into the brig.
But he didn’t really care. They had come to rescue him and as far as he was concerned, they could have been dressed like the Rockettes and the ship could have been the Staten Island Ferry.
“I hope they don’t run us down,” Johnny said. “Wouldn’t that be just the proper end to this disaster?”
“She’s doing fine,” Cole said appreciatively. Her captain, whoever he was and whoever she was, worked her steering and engines masterfully.