Murdo's War Page 13

The huge blond man stretched and rose smoothly to his feet. He had bathed the cut on his face with sea water and already it was healing beneath a long brown scab.

  ‘We can all do with some food and a hot drink,’ Henry Smith said. ‘Go down to the cave and get what you can from Knut. It’s not very far. And ring the Captain Ivy from the call box in the village. Tell them I’m staying away, but I’ll be back in a day or two.’

  Bjorn nodded. ‘Right,’ he said briefly, and bent to tie his boots.

  ‘Keep an eye open for Haakon,’ Henry Smith continued. ‘And see if you can spot a boat anywhere. I think we might need it tonight – for the guns. We’ve got to try to get this lot ashore.’ He indicated the waste of water at the mouth of the bay, where the Lobster Boy had gone down.

  Bjorn looked up in surprise, but kept his own counsel and finished tying his laces.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ he said, standing. ‘I’m off. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’ He glanced from Murdo to Carl Voss, then back to Henry Smith. ‘Don’t be too hard on the boy,’ he said. ‘And keep that animal away from him.’

  ‘You just get the food,’ Henry Smith said to him. ‘That’s your job.’

  ‘Just don’t be hard on the boy, that’s all,’ Bjorn said again. ‘There’s no need for it.’ He regarded the dark sea, still foaming about the rocks.

  Murdo looked at Carl Voss. His face was turned towards the spot where Bjorn had just passed out of view. His lips were set and his dark eyes glittered. With powerful fingers he massaged his twisted knee.

  For a while nobody moved, holding on as long as they could to the little pockets of warmth which they all, like Murdo, had nurtured through the long hours. Henry Smith, still standing, surveyed the four remaining survivors. They were a bedraggled and weary group of men, unshaven, their faces pale and blotched with the cold, clothes crumpled and still wet, frozen where they were not touched by the heat of their bodies. He took the revolver from Carl Voss and shortsightedly lined the sights up with a rock ten or twelve yards away.

  ‘I have been thinking,’ he said almost absently. ‘It would be better if you were both out of the way. The current here is very convenient, as we know.’

  Seconds passed, seeming like minutes. Then, very slowly, he dropped his aim, until the barrel lined straight up with the middle of Murdo’s face. There it paused. Murdo’s eyes widened, hypnotised by the small black hole with its rim of blue steel. Henry Smith’s face was very calm, his breathing easy. His eyes blinked unemotionally. Then, relaxing, the arm fell to his side, and he addressed them in a detached and matter-of-fact voice.

  ‘Yes, I feel it might save us a great deal of trouble in the long run – but yet again you can be useful to me. So I must, for the present at least, postpone that convenience. Possibly I might even overlook it. We will see how you get on.’

  Frozen though he was, Murdo felt a great surge of relief, prickling through his body from legs to scalp. He half relaxed, but still the German leader held his rapt attention.

  ‘There are two things I want you to know, however,’ Henry Smith went on. ‘The first is to remind you that if you attempt to run away, or thwart me in any respect whatever, I shall this time shoot you dead. In the present circumstances I should think no more of it than if I was shooting a rabbit in the garden. The second is that I intend to raise the boxes of guns from your sunken boat.’ He shook his head. ‘No, no, Mr Gunn. It is no use looking bewildered. You know even better than I do, it is perfectly possible. That was not just any rock you ran your boat into, you know exactly where she is lying. And with that weight in her she will not have moved much. Now, with the full moon we all saw last night, there will be big tides at the moment – if I remember the tide tables correctly, a rise and fall of about seventeen feet. It was nearly high tide when we crashed last night, and it will soon be low. So if the boat is where I think, there will not be much water above her even now.’ He looked across the wilderness of rocks. ‘Unless you have made a mistake and she is lying in a gully, it should be a relatively simple operation – and somehow I don’t think you would make that mistake, not with the Lobster Boy, she means too much to you.’ He smiled. ‘That is the advantage of having ‘the best seaman on the coast’ to assist us.’

  He turned slightly to bring the two Germans into his sphere of authority. ‘First, however, we must look for Haakon. I do not think we’ll find him, and we can’t look for long. But there is the unlikely chance that he has survived and is hurt, or that his body has been washed up. So we must look. Voss, you come with me and these two Scottish...’ he hunted for a word, then left the sentence unfinished. ‘Gunner, you can go that way. I will see you back here in forty minutes, that is at – eight thirty.’ He pushed the watch back up his wrist. ‘Right, on your feet, everyone.’

  Slowly the dishevelled figures pulled themselves from the boulders. The night had taken its toll and it was a painfully stiff and weary group of men that stood there, cautiously stretching and trying to rub some circulation back into joints and muscles which had frozen through the cold hours. One figure alone showed no signs of the ravages of the night – Hector. The sturdy old man stood there as solidly as if he had risen from his bed an hour earlier. His white hair was rumpled, the stubble thick upon his chin, but the clear blue eyes gazed out as steadily as ever. Even the blow from Carl Voss had resulted in only a slight redness on the side of his face. Murdo touched his own bruised eye and rubbed his frozen legs, and wished he was as tough himself.

  The search along the coast revealed nothing. Haakon was certainly dead, for the water below the long line of cliffs to each side of the cove was bottomless, and the shore rocks beyond were empty. No tracks save those of a few sheep disturbed the mantle of snow. A Cambridge degree and engineering skills were no use to him now, for with Dag he was drifting through the weed and bumping over the stones on his way to the deep currents of the Pentland Firth.

  At half past eight they assembled once more beneath the ice- sheathed cliff. Murdo gazed down at the beach. The tide was far out, a chaos of rock extending between themselves and the open water of the bay. He tried to pick out the pinnacle to which he had clung, and the two outcrops past which he had swum in the blackness of the night, but now the water had receded it was difficult to tell which they were. He thought he recognised them, rising from deep weedy pools, but he was far from certain.

  ‘If I am correct,’ Henry Smith said, his eyes roving judiciously over the same sea rocks, ‘the boat should be lying about – there.’ He pointed to a ragged peak about thirty yards off-shore. ‘If the beach shelves at the same angle, there will be about five feet of water there right now. And I think the tide may have a little way to fall yet.’

  Gunner, the naval man, nodded.

  ‘So.’ Henry Smith turned to Hector, blinking against the brightening day and high bank of snow. ‘Am I right?’

  Hector shrugged non-commitally.

  Henry Smith’s voice was insistent and menacing. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘It was dark, wasn’t it?’ Hector protested, ‘I don’t know where she is. How could I? All I did was run her on the rocks where I thought we had a chance of getting ashore.’

  ‘And two of my men died. Oh no! You know where the boat is very well. And you know how deep the water will be.’ He stepped across to Murdo and raising the revolver pushed its icy muzzle into the boy’s ear. ‘It did not take you very long to forget my warning, Mr Gunn. Now, do you want to see whether I am bluffing? I will ask you once more. Where is the Lobster Boy?’

  Hector did not hesitate for a moment.

  ‘All right,’ he said, drawing a deep breath. ‘Put the gun down.’ With a smile Henry Smith removed the revolver.

  ‘You see sense at last. I think that’s the first wise thing you have done since we met. Now!’

  ‘She’s over there.’ Hector pointed towards a rock some thirty yards to the left of that indicated by Henry Smith. ‘She’ll be lying on the bottom, the right way up I should think with all the weigh
t in her. The tide is falling, it will drop another foot or so yet. By then you should be able to see her bows above the water.’

  ‘And how long will we have to unload her?’

  ‘Two hours maybe.’

  ‘With the water at that temperature it will be long enough.’ The pale eyes turned to Murdo. ‘And now you can go out and see whether he is telling the truth. You have a choice. The water is cold, if you stay out there too long you will become unconscious: if you return without finding the boat, I will shoot you. It is up to you.’

  There was no arguing. Murdo looked to Hector for advice. With set and wrinkled face, the old man nodded back encouragingly. He began to rid himself of his clothes.

  ‘No, leave them on,’ Hector said. ‘They will help to keep out the cold. Just take off your jacket.’

  Murdo’s stockinged feet were numb; nevertheless the sharp rocks cut painfully into his soles as he limped across the lower shore, eighty yards below the boulders of the beach. Then he was stepping into the water, straight to his knees in a pool at the seaward end of a black weedy gully. A wave swept in, washing to his waist, fiery cold. Resting his hand against a side rock he waded out, feeling for footholds, the sea bed uneven and slippery beneath his feet. Then he was wading free, the rock Hector had indicated fifteen yards away. Half way there one leg skidded into a deep fissure, and struggling to keep his balance he stumbled and fell sidelong. He came up panting, his body burning with the cold of the water.

  By the time he reached the rock the sea was to his chest, rising to his shoulders and lifting him as the waves rolled by. He began casting around, trying to keep to the higher ledges – but there was nothing.

  ‘Around the back,’ Hector called above the noise of the waves. And almost at once there she was, the old Lobster Boy, her gunwale only a foot or two below the surface. He began to turn, to shout, then hesitated. Should he tell them? He looked back to the shore. There stood Hector, white haired and weather-beaten, flanked by the three Germans. He could not let his old friend down.

  ‘Right there!’ Hector’s voice was anxious.

  ‘There’s nothing here.’

  ‘There must be.’

  ‘No.’ He pretended to keep searching.

  ‘A little to the left, then.’

  Murdo moved away from the edge of the boat into open water, feeling around beneath the surface. His hands were numb, and he had difficulty in breathing.

  ‘I’m coming out to you!’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Henry Smith motioned Hector back. ‘You stay here. One at a time.’

  For five minutes more Murdo pretended to search in the deep water. His head was spinning, he no longer felt the cold. He began to flounder.

  ‘Go back where you were before.’

  Obediently, hardly knowing what he was doing, Murdo made his way back to the boat.

  ‘She must be there.’

  Murdo put a hand on the bow for support.

  ‘No,’ he shouted. ‘There’s nothing here.’

  A big wave surged past, rising to his mouth and foaming on the rocks. In the deep following trough, the watchers on the shore saw the sturdy green timbers of the Lobster Boy rise from the water, gripped by the boy’s hand.

  ‘There she is!’ Gunner and Carl Voss cried out simultaneously.

  ‘All right, Murdo. Come on out. We’ve seen her.’ Hector’s voice trembled. He turned to Henry Smith, ‘I’m going out there. Shoot me if you want. The boy’s had enough.’

  Henry Smith nodded quietly, his eyes fixed with a look of unwilling admiration on the black-headed figure in the water. Two minutes later the white head joined him there. The Germans saw them talking briefly.

  ‘Have a look in the boat,’ Henry Smith called through the breaking sea. ‘See if all the cases are there.’

  Slowly the boy’s figure pulled itself clear of the waves as he climbed inboard, and dropped down into shallower water. His head was hanging low and he shook it as if to clear away drowsiness. For a moment he stumbled about, then straightened for a lungful of air and plunged beneath the surface. For several seconds he was gone, then suddenly burst into sight again, the icy water cascading from his shoulders. He turned to talk to Hector, who a moment later climbed into the boat after him. To the watching Germans it seemed they were arguing. Hector grabbed the boy by the shoulders and pointed emphatically towards the shore. Murdo nodded briefly, and clumsily climbed down from the boat. Slowly he set out for the beach. He had only gone a few yards, however, when he tripped and fell. Rising again from the water, he no longer seemed to know where he was going, and for a few paces splashed parallel to the shore. Hector shouted but he took no notice, his head hanging, almost touching the waves that rolled in from the bay. The next moment they had swung him about so that he was heading out to sea, still stumbling forward. Then he was reeling, floundering this way and that. With a shout Gunner leaped into the waves and forced his way through them towards him. He reached Murdo at the same time as Hector. The boy was unconscious, a limp shape swilling this way and that amid the tossing waves.

  Switch Off the Moon

  MURDO DID NOT regain consciousness quickly. The men carried him out of the wind and chafed his arms and legs to bring back the circulation. Roughly they wrung out his clothing and covered him with their own jackets. But it was very slowly that some colour returned to his grey cheeks and his limbs lost their clammy chill. Gunner produced a small flask from his inside pocket and poured a little brandy into his mouth. Dimly Murdo felt the burning sensation in his throat, and a coughing, choking feeling, then a thin stream of fire coursed down his body.

  ‘He is coming to.’ It was Henry Smith who spoke. ‘Give him some more of the brandy.’

  Again the burning in his mouth and the gasping. A radiant heat spread outward from his chest and stomach. Murdo breathed deeply and his eyes flickered open. What seemed a forest of men’s legs hemmed him in. He looked up to their bodies and faces, and closed his eyes again. Then he remembered the sea, the dizziness, the lurching blackness. Hector was leaning over him, speaking, but he could not make out the words. He forced his eyes open.

  ‘What...’ the word was scarcely audible.

  Again Hector’s voice, and a hand on his shoulder. Then the old man stood up. They seemed so tall, immeasurably high, little faces looking down.

  Henry Smith stood back a pace. ‘There is no more we can do until Bjorn comes back with the coffee. And before you ask – no, we are not building a fire. So we might as well get on with the unloading. The tide must be low now, you can see the bows of the boat quite plainly, almost between every wave.’ Without his thick coat he felt the wind icy and rubbed his arms vigorously, looking about in a business-like manner. ‘Right! Gunner, you get out there and take off the lashings. Voss, cut a length of rope and put a knot around this boy’s wrists and ankles, there is no point in taking chances. Then give us a hand to carry the cases ashore.’

  Carl Voss loosened the catch of the big clasp knife that hung at his waist and turned towards the sea. He was soon back, binding the rough manilla tightly about Murdo’s ankles, completing the work with a reef knot and whole series of half-hitches that would be impossible for him to unfasten. Then he lashed his wrists behind, the rope tugging at the skin. When he had finished he pulled the damp jackets over him once more, stood back for a moment, raised his boot as if to give the boy a parting kick, then laughed and went to join the others far down the rocks.

  At first Murdo hardly noticed the new discomfort, so wretched did he feel. Gradually, however, as the worst of the weakness and nausea passed, he became aware of the harsh knots against the bones of his wrists, and the rope cutting into his ankles. He writhed his hands and strained his feet to try to get some relief, and with a little success, but the bonds were well fastened and there was no chance of working them loose.

  The effort did Murdo good. As he lay back panting, the swimming specks cleared from his eyes and he felt rather better. By shifting his head a little he could see the me
n struggling in the waves as they carried the crates to the shore. It was a terrible task, for they were heavy and the sea-bed was treacherous. With an upsurge of concern and affection he regarded the stocky figure of Hector, his white hair blown by the wind, the sea surging about the case he clutched to his chest. Henry Smith stumbled and dropped his box, then had to bend head and shoulders into the water to retrieve it. The day was brightening all the time, and as the boy watched, the first burnished dot of sun appeared at the rim of the tossing sea. Slowly it rose, dazzling and huge. A golden track spread across the water.

  The sun brought no warmth, but Murdo felt it did and his spirits rose. Gunner had left the brandy flask on a stone beside him. He crawled across, picked it up in his teeth, and struggled back to his former position. Holding the flask between his knees he managed to unscrew the cap, then lost it between the stones. But when he came to take a mouthful of brandy, holding the flask tightly in his teeth, the spirit suddenly gushed forth, spilling down his neck and into the back of his throat, making him choke. Somehow he dropped the flask into his lap without wasting what remained, then leaned forward and coughed until his eyes watered.

  The boat was nearly empty when Bjorn, accompanied by Peter, Sigurd and Arne, came down the slope behind the gully. They were carrying rucksacks of food, mess-tins and primus, and an assortment of dry clothes.

  A word or two with Gunner was enough to tell Bjorn what had happened. He leaned down and unfastened the bonds from Murdo’s wrists and ankles, and handed him a pair of dry socks, trousers and a sweater. While Murdo put them on, Bjorn spread those he discarded over the rocks where the low sun and wind might dry them a little. Through his youth and empty stomach, Murdo was half drunk with the brandy and smiled stupidly and light-headedly when the big man said something to him. But it was a hollow feeling of well-being that the spirit provided, and he needed the hot coffee and fried bully-beef and biscuit that came to him a quarter of an hour later. The healthier warmth sank into his stomach, and after a trough of sick weariness as the euphoria faded, a slow strength once more began to build up inside him. Soon, in dry clothes and sunshine, with the hot food doing its work, he felt a great deal better.