V for Vengeance (18 page)

He had no idea how long he lay like that, but suddenly he let out a gasp of shock and began to splutter violently from someone having pitched a bucketful of cold water right over his aching head. A roar of laughter greeted his wriggles, as he weakly shook the water from his hair and endeavoured to sit up. Next second there was another splash and a loud shout, as Kuporovitch received the second bucketful in his face.

‘On your feet, damn you!' yelled the
Unter-offizier
. With an effort Gregory twisted round his head and, while attempting to rise, got his first sight of their principal tormentor.

As Gregory endeavoured to stumble to his feet the Prussian hit him sideways across the face, so that he measured his length on the floor again, and another shout of laughter went up from Hitler's brave little men.

Most of them were youngsters who could not have been much more than children when Hitler came to power. During the whole of their adolescence and young manhood they had been consistently educated into the belief that their country had for generations been the victim of the greedy aggressive older nations, and that in Hitler Germany had at last found a leader who would right her wrongs and lead her to a new prosperity. The only history that they knew had been learned from the Nazi-edited schoolbooks, which had been deliberately falsified to beget in them hatred of other races. They knew nothing at all of peacetime conditions outside their own country and were fully convinced that Germany's poverty was entirely due to the harsh terms which had been inflicted upon her at Versailles.

They had been brought up on the doctrine that Might is Right and that only by each one of them exerting his full brute strength at every opportunity which offered could the
balance be redressed and Germany triumph. They had been told that they were the
Herrenvolk
—the Master-Race—but that they were far outnumbered by the non-Aryan peoples, and that only by the exercise of complete ruthlessness against all enemies of their Fuehrer could they hope to win through.

Even before the war many of them had participated in Jew-batings and the horrid brutalities exercised upon prisoners in their own concentration camps. Animals are cruel to each other by instinct, but a really merciless man can be more brutal than any beast.

And even such spiritual qualities as these young men might have had had been denied to them by Hitler, who had suppressed all teachings of higher things and, instead, deliberately fostered the brutal lust for domination. They had been taught that mercy was only a sign of weakness in themselves, which must be rigorously suppressed, and that chivalry was a thing to mock at and to take advantage of whenever it would give them a better chance to trick and defeat their decadent enemies.

In Czechoslovakia, and in Poland, they had had innumerable opportunities to experience the perverted joy of inflicting pain. In Norway, Holland, Belgium and France they had been ordered by their officers to machine-gun refugees, old men, women and children. They had even been ordered to crush their own wounded under the tracks of their tanks, rather
than halt the advance. Their hearts had turned to stone within them, and Hitler, their chosen leader, had brought out for all the world to see the real and terrible truth. Now that they were the masters of Europe, and thought that they had no more to fear, they were behaving as the brute beasts that deep down in their cold savage natures they really are.

Kuporovitch was under no illusions, and while Gregory lay moaning on the floor the Russian stared round him at the ring of soulless jeering faces. There was nothing he could do, no hope of escape, and any attempt to do so would only have been to invite further punishment.

The Prussian sergeant was now bawling something at him, but unlike Gregory, who spoke German like a native, Kuporovitch spoke only Russian, French, and his recently acquired smattering of English: so he did not understand a word.

Suddenly the German kicked him in the stomach, and he went over backwards. With every breath driven out of his body he lay doubled, squirming with agony.

Gregory was ordered to get up again, but he remained lying where he was. Two of the men lugged him to his feet, and the Prussian began to yell at him, asking his name and what he had been doing on the island; but Gregory knew that no answer he could give would save him from what was coming to him, so he feebly shook his head, pretending that he did not understand.

After a moment the sergeant gave up and hit him again with all his might, once in the stomach and again in the face. The body blow was like the kick of a mule and the shock so frightful that Gregory vomited where he stood. The second blow caught him behind the ear and temporarily knocked him out.

More buckets of water were brought and cast over the prisoners until they revived, then the hideous game went on. Even when neither of them could any longer stand alone they were held up by their captors while the Prussian pasted hell out of them, until at last they lapsed into deep unconsciousness, from which neither kicks nor further bucketfuls of water could stir either of them.

When they gradually came to themselves once more they
were still lying on the floor, but they realised that it was morning. Daylight now filled the barn-like room, and only two soldiers were in it. Both sat propped up with their backs against the wall, one either side of the door, and they appeared to be asleep.

Very gingerly, limb by limb, Gregory stretched himself. The pain was agonising, and he could still see out of only one eye, but he did not think that either of his arms or legs was broken. He was still wet, and very cold. After a little he felt Kuporovitch stirring near him, and turning over he whispered through his blood-caked, thickened lips: ‘How goes it, Stefan?'

‘All right,' croaked the Russian, ‘except for my left ankle. It's broken, I think.'

Gregory began to curse under his breath. It seemed that their captors had never meant to go to the extreme lengths of killing them, so there were probably standing orders that anyone coming to the island should be handed over alive to the Gestapo. He was praying now that before the Gestapo received what was left of him he would manage to get his hands for a few moments on the Prussian sergeant. But he knew that he must not waste his energies in futile wishing, as he might yet need every ounce of strength that he could muster. He remained still then, trying not to think at all, but breathing gently and as regularly as the pain of his battered body would permit.

They had no means of measuring time, but for about an hour they lay there, gradually regaining the use of their faculties. Both silently considered and rejected the thought of escape. They knew that it would have been quite impossible to get through the doorway without rousing the two soldiers, and they were still far too weak to have either put up a fight or run any distance. They could only try to put away from them the unnerving thought that when the sergeant returned he would probably begin to torture them anew, and pray that they might be left alone long enough to regain sufficient strength to attempt their escape later should any reasonable chance offer.

There came the tramp of heavy feet outside. The two soldiers in the doorway roused themselves and stood up. The
sergeant stamped into the room followed by two more of his men. Pausing for a moment, he stared down at his prisoners, then gave Kuporovitch a vicious kick.

‘Ouch!' grunted the Russian, pulling back his injured leg.

The sergeant aimed a second kick at Gregory, but the latter saw it coming and swiftly wriggled aside.

‘So there's still some life in you!' muttered the Prussian morosely. ‘If it hadn't been against my orders I'd have wrung both your necks, but the Gestapo wouldn't thank me for handing them a couple of corpses. Up you get, damn you! The boat's here, and I'm taking you over to the mainland.'

As he spoke he turned abruptly away, evidently expecting to be followed, and the two prisoners painfully dragged themselves upright. Owing to his twisted ankle, Stefan could not walk, so Gregory pulled his friend's arm about his shoulders, and as best they could they shuffled out into the morning sunshine.

Although they were still half-dead from the beating they had received, the fresh air did them both good, and for the first fifty yards they felt a vestige of new strength creeping back into their tortured bodies, but they were not permitted to enjoy that for long.

The Germans, now feeling like a little morning sport, began to drive them on at a quicker pace than they could properly manage with Kuporovitch only able to hop along on one foot. From shouts and curses their captors resorted to blows and painful jabs with the long hunting-knives that they carried. The beach was only some half a mile distant, but now as they staggered panting down the slope it seemed as though they would never make it. Twice they fell, provoking gusts of laughter from the licensed murderers in grey-green uniforms; but they stumbled up again, and at last, gasping and perspiring, reached a rowing-boat, which had been lightly beached on the sandy shore.

The sergeant and two of his men got into it, but he waved Gregory back as he was about to help Kuporovitch aboard. To the renewed mirth of the others, he declared that it was not for the German
Herrenvolk
to soil their hands with menial labour when there were members of the slave-races
present to do it for them. The two prisoners were to push off the boat.

Kuporovitch leaned against its prow, bearlike and sullen, not understanding what had been said. Gregory understood perfectly well, but pretended not to until he was left no option through the other soldiers who were remaining on the island demonstrating with gestures and more kicks what the prisoners were expected to do. It was no good inviting further chastisement through appearing mulish, so Gregory nerved himself for the effort, and leaning his shoulder against the gunwale of the boat, heaved at it, while Kuporovitch, standing on one foot, leant his weight as well.

The boat was stoutly made and heavy. It would not budge, but the sergeant seemed in no hurry. He and his two companions sat in the boat smoking and grinning, while the other men stood round on the beach, enjoying this edifying spectacle of two exhausted, bloodstained, crippled men panting and sweating as they heaved at the weighty boat.

They would never have managed to launch it but for the fact that the tide was nearly at full again, and the still-rising water took an increasing share of the weight. At last it began to move. ‘Come on!' panted Gregory. ‘One more effort, Stefan!'

Kuporovitch exerted all his great strength, and the boat slid forward, but as it went, caught off his balance on one foot, he stumbled and fell headlong with a great splash into the shallows, which brought forth a huge shout of laughter.

Wet, bedraggled and half-fainting, they clambered into the boat and lay there for a moment panting in her bottom; but their ordeal was not yet over. ‘Up you get, slaves!' roared the Prussian. ‘What do you think you're doing there? It's not for men of the Fuehrer's Army to row scum like you ashore. Get out the oars and put your backs into it!' His men made his meaning plain by thrusting the hafts of the oars towards them.

Dragging themselves up, they slumped on to the thwarts, got the clumsy oars into the rowlocks, and limp, gasping, dripping with perspiration, began to paddle shorewards, while the sergeant roared at them for ever greater efforts. They saw now that it was well over a mile to the mainland, but
the Prussian was not steering in that direction. He was holding the boat on a course parallel to the shore.

At first they thought that this was just a fresh devilishness to inflict further suffering upon them, but as the boat progressed they remembered the description which they had been given of Saint Jacut, and that its little harbour lay round the point some distance up the farther creek, which meant that there lay before them an agonising pull of two miles at least.

Kuporovitch could only exert pressure with one foot, and after pulling for a few moments Gregory knew that two of the fingers of his right hand, which had been numb since he had come round, must be broken. With every move back and forth pain racked their bodies, but the potato-headed gangster in the stern would give them no respite. It seemed that they had been rowing for an age, and that their backs were actually breaking under the strain, when they rounded the headland and entered the wide mouth of the creek.

The boat was hidden now, both from the island and from the little harbour which was still farther round the bend, and owing to their position in the boat, the two wretched galley-slaves could not see that, half a mile ahead of them, the fishing fleet of Saint Jacut, consisting of some six or eight small vessels, had just put to sea and was heading in their direction.

As they laboured on, the sweat now coursing down in rivulets through the caked blood on their swollen faces, they remained quite unaware of the approaching fishing-smacks until the fact of the sergeant altering course twice in rapid succession caused them to look round. They were well in the middle of the channel, but the smacks were spread out right across it, so they would have to pass between two of them. Since they were fairly close together, it seemed that the sergeant could not make up his mind on which side to pass the nearest of the smacks, which was now coming under full sail straight towards them.

A moment later the Prussian began to shout and heave with all his might upon the port tiller-rope. As the nose of the boat swung round Gregory stopped rowing, and straining the sore muscles of his neck once more, again looked over his shoulder. One glance was enough to show him that they were
in serious trouble. Two of the heavy smacks appeared to have left their course, and with a full wind in their sails were converging upon the rowing-boat. The nearest was no more than twenty yards distant.

In the bows of both the smacks French fishermen were shouting and gesticulating, but in neither case were they apparently prepared to haul down sail or alter the course of their vessels. The Prussian was now standing in the stern of the boat shaking his fist at the Frenchmen and screaming profanities in German, but his experience with boats was probably small, as he seemed to have no idea of how to get out of the way.