V for Vengeance (53 page)

For the next ten minutes they did not exchange a word, as with heave after heave Kuporovitch sent the dinghy bouncing forward. Then Gregory exclaimed: ‘Stick to it, Stefan, stick to it! I can see something ahead.'

The moon was now in its dark quarter, but faint starlight enabled them to see a little distance, and as they advanced Gregory could now make out a black mass that he had sighted across the water with growing distinctness. His heart leapt with joy. He was certain now that it was the
Sans Souci
with her string of barges. Another five minutes' hard pulling and they were under the stern of the rearmost barge.

But the
Sans Souci
was just passing the harbour mouth. The size of the waves was increasing, and having cleared the entrance she was now putting on speed. It was all that Kuporovitch could do, even by the mightiest efforts, to keep up with the rearmost barge. At Madeleine's urging he put on a final spurt, then standing up in the dinghy, Gregory cast its small anchor up on to the barge. It caught on the low rim which ran round the deck, and by hauling on the anchor rope he was able to pull the dinghy up under the barge's counter.

For a few minutes Kuporovitch rested from his exertions, while Gregory lashed the anchor rope to the boat's thwart and got a second grip on the barge with a boat-hook. The Russian then prepared for the difficult job of getting on board.

The side of the barge was eight feet or more out of the water but by standing on the little triangular foredeck of the boat he reduced the distance by two feet. The anchor rope was too thin for him to climb, and the only way that he could reach the barge was to jump.

With the boat now tossing in the waves it was a most hazardous attempt to make. For a few seconds he balanced himself precariously until a wave-crest carried the boat up; then, knowing that if he failed to secure a hold he would be dashed overboard and swept away in the darkness beyond hope of rescue, he sprang.

His fingers caught the wooden rim above the barge's deck. For a moment he hung there kicking wildly, while Gregory and Madeleine watched him fearfully. Then, with a frantic wriggle, he managed to lever himself up and tumbled head foremost into safety.

A moment later, now lying on the deck, he put his hands and arms over the side. Madeleine was all ready for him. As she jumped he caught her in his arms and hauled her in. As
soon as he had released her he turned again, and gripping Gregory's hand pulled him up too.

For a full minute all three of them sat panting there on the deck, then Madeleine cried: ‘We've done it, we've done it! We're safe at last!'

‘Yes, we've done it, thank God!' Gregory echoed. ‘But I'm afraid we're only safe for the moment. The devil of it is that through that wretched fellow Picquette holding us up we were unable to join our friends, and I don't see how we can do so. We caught the boat all right, but we're in the wrong barge.'

‘What does that matter?' Madeleine shrugged.

‘It matters a hell of a lot,' Gregory said with unusual seriousness. ‘Now we're out of France I can tell you the plan we hatched for conveying all our Paris friends to safety. These barges are bound for a Dutch or German port, so they've got to pass through the Straits of Dover. Reconnaissance aircraft of the R.A.F. are keeping a daily watch for them. The recognition sign is that the third barge in the string is much smaller than the other four. When we're sighted the Royal Navy will get busy. The Nazi escort ships will be sunk, and the people in Baras' barge will be rescued and taken to England.'

‘But how marvellous!' exclaimed Madeleine. ‘And in that case why ever should you worry? When the Navy comes on the scene we have only to show ourselves and shout, and they'll take us off too.'

Gregory grunted. ‘That sounds all right, if the Nazis don't spot us first and shoot us; and if the British come near enough to hear our voices. The trouble is that four out of five of these barges are filled with high explosives. The Navy has orders to cut out the barge which has our friends on board and blow the others sky-high. As I've just pointed out, we're on the wrong barge, and, as far as I can see, have no means of reaching the right one.'

The more they thought about their situation the less they liked it. The five barges were strung together with twenty-fathom lengths of steel cable, and there was no way at all in which they could cross those yawning gulfs to reach Léon Baras' party, which occupied the second barge in the string.

‘We'll have to wait till daylight,' Kuporovitch said. ‘The captain and the crew of the
Sans Souci
are in the secret. If we signal them they'll slow down so that we can get back into Boucheron's boat and row along to join our friends.'

‘I'm afraid there's not much hope of that,' Gregory sighed. ‘You seem to have forgotten, Stefan, that this string of barges now forms part of a convoy with a German escort. What the escort consists of we shan't discover until daylight, but I expect there'll be at least one Ack-Ack ship and probably several E-boats. Directly we stand up to start signalling the Germans will wonder who we are and come on board to investigate. There's another thing. We'll have to cast off the boat before morning. Otherwise the Nazis will spot it and guess that some unauthorised persons came out to this barge in it under cover of darkness.'.

‘Wait a moment, though,' said Madeleine. ‘If the British Navy is going to capture Baras' barge and tow it to England why shouldn't they capture the whole string? This great cargo of explosives would be as useful to the British as to the Germans, and surely the Navy will have thought of that. You must be wrong in thinking they mean to sink all the other barges.'

Gregory laughed. ‘I'm afraid you don't understand the difficulties of such an operation. The Germans aren't going to take this little party lying down. We shall be hugging the French coast the whole time, and once the balloon goes up scores of German aircraft will take off to bomb the British ships. They'll probably despatch to the spot any other fast E-boats they may have within thirty miles and a submarine or so into the bargain.

‘To capture a whole string of barges and tow them back to an English port with the British ships being attacked both by sea and air while they're on the job would be one hell of an undertaking. Speed is their best defence against such an attack, so there wouldn't even be time for them to send boarding-parties on to the barges to undo the hawsers and attach each one to a separate ship. They'll simply come alongside Baras' barge and throw him a rope. Directly it's made fast, and he's cast off from the barges ahead and astern, they'll pull him out of the string as quickly as they possibly
can. When they've got his barge to a safe distance they'll blow up the other four barges by gunfire in order to create confusion among the Germans and destroy this big cargo of enemy war material.'

‘I see,' said Madeleine softly. ‘Of course, one always thinks of the British Navy as all-powerful, and that there's simply nothing that it cannot do.'

‘I'm afraid that even the Royal Navy has its limits,' Gregory smiled, ‘but it's nice that people should think of it in the way that you say, and actually far too little appreciation is given to the amazing things it has accomplished. The fact of the matter is that the English are not given to talking very much. They're not very good at bringing home to other people the real basic fact that without them Hitler would have won his war and had the whole of Europe in the bag long ago.'

‘That's entirely on account of your incredibly ill-managed propaganda in the first two years of the war,' Kuporovitch remarked. ‘Nine-tenths of the people outside Britain still believe that the English are decadent and that their fighting is being done for them by the troops of the Dominions and a few gallant Scottish regiments. But where would all the others be without them? No portion of the Empire could continue to exist without the homeland, unless they allowed themselves to be taken over by the United States. And where would the United States be if Britain fell? If Hitler had every shipyard in the whole of Europe, including Britain, to build the greatest Navy that the world has ever seen for his assault on the Americas, they couldn't possibly compete in such a building race. Within five years the Stars and Stripes would be swept from the seas.'

Gregory nodded. ‘You're right, Stefan. And it's a rotten shame that this idea that everyone else is doing the fighting should still persist. When I was last in London a great husky Australian stuck a finger in my chest and said: “If you don't soon get down to business in this war I'll be meeting you in New York one day with
Free English
written on your shoulder. How would you like that?”'

‘Of course, it's quite true that we're terribly slow in the uptake, and we're not fighting all out yet. We need, and we're thundering glad to have, all the help that we can get
in this titanic struggle, both from the peoples of our own Empire and the Free Forces of all the peoples who are fighting with us, but that does not affect the fact that the people of the homeland are the rock upon which Hitler will break.'

He paused a moment, then went on: ‘In no other country in the world is there quite the same solidity and strength of purpose as in the little island where the three ancient races are now merged into one; and that brings us back to the Royal Navy. Every other people on earth that is fighting for, or even prepared to fight for, its freedom, is now dependent on Britain keeping free the seas; and, although not many people realise it, over eighty-five per cent of the officers and men who man our fighting ships are drawn from the Southern Counties of England.'

There was another short silence, then he gave a cynical little laugh and added: ‘Of course, the men of Devon and Hampshire and Kent don't get much credit for the fact that Hitler isn't occupying Buckingham Palace, or that Britain is still far and away the best fed and most comfortable country among the warring Powers in which to live. Neither do the people of all the other towns and counties between John o' Groats and Land's End, who provide much the biggest proportion of the Imperial Armies and Air Forces; yet it is
their
blood, and
their
tradition, which permeates all the other Anglo-Saxon peoples of the world. That indomitable spirit, which has made the Empire, lives in it still today, and without it all else which sustains our Commonwealth of Nations must perish.'

‘You're right, Gregory, absolutely right,' Kuporovitch agreed, ‘and we'll see the Navy doing its stuff tomorrow—if all goes well. Perhaps, though, if we slept for a bit we'd be able to think up some way of getting rid of our ringside seats. It's quite clear now that they're going to be far too near the performance to be comfortable.'

Getting up from the deck, Gregory set Boucheron's boat adrift, then they went down into the small cabin in the stern of the barge, which was occupied by a watchman when it was in port. There were two bunks in it, and on one a couple of coarse blankets had been left neatly folded. Madeleine lay down on one bunk, while Gregory and Stefan tossed up for
the other. Gregory won, so the Russian found some old sacking and made himself as comfortable as his makeshift bedding permitted, on the floor. Although they had slept for three hours that afternoon they were still terribly fatigued from their long journey and desperate exertions, so within a few moments they were all asleep.

When Kuporovitch awoke it was daylight. He roused Gregory, and the two of them went cautiously up the short companionway to take a look round and find out the composition of the convoy. They soon saw that none of the ships was within several hundred yards of them, so they were in little danger of being spotted, provided that they did not let more than the top of their heads appear above the hatch.

To their right they could see the coast of France very clearly. They were not more than a mile from shore and were heading up-channel. They were just passing a town that Gregory could not definitely identify but thought was probably Fecamp, and they found that their string of barges formed the second in the convoy, which consisted of six strings altogether. On their seaward side there was a small grey-painted motor yacht, which had doubtless been commandeered from some French port and converted into a Flak-ship. There were also three E-boats, spaced out at intervals along the line. In addition, they also saw that each of the six tugs towing the strings of barges was now flying a balloon as a precaution against aerial attack.

‘The balloon puts paid to any chance of our making our presence known to the people in our tug,' said Gregory. ‘There must be German Air Arm men on board to fly it, and I expect they rigged up their winches while we were at Boucheron's yesterday afternoon.'

‘No, we can't expect any help from that quarter,' Kuporovitch agreed. ‘Even if there weren't Germans on board her their friends in the escort ships would see our signals. You were quite right last night in your prediction of the fix in which we'd find ourselves. As far as I can see, the only thing for us to do, when the party starts, is to jump overboard and trust to luck that the British will pick us up.'

‘But you can't swim,' Gregory objected.

‘I know; but I can make some sort of raft, or, anyhow, lash
together all the spare bits of wood that I can find as something to which to cling.'

When they went below again they found that Madeleine was awake and rummaging in the lockers of the little cabin in the hope of finding some odds and ends of food; but she was disappointed. They had to go breakfastless, and instead employed themselves on making three good-sized floats from cupboard doors which they wrenched off, broom-handles and other wooden gear. There was plenty of twine in one of the lockers, and by the time they had finished, although each of the floats looked like a large bundle of junk, they felt certain that they were large enough and sufficiently strongly tied together, to support the weight of a body in the water for several hours.